ICYMI: Sen. Schiff Talks Recent Supreme Court Rulings, Cost of Trump’s Corruption, and Democrats’ Path Forward on Lovett or Leave It

Los Angeles, CA — In case you missed it, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined Jon Lovett’s Lovett or Leave It for a wide-ranging discussion on recent Supreme Court rulings empowering President Trump, Trump’s repeated self-enrichment schemes and brazen corruption at the cost of the American people, and the consequences of the Trump administration’s abuse and politicization of agencies – including the Department of Justice and the office of the Director of National Intelligence. Schiff also spoke about the Democratic Party’s path forward – emphasizing the need to hold the Trump administration accountable, work to bring down the cost of living for Americans, and reform the Supreme Court. View the full interview here . Key Excerpts: On the Supreme Court’s rulings and the partisanship of the Roberts Court: […] I think it continues a dangerous trend of empowering a president, the president, any president. And the president was already hugely powerful, the office was. But this Court has made it even more so, and it has also taken down so many of the guardrails. I think, yes, it’s because they believe – many of these justices – in what had been a fringe theory of unitary executive power. But I also think that maybe even more than the president’s power, this is about the power of the Court itself, and it’s about the power of the chief justice. You can’t tell me that John Roberts didn’t understand how damaging his immunity decision would be. But I think, like I have seen with so many other people during the era of Trump, Roberts made the decision that it was more important to him to be at the center of power on that Court than to do the right thing by the country and the Constitution. […] It is interesting to parse the different decisions in all these cases, where there is concurrence and dissent. But one trend to me of all these decisions, which again I don’t find the least bit surprising, they track the money. They go where the money is. This is really the strongest common bond of this right-wing Court, is to go where the money is. So, I fully expected they would give the president the power to fire commissioners, except for the Federal Reserve, because that’s where the money is. And likewise, the Supreme Court decision to allow big donors to give to parties, and those parties to coordinate with campaigns, just unleashing more money. That’s also in big money’s interest. That’s the common denominator with this Court. And yeah, they’re partisan, mostly partisan, not conservative anymore, because they’ll throw out precedent at a drop of a hat. But the real glue that holds them together is big money. The money behind the Federalist Society, money behind their expensive trips and vacations, that is, I think, what unites this right-wing Court. On the Democratic Party’s midterm agenda: […] I am squarely in the camp that thinks there has to be accountability. Because if we don’t hold the president and others accountable for their lawlessness, they will simply do it again whenever they take power back. And they will believe, and not without reason, that the Democrats are too weak and feckless to do anything about their abuses. It’s a get out of jail free forever card. So, there has to be accountability. Now, what that accountability should look like – should it include impeachment? We’ll have to make that kind of a tactical judgment at the time. An impeachment isn’t going to be successful in the Senate. Nevertheless, the president’s conduct certainly rises well beyond impeachable offenses. So, I think we’ll have to make a sort of a game-time decision. […] We do need to learn this from what Republicans have done: and that is, if you have the courage of your convictions, you can move the country far and fast in a particular direction. Now they’ve taken it in a horrible direction. But we should take it in the right direction. And both by holding the miscreants accountable, but also by proposing things that are bold. That are not just going back to the status quo before all this mess, that are willing to use all the tools of power to make that happen, including when it comes to the Supreme Court – expanding the Court, term limiting the Court, an enforceable code of ethics for the Court. We need to be prepared to outlaw gerrymandering, do whatever is necessary to get that done. We should have got that done in the first years of the Biden administration. So, we need to move far and fast. On the cost of Trump’s corruption: […] You’re president 24 hours a day, although this guy spends a lot of time on the golf course after criticizing his predecessors for spending far less time on the golf course but never mind. There are limited time and attention as president to a lot of problems the country faces. When this president is spending so much time on the ballroom, on the State Fair, on a UFC fight, it means he’s not focused on the things that really matter to people. People can’t afford to fill up their gas tank right now. What is he doing about that? He’s not doing anything about that. […] The cost of this corruption – if these bribe payments or extortionary payments were paid to Trump in this litigation he had against CBS and ABC, etc. The cost of the corruption is that you have mergers going forward which may result in thousands of people losing their jobs, may result in consumers having to pay a lot more for what they stream and having fewer choices. This is the cost of that potential corruption. But whether it’s the crypto deals or meme coin stuff, or tungsten deal in Kazakhstan that the kids are profiting off of, or these sole source contracts, no-bid contracts – they’re wasting the money, the resources of the country to enrich Trump, his kids, their friends in true oligarchic fashion, while the rest of the country suffers. On the politicization of intelligence at DNI under Bill Pulte and Tulsi Gabbard: […] In terms of Pulte, the Director of National Intelligence, the whole purpose behind that office – and what happens to our national security with people like Pulte and Kash Patel leading the bureau, and Tulsi Gabbard, while she was there at the DNI – it means you’re incompetent. It means that you, as Kash Patel often does, you shoot off your mouth, and you compromise investigations. It means that you fire a lot of the most experienced people. A lot of the people that Pulte is apparently firing are focused on national counterterrorism when we’re at war, it seems like kind of a stupid thing to do. It means that Tulsi Gabbard is spending time in Fulton County, Georgia, looking at ballot boxes from an election that took place years ago. Bill Pulte, likely to do very much the same. It means that Pulte will carry on and perhaps make worse what Tulsi Gabbard was doing which is when the intelligence community came up with an analysis that contradicted one of the president’s false narratives, Gabbard basically told him to rewrite it through her chief of staff. To rewrite it or fired them. So, this is what we can expect. Now, when that happens it means that policymakers don’t get good information. It means that we’re unaware of threats we should be aware of because the intelligence is being politicized. We saw the politicization of intelligence in the run up to the Iraq War and the disastrous consequences there. There may be very well tragic consequences here if policymakers, including the president, don’t get good information. ###