MSNBC "All In with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Adam Schiff

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Congressman Adam Schiff is a member of the January 6 committee. He`s chair of the House Intelligence Committee. He led the prosecution of Trump`s first impeachment. He`s just published a memoir called Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy And Still Could which includes harrowing details from inside the Capitol during the insurrection. And Congressman Schiff, thanks for joining us tonight.

First, let`s start on the Bannon question. You and other members of the committee said we`re not playing around here. It sounds like of the four who subpoenaed, three have been engaging through council, Bannon just saying no screw you. What happens next?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Well, we`ll take up this report on Tuesday night we`ll vote it out to the House. The House will then vote to hold him in criminal contempt. And once that takes place, the Speaker will send that to the Justice Department. And then, the statue says that they have a duty to present it to the grand jury.

So he will be prosecuted. That`s our expectation. And I think the reason why Bannon feels he can get away with this is for four years, that`s exactly what the Trump administration people did. When Bannon came into the committee room during the Russia investigation, he came with a list of only 25 questions he would answer, and they were written out for him by the White House.

He got away with it, he scammed and ripped off Trump`s own supporters and got pardoned for it. He apparently feels he`s above the law, but he`s about to find out otherwise.

HAYES: What is the timeline here? I mean, it sounds like what you -- what I hear in your voice is you understand that rapidity here is of the essence.

[20:10:07]

SCHIFF: I do. I mean, look, after they stonewalled and played rope-a-dope in the courts for two years before we got to hear McGahn`s testimony, it`s pretty clear we need to move swiftly. Now, we didn`t have something during the last administration that we have now. We didn`t have a Justice Department that was interested in justice or the rule of law.

We had an attorney general in Bill Barr that was interested in turning the DOJ into Donald Trump`s criminal defense law firm. But now we have an independent Justice Department with an attorney general who doesn`t believe anyone should be above the law. So, it`s a very different expectation. And I think when people start to get prosecuted for ignoring lawful process, it will send a message and a proper one that people need to cooperate when they`re compelled to testify.

HAYES: Let me -- let me play a little bit of sound from Bannon that day. I think I as I had been sort of tracking all this, I knew he was kind of around and I knew that he was -- you know, he`s always got some weird side content podcasting hustle where he`s like, you know, talking into a microphone, so, I knew that was happening.

But I didn`t realize how much he had been hyping up January 6. This is him actually the morning of January 6. Listen to the last thing he says. I don`t know if you`ve seen this tape before but listen to the last thing he says here. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BANNON: We did tell you. Today is just not a rally. The president`s going to give you his opening argument. I think Eastman is up there actually throwing down and maybe we can go if I get in my ear, whether he`s still up there, we`ll try to go live to him. At 1:00, that starts. There`s going to be some pretty controversial -- pretty controversial things going on.

HAYES: At 1:00, that starts some pretty controversial -- pretty controversial things going on. He sure seems like he knew what was coming.

SCHIFF: Well, it really sounds that way. And one of the things that we made reference to -- in seeking his testimony and compelling it, was other statements about all hell breaking loose. These were statements that were reportedly made by him the day before the insurrection. So, he`s clearly someone that has information relevant to our investigation. And we`re going to -- we`re going to get to the bottom of it.

HAYES: The three other individuals who were in that first round of subpoenas, they include Mark Meadows, former chief of staff, Kash Patel who is an advisor and a staffer actually on your committee, to Devin Nunes at one point went over to DOD, and Dan Scavino who`s the social media director. They`ve all been granted a delay according to our own Sahil Kapur, short postponements.

My understanding is there are open lines of communication with their lawyers about meeting the obligations of these subpoenas. Is that fair to say?

SCHIFF: You know, I can`t comment much beyond the fact that we are engaging with the attorneys for these potential -- or these witnesses, but I can`t, you know, point to the situation for example with Jeffrey Clark who we were engaging with his attorneys to try to seek his voluntary testimony, but those negotiations led nowhere, and he has now been subpoenaed and compelled to appear.

We`re not going to wait long. If people are just trying to delay and obfuscate, we`re going to move quickly to subpoenas. And as we`re showing with Bannon, we`re going to move quickly to criminal prosecution referrals when we need to.

I don`t know if you got a chance to see the opening monologue tonight as you were -- you were getting wired up there, but I played some sound of a pledge of allegiance at that rally for the Virginia Gubernatorial Candidate Glenn Youngkin in which the flag was brought out and noted that this was the flag present on January 6 at the "peaceful rally." I just wonder, what goes through your mind? What`s your reaction to seeing that brought out as sort of object of reverence in a republican rally that the president calls into for a current Republican candidate?

SCHIFF: Well, a shock on the one hand, but on the other hand, it`s just as you say, the Republican Party has turned into an autocratic cult of the former president. It is no longer wedded to even the idea of democracy. This is something that I write about in the book when I describe insurrectionists wearing suits and ties. Those people at that rally wearing suits and ties are trying to achieve the overturning of an election and the people`s will by other means. They`re going around the country stripping independent elections officials of their duties, replacing them with partisan boards or Trump acolytes.

And the whole -- the whole lesson they apparently learned from January 6th and the aftermath is their mistake was they didn`t have people in place as secretary of state in Georgia that when the president called and asked them to find 11,780 votes, were willing to do it. And now, they`re determined to find people who will do that. And that to me is the most grave danger we face.

HAYES: There`s a passage in your book I wanted to ask you about it. It leaps out -- it`s a description of some of -- there`s a quite a bit in the book about what happened that day. And this is a passage you talking to some Republican members as there`s an awareness that the perimeter had been violated, the Capitol had people within it that you all had to shelter somewhere. You can`t let them see you, a Republican member said to me.

[20:15:19]

He`s right, another Republican member said. I know these people. I can talk to them. I can talk my way through them. You`re in a whole different category. At first, I was oddly touched by these GOP members and their evident concern. But by then, I had been receiving death threats for years and that feeling soon gave way to another. If these Republican members hadn`t joined the president in falsely attacking me for four years, I wouldn`t need to be worried about my security, none of us would.

Do you think they understood at the moment -- I mean, among many things, what this reveals to me is the people in that building in that moment across ideological and partisan lines did understand what was happening.

SCHIFF: Well, they absolutely understood what was happening. And you know, they were scared. I walked out with a Republican who had ripped a wooden post out of the floor with a hand sanitizer on it to use as a club to defend himself. He`d been in Congress all of 72 hours. So, they understood what was taking place.

But what we have seen over the last four years time after time after time is every time Donald Trump brings about some new outrage, some new terrible development in the country, initially the reaction is OK, that`s the last straw, we`ve got to stand up to him. But it so quickly falls away. Just as we witnessed with Kevin McCarthy blaming trump on the day of the insurrection, and then going down to Mar-a-Lago shortly thereafter and begging forgiveness, it seems as if there is nothing that this former president can do that will cause at least the Republican leadership as it exists today to stand up to him and defend the democracy.

And you know, one of the terrible epiphanies for me in the last four years was I respected, even admired some of my Republican colleagues because I believed that they believed what they were saying. But we`ve now learned that they don`t believe it. It`s all about power. It`s all about maintaining their position. And they`re willing to tear at the foundation of our democracy if they can attain it.

HAYES: Congressman Adam Schiff whose new memoir Midnight In Washington is out now. Thank you so much for joining us tonight.

SCHIFF: Thanks, Chris.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source