MSNBC "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" - Transcript: Interview with Adam Schiff

Interview

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O`DONNELL: Less than a year after Adam Schiff`s warning at the urgings of Donald Trump, the Trump mob attacked the Capitol and entered that same chamber where Adam Schiff was speaking, the United States Senate, to stop the certification of Joe Biden`s presidential election.

Donald Trump then made history as the first president to be impeached twice and the first president to be found guilty in the Senate trial by members of his own party. Tonight, the United States Capitol police say they are closely monitoring activity around a planned September 18th rally in support of the Trump criminal defendants who attacked the capitol on January 6th.

It comes as the select committee is investigating the communications Donald Trump and some Republican members of Congress had on January 6th and Kevin McCarthy is threatening telecommunications companies not to cooperate with the congressional investigation.

Joining us now is Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence committee and a member of the House Select Committee investigating January 6th.

Thank you very much for joining us tonight, Mr. Chairman.

I wanted to get your reaction to Kevin McCarthy`s threatening of parties who you as investigators have been in contact with about your investigation.

SCHIFF: Well, first, Lawrence, I just want to say how refreshing it is to see Zelensky finally get that White House meeting and with President Biden. After all, it was Trump`s effort to try to sneer Biden, to try to weaken him as a political opponent that ended up getting him impeached and he did so by withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid that Zelensky desperately needed to fight off the Russians. So, very refreshing to see that meeting take place and to take place with Joe Biden.

In terms of McCarthy, McCarthy understood even as we were investigating the president`s Ukraine -- President Trump`s Ukraine malfeasance a couple years ago, that Donald Trump was guilty, but nonetheless, he and the Republicans in the Congress at the time defended the president and tried to thwart our investigation, even though we all understood that if he wasn`t stopped, he would do it again or worse and, in fact, that`s what happened.

So what McCarthy is doing now by issuing the statement threatening the telecoms if comply with a lawful process by select committee, he will punish them if he should be the speaker one day. It goes to show you nothing has changed for McCarthy. He`s still protecting the former president. It`s still a cult in that party around this former failed president.

And the fact he would go to such length as to threaten the telecoms shows how desperate he is in the former president`s defense. But it`s an egregious violation I think of ethics and it shows yet again with Kevin McCarthy will never be permitted to go anywhere near the speaker`s office. We have to make sure we maintain a Democratic majority in Congress.

O`DONNELL: I just want to dwell on this McCarthy threat because it comes from a legislative body. His power, if he were to become speaker, would be legislative. So he`s saying if you comply, if you telecommunications companies comply with legal process, we will write a law and we will pass a law that we would not pass. We wouldn`t do this at all, we wouldn`t even think about it as long as you didn`t comply with legal process. But if you do, we will write a law that will have to be about something like taxation or some regulation of telecommunications in a way that is -- that they haven`t even contemplated. He doesn`t even know what it is. He couldn`t even announce what the actual legislation would be.

But what he`s clearly saying is this legislation isn`t necessary, there`s no reason to do it. The only reason we would do it is as some kind of vindictive act against companies that complied with the law.

SCHIFF: Well, that`s exactly right. And here he is following again the form of his boss from Mar-a-Lago. Trump when he was in office also threatened the telecoms because he didn`t like when there was sort of adverse feedback on social media about him. So he threatened, for example, to repeal the immunity from liability that the telecoms enjoy.

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Now, there may be good reasons to do that, but punishing them because he doesn`t like their content isn`t one of them.

And here it`s almost more egregious from McCarthy because you have Congress, the very branch in which he is serving on a bipartisan basis telling these companies preserve these records because we may need them in our investigation, and he`s threatening them because they`re going to be asked to comply with legal congressional process.

He`s essentially trying to undermine his own branch to protect this former president. It shows just what a sacrifice of our own institutional interests McCarthy is willing to undertake to protect this would-be autocrat.

LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: What can you tell us about the pace of the committee`s investigation of January 6th? What can we expect next?

SCHIFF: Yes. I mean we are working as expeditiously as we can. We`ve been hiring new staff. We`ve been mapping out our next hearings or hearing.

We`ve been -- as you can see, issuing a broad series of requests for information and preservation letters. When you compare how quickly we have assembled ourselves and are moving forward compared to, for example, the 9/11 commission, we`re moving with pretty break neck speed.

Now, I think it`s in part because we feel a real sense of urgency here. The country is still not out of the woods. The very forces that brought about January 6th continue and as you were pointing out, Republicans in Congress are now trying to turn these criminals who attacked the Capitol, terrorists who attacked our law enforcement and bludgeoned them as some kind of political prisoners and heroes.

So these lies go on, the very lies that resulted in January 6th continue to be propagated by McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Cawthorn and all these people. So this is really quite urgent but we`re also determined to be very thorough which is apparently what frightens McCarthy.

O`DONNELL: Chairman Adam Schiff, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

SCHIFF: Thank you.

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