WATCH: Sen. Schiff Breaks Down Todd Blanche Hearing, Condemns Continued Evasions from Trump Nominees on CNN and MS NOW

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined CNN’s OutFront with Erin Burnett and MS NOW’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki to recap his questioning of Todd Blanche during the Acting Attorney General’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He condemned Blanche’s role in the conception and approval of President Trump’s tax immunity deal and proposed slush fund, and Blanche’s leadership of a Department of Justice (DOJ) that has been weaponized to pursue prosecutions of the president’s enemies. The Senator also spoke on the confirmation hearing for Jay Clayton as the next Director of National Intelligence (DNI), emphasizing his lack of confidence in Clayton’s ability to serve as the leader of the intelligence community if he is unable to state clearly the 2020 election results. View the full interviews here and here. Key Excerpts on CNN’s OutFront with Erin Burnett : On Todd Blanche’s weaponization of the Justice Department: […] He said yes to this slush fund. He said yes to this self-dealing IRS settlement that a judge just this week basically said was a fraudulent act of collusion. And referred Todd Blanche to the Bar Association in New York to look at his ethics or lack of ethics. There’s nothing it appears that he’s unwilling to do for the president. He even went to the length of telling the president he loves him at the podium at the Justice Department. And there you just saw him deny exactly what he said, which is he was asked about prosecuting the president’s enemies, and he said, “Yeah, there are people out there the president has had disagreements with, and he has not only the right to go after them, but a duty to do so. Those were his words, and much as he tries to dissemble, he owns that. And of course, the Justice Department is acting upon that. No self-right, you know, self-respecting prosecutor in his old office would bring a seashells case against James Comey or a case against my Senate colleagues for a video they made that Hegseth didn’t like. It would be unthinkable. And yet this is where Todd Blanche is today. On Jay Clayton’s confirmation hearing: This is a position where it is all the more important to be able to speak truth to power, to confront the president or members of Congress with unpleasant truths in order to protect the country. If Jay Clayton can’t say out loud that Donald Trump lost the election and Joe Biden won the election. Can we have any confidence then, when push comes to shove, when we need the straight scoop about threats to our country, that he’s going to level with us instead of merely singing by the president’s song sheet? It also suggests that if the president wants the intelligence agencies to cook up something to justify voter interference in the midterm elections. That Jay Clayton doesn’t have the backbone to stand up to him. That may be the most significant consequence because, of course, Tulsi Gabbard didn’t have the backbone to stand up to the president. There she was in Fulton County, Georgia, where she has no business being during an FBI raid seizing ballots. So, doesn’t harbor well in terms of what Clayton is willing to do or not do if Trump tries to interfere once again in the next election. On Schiff’s continued efforts to bring the Iran War to an end: There is every way to stop him if members of Congress vote to bring an end to this. We can defund these operations. We can pass these War Powers Resolutions with even greater bipartisan support. Force him to veto it, or if necessary, overcome a veto. But yes, we have all the power that we need in Congress to stop this. What we don’t have yet is sufficient bipartisan will to do it. But this appears to be going on without end, and it appears to be a classic definition now, sadly, tragically, of a quagmire. Key Excerpts on MS NOW’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki : On the biggest takeaway from Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing: I think the central question the senators had for him, he didn’t answer very well, and that is, ‘who do you represent?’ Do you represent the American people as the attorney general is supposed to, or do you represent Donald Trump? Are you still his criminal defense lawyer? And he has made it very clear he is still the president’s lawyer. He signs this settlement agreement, which a judge just said was basically collusion and a fraud, and just a pretense of some kind of a court proceeding to give a patina of respectability to something absolutely devoid of that. He’s made it clear that he will go after the president’s enemies. He’s made it clear that he believes the president has not only the right but the duty to go after his adversaries and abuse the Justice Department to do it. So, he has basically made it clear he is there to be an instrument of Donald Trump’s will to protect him, use the law as a shield to protect him, and also as a sword to go after his enemies. […] Who wrote this tax giveaway for the president? I asked Blanche about it. It’s his name that signed it. He couldn’t tell us who wrote it. Now he said he assumed it was written by a Department of Justice lawyer or an IRS lawyer, but actually, when you look at the terms of it, it is so favorable to Donald Trump. You might surmise that it was actually written by his attorney. The person who is joined in filing the suit, the person who’s now been referred to the Florida Bar Association by that judge in Miami for potential disciplinary proceedings. That judge also referred Todd Blanche to the New York Bar. But we don’t know who wrote this thing. We don’t know why Todd Blanche was the only one who signed it. The agreement from the day before was signed also by someone from the IRS and someone else from the Justice Department. But this alone had Todd Blanche’s signature. So, he’s taken full ownership of this at one level and at another wants to deny any responsibility. I don’t know who wrote this thing. On the potential future of the intelligence community under Jay Clayton: […] They set the bar at Pulte. Isn’t anyone better than Pulte? Shouldn’t we just jump at Clayton because he’s not Pulte? Clayton has very little experience, and as you saw today during the hearing, he couldn’t even answer a basic question that would have required him to speak truth to power. He couldn’t say who won the election because he knows Donald Trump doesn’t want him to say that. If he can’t say who won the election in 2020, how can we count on Jay Clayton to give it straight to the president to Congress when the intelligence might contradict what the president prefers? I mean, let’s say there’s intelligence that Iran is cheating on this deal, but the president doesn’t want to believe it because he’s telling the public something otherwise. We need the director of national intelligence to both level the president say, “Sir, I’m sorry, but we have strong intelligence. The Iranians are cheating. Here’s what it looks like. Here’s our degree of confidence in it.” We need them to brief Congress this way. And what we saw with Tulsi Gabbard is a willingness to manipulate the intelligence, to basically tell an intelligence counsel, “No, I don’t like that conclusion. Rewrite it and fire people who won’t.” That is the worst thing you could ask for in a director of intelligence. Clayton gave us no confidence that he would be any different than Gabbard. ###