CNN "Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees" - Transcript: Interview with Adam Schiff

Interview

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COOPER: Not about what they found out about Benghazi, or didn't find out, it's about her numbers making them drop.

Joining us now, Congressman Adam Schiff, member of the Select Committee and Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Chairman Schiff, this House G.O.P. resolution that just failed tonight, which demanded that Speaker Pelosi seat McCarthy's picks for the committee, is this anything other than just You know gamesmanship by Kevin McCarthy?

[20:05:01]

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): No, that's all it is. And I think you summed up both McCarthy and the lack of any dedication to principle, ideology, anything, but maintenance of his position. This is just more of the same effort at distraction.

And I think you also made a very important point at the outset, which is, at the end of the day, what this insurrection was about was about a large group of people unwilling to accept the results of a democratic election, willing to use violence to have their way and that is a very dangerous sign that our democracy is on thin ice.

And one of the things that I hope that we will shed light on is how our country got to this point, as well as how we got to January 6, but what we need to do going forward to put our democracy on more solid ground.

COOPER: House Republicans have their own plans to try to counter the narrative of the hearing tomorrow. We learned today that Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar -- are all the bright lights of the Republican Party plan to hold a press conference, quote, " ... demanding answers from Attorney General Merrick Garland on the status of January 6 prisoners and related investigations," end quote.

They are calling insurrectionists who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, prisoners, as though they're sort of POWs in some way. The fact that they're doing this on the day the police officers are testifying about how they feared for their lives. You know, Louie Gohmert claims to be a law and order person. I mean, he's from Texas. This is what the Republican Party has come to. SCHIFF: It is what the Publican Party has come to. It's not a party of

ideas. It's a cult around the person of the former President. And look, if they choose to do that, and we fully suspected that that might choose some distraction tomorrow, it will only sharpen the contrast between the Democrats and Republicans on the Select Committee and their genuine desire to get to the truth and the facts.

And this clown show that has become the G.O.P. wedded to this grifter in the form of the former President.

COOPER: Is there anything new really to learn though, about January 6? I mean, that's one of the criticisms of, you know, of having this Select Committee. They say, it's really just to, you know, keep this in the news and bash the former President. What more do you hope to learn from this?

SCHIFF: Well, really, just about everything more. There is very little that we really know about that day. We don't know what the quality of the Intelligence was before that date. We don't know how well it was shared or not shared. We don't know why it wasn't acted upon, or if it was acted upon.

We don't know why it took so long to call in the National Guard. We don't know what the White House administration knew about the participation of these white nationalist groups. We don't know what degree these white nationalists essentially coordinated with each other.

We don't know what their object was, in terms of violence against particular members. We certainly know that they intended to do harm against the Speaker, against Mike Pence, but we also don't know what plans they have in the future.

So, all of these questions and many more, we hope to shed light on, we hope to learn in depth about, and create a comprehensive report, and most important make recommendations for the future.

COOPER: Just looking at the hearing tomorrow, can you explain how it is going to be formatted?

SCHIFF: Yes. It will have opening statements by the Chair, Bennie Thompson, and then by Liz Cheney, so that she can articulate the view of a great many Republicans who are also interested in getting to the truth. And then we will proceed with the witness testimony.

And then we'll have member questions which will probably last five to 10 minutes apiece, probably closer to 10 minutes. And those will -- the questions will be interspersed with videos, some that has been seen before, some that has not been seen before.

But most importantly, these police officers who were on the frontlines who were beaten, who were sprayed with bear spray, who were attacked and continue to suffer injuries, some who came close to dying that day will be able to help tell us what happened, and also give content to these video images that many people have seen, but don't really understand what was going on. COOPER: It is remarkable when you think about 9/11 and the horrific

attack on America and American democracy that day, and the amount of investigation, the amount of attention -- bipartisan -- that was rightfully paid to it. It is -- just when you step back and try to kind of remove the politics from it, just on a purely historic and national security basis, it is kind of stunning that we're in this position where it's now politicized -- it's seen through the lens of politics if you want to know more about what actually happened.

[20:10:04]

SCHIFF: Well, that's exactly right. And of course, you could have made the same point after 9/11. Do we really need an investigation? Because don't we know what happened? And don't we know that al-Qaeda attacked us and they used aircraft? What more is there to learn?

Of course, there was a lot more to learn about why this happened and why we weren't able to stop it, and what future threat was posed by al-Qaeda and what reforms and changes we needed to make to our Intelligence collection and collaboration among agencies, and we approached that task in a bipartisan way.

Now, then, like now, there was some initial opposition of the Bush administration. They thought the commission might report negatively on how they didn't stop 9/11 from happening. But there were enough people of goodwill in both parties to overcome that and come up with a bipartisan product.

But that Republican Party that was willing to do that in 2001 and 2002 is not Donald Trump's Republican Party. Had Kevin McCarthy been the leader then, there would have been no 9/11 Commission. There would have been, you know, an effort to persuade the country that what, it didn't happen, or it's overblown, or who knows what the explanation would have been.

COOPER: Well, also, former President Bush did not address the hijackers ahead of the attack on 9/11. I mean, you know, none of this would have happened, were it not for the former President of the United States. I mean, that is an event unique in American history.

SCHIFF Well, that's true. And more than that, it wouldn't have happened without the weeks and weeks of preparation before January 6, all of the propagation of the big lie about the election that made this such fertile ground. And, you know, the admonition from the President and the amplification that he got on, you know, the right- wing media, that all was a component of this, and a lot more.

But that amount that we don't know is what we hope to reveal. What was the role of these right-wing, white nationalist groups? How much foreknowledge was there in the administration that they would be there intent on doing violence? These are questions that need to be answered.

COOPER: Chairman Schiff, I appreciate your time. Thank you.

SCHIFF: Thank you.

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