MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: Interview with Adam Schiff

Interview

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REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): You bet.

MADDOW: What Mike Schmidt just told us is that your records, the records of your entire staff, and the child of one of your staff members were all seized secretly by the Trump Justice Department as part of this investigation.

Does that comport with your understanding now that the gag order has apparently been lifted on Apple and they were able to notify you at least of some of the scope of what happened here?

SCHIFF: I don`t know whether it was the full staff or not, and we`re trying to obviously observe the privacy of our staff members, so we`re reliant on people who want to report what they have received.

We also don`t know whether it extended beyond Democrats on the committee to Republicans. I guess the Republicans are not saying.

But, you know, we`re obviously deeply suspicious of what the Justice Department was doing. More than that, this looks like a patent abuse of the department. Yet another example of the president politicizing, using the Department of Justice as a cudgel to go after his enemies. He would repeatedly attack our committee, attack me personally, call for investigations of our committee while we were doing an investigation of him.

And apparently, those pleas were met with a receptive audience at the very top level of the Justice Department, among Sessions and Bill Barr, even though there was no evidence to support a leak coming from our committee.

And so, you know, look, it`s going to take a decade, I think, before the department recovers from this politicization. I spent almost six years with the department. I really venerate the department, and it`s heartbreaking to see what he did to it and how -- you know, how difficult it is to rely now on the impartiality of the department given this sordid four-year history.

MADDOW: You released a statement tonight, and you spoke with "The Times" as well, calling on the inspector general, the independent inspector general inside the Justice Department, to look into this, to investigate this essentially as the -- potentially, the weaponization of law enforcement for political purposes.

Can you explain to our audience, to people who hear this as kind of an extension of what they`ve heard about going after reporters` records, who may not necessarily grasp why this is -- why this is a big deal, why this is something that hasn`t happened before? Why is it such a big deal? Why would it be perhaps unprecedented, at least very unusual thing for a member of Congress to have records like this seized by a Justice Department?

SCHIFF: Well, it`s, you know, really norm within norm within norm being broken here. The first and most important norm post-Watergate is the president of the United States does not get involved in particular cases at the Justice Department, doesn`t urge the Justice Department to investigate particular people. That`s one very important norm.

Beyond that, the president of the United States doesn`t urge the department to investigate his political adversaries or his political enemies. That is even a more important norm.

And then I think even beyond that, you have the specter of a president who is himself under investigation by our committee, calling for an unprecedented subpoena -- unprecedented subpoenas for account information pertaining to members of Congress, to staff members, to family members, even to a minor child.

And that -- that is, I think, a terrible abuse of power. It violates, I think, the separation of powers. But it also makes the Department of Justice just a fully owned subsidiary of the president`s personal legal interests and political interests. And that does such damage to the department.

So, it`s extraordinary, maybe unprecedented for the department to seek records like this of a member of Congress or staff of a member of Congress or staff of a committee, to do so in a partisan way, to do so when they`re investigating him, to do so openly calling on his department. It`s hard to express just how shocking an abuse of power this really is.

MADDOW: Mr. Chairman, do you know who the other Democratic member is on the committee whose records were targeted?

SCHIFF: You know, I know some of the information about other people who received subpoenas. Out of respect for their privacy, I will let them speak or not speak.

But the truth is I don`t know how broad these subpoenas were except that I know they were extraordinarily broad. Went out to a staff who weren`t even related to the committee, who had no responsibilities on the committee.

And in terms of how many members were affected, part of the difficulty in knowing for sure is a lot of people who got this notice from Apple thought it was spam. And we may learn more now that the story has come out about others who similarly got these notices as they go back and they check their old email to see whether they got a notice like this as well.

So we may learn more. I would certainly like to know, and we`ve asked the Justice Department, and they`ve not been forthcoming, whether this was just directed at Democrats or whether this was a committee-wide investigation. I wouldn`t be surprised if this was a purely partisan investigation, really targeting one party.

But there`s a lot we still don`t know, and I imagine we`ll find out more.

MADDOW: And, well, on that point, though, are you going to find out more?

It would seem to me that Merrick Garland, as the new attorney general, inherited not just the awesome responsibilities of being attorney general of the United States but a whole extra awesome responsibility that nobody`s had to deal with since, you know, the era of Nixon and John Mitchell perhaps at the Justice Department, which is that there`s all this stuff that happened in the Justice Department, including people -- including with the involvement of people who are still there.

That is a profound departure from previous norms. In many cases, that is a profound and shocking violation of Justice Department policy. Everything from, you know, intervention in criminal cases involving the president`s friends to the way that reporters were apparently surveilled, and now what you`re describing here.

In terms of getting to the bottom of this, do you expect Merrick Garland to publicly testify about this, to make Justice Department officials who were involved in this testify? Do you want Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities here, or do you want this just handled quietly by the inspector general on the I.G.`s own terms?

SCHIFF: Well, look, I think Congress has certainly had a role here. Merrick Garland will testify before different committees in Congress. I`m sure he will be asked about these actions by the department, actions in going after members of Congress with baseless subpoenas, actions in going after reporters the way that they have, the gag orders that were issued.

But also as you point out, the intervention of the attorney general apparently in this investigation involving our committee but also to reduce the sentence of Roger Stone, someone who committed perjury, lying to cover up for the president. The dismissal of the case against Michael Flynn, another person convicted or pled guilty twice to lying to federal authorities.

So I think that the attorney general has an obligation to clean house, to essentially understand exactly what the department was doing over the last four years, make sure that there`s accountability for those that were engaged in political and partisan investigations within the department. And, you know, in terms of the oversight by Congress, I don`t think I have a role in that given that some of my records were apparently the subject of a subpoena.

But I think other committees, as part of their oversight responsibilities, ought to ask the attorney general and others, and I do think the department needs to do a wholesale review of the politicization of these cases over the last four years.

MADDOW: Yeah, clean -- clean house, I think, is an appropriate term there.

The Justice Department was used over the last four years in ways that can`t just be left to sort of drift into the ether without us knowing the extent of it and without it being corrected -- if you`ll forgive me saying so.

Congressman Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee - - sir, thank you for joining us on short notice. I am sorry that this happened to you and to your staff and to their families in particular. I look forward to getting to the bottom to it -- bottom of it as fast as we damn well can. Thank you, sir.

SCHIFF: Thank you.

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