Transcripts For CSPAN Rep. Adam Schiff On National Security 20180216

Andrea welcome, everyone. Thank you also much for turning out. I know you are turning out for congressman adam schiff, so it is my great pleasure to introduce the congressman, who is currently serving in his ninth term representing the 20th district in california. He of course is the ranking democrat on the house Intelligence Committee. Throughout his tenure in congress, the congressman has focused on the economy, on National Security, education, safety, and health issues. Previously, he served in californias 21st district in the state legislature. He chaired the Judiciary Committee there and the select committee on juvenile justice, and the joint committee on the arts. We just learned we shared an adolescent involvement in music. He is also a former teenage musician. [laughter] andrea before serving in the legislature, the congressman served with the u. S. Attorneys office in l. A. For six years. He has six years as a federal prosecutor. He is a graduate of Stanford University and harvard law school. He and his wife eve yes, adam children, aave two daughter alexa and a son elijah. We know the council is completely nonpartisan and has an open invitation, and has continued to invite the republican chairman of house intelligence, and he is welcome at any time to come to one of these sessions. I want to start with something that is certainly being here, and also overseas. It involves our reputation abroad, and also a threat that was outlined more broadly to the Intelligence Committee on the senate side, by the intelligence leaders, by the dni, which is russian interference through cyber and social media. We are seeing, according to the hamilton project, that russian bots, for the last 48 hours, have discussed parkland, the high school in florida, more than anything else. Seen reporting that there was involvement on support for the nra by russian intermediaries during the election in 2016, something that still might be subject to investigation more broadly. I want to ask you about guns and about american culture, and how this affects all of us. Whether you think, in my interviews in the last 24 hours we have heard from state officials, school superintendents, parents, and teachers that young people in this very Large High School are not only traumatized, but are also asking questions. We did not hear a single word about guns from the white house yesterday. Us. Schiff i think all of are still having a hard time recovering from what happened in florida. After every shooting i have a high school aged son and a college aged daughter. I would tell my son, dont worry. This would never happen at your school. That has gotten harder and harder for me to maintain. Myont know how to talk to son about it. I dont know how any parent talks to their child about it. This is a cannot say problem somewhere else. It is a problem everywhere. And i was talking with one of my intel staff members, wonderful staff on the Intelligence Committee and in my personal office, about the shooting yesterday. He was saying i wanted to be on this committee because i wanted to work on National Security and public safety. And it just seems so strange that we put so much effort into protecting ourselves from foreign threats, and we do little or nothing to protect ourselves from the threat that is right on our doorstep. Why is that . You know, there are obviously a number of explanations. Whenever you see a really wide gulf between what the public wants and what the public gets, there is usually a powerful special interest in the way. Majority ofhe vast nra members support meaningful background checks and restrictions. But the leadership does not. And the leadership has put enough fear into a majority of the members of the house and senate that we cannot seem to make any progress. Or if we are making progress, it is only incrementally, in changing attitudes. We have not seen it reflected in the congress. Todayct that the argument that it is too soon to talk about this is now the subject of such ridicule. T least it shows some progress clearly, we have a long way to go. , i know, as you can imagine tend to view what is happening sometimes through a russia prism. It is interesting when you look at the social Media Campaign that russians undertook during the 2016 election that one of the wedges they chose, aside from race, with the black lives mark webpages and advertisements, were ads focused on the second amendment. The russians are very big fans of our second amendment. They dont particularly want one of their own. They dont necessarily want lots of russians running around with guns. But they are really happy we do. They would like Nothing Better than if we were shooting each other every day, which sadly we are. Sometimes, you need to look at the perspective from the outside to understand the vulnerabilities we have. On more russians worked than anything else in the 2016 election, even more than helping one candidate or hurting the other, was to weaken our democracy. They view this as one of the fault lines to exploit. Andrea dni was describing this things whene major coats addressed the senate. Was no house intelligence threat hearing for the agency chiefs. When i covered congress fulltime, first of all, the Intelligence Committee was completely bipartisan. Whenever a majority report was theed, in the instance of socalled torture report, it was also a minority report at the same time. We can get to the memo in a moment, and the time lag between the release of the memos. The other point being there was always a threat hearing in the senate and the house at the same time. Why has been has there been no scheduled threat hearing for house intelligence . Rep. Schiff it is a good question. I do not know the answer. We have certainly asked that we conduct one. I would say the good news bad news is the following. The good news side notwithstanding the chairman and my substantial differences on russia, the conduct of the russia probe, the other work of the committee has gone on notout i would say without difficulty, but it has gone on effectively. We have continued to put of Defense Authorization bills. We put one through the house on a bipartisan aces, where the senate has not succeeded in doing so. We were able to pass a difficult and complex 702 reform bill. That was no easy task. This is in the same category, i would expect, of nonrussia related or nonrussia centric work we might be able to do. I cannot explain it. The senate has gone first. The senate always seems to go first. But our hearing usually closely followed thereafter. I hope it will. Whats more, i hope we can do a variety of other open hearings that ought to be very nonpartisan. One we have been advocating for a great many months is one on election security, so we can bring in the department of Homeland Security to bring in state elections officials, and we can get a state of the close we check on how are to finishing work that has to be done to protect our polling places. Andrea on that subject, the testimony from the senate side was that russia is involved in an Ongoing Campaign to metal in our democracy, to undermine our democracy through social media and other means. Questionsn answer to it was acknowledged, in answer to a question of fbi director wray, that the president has never sought a question, a solution, a program for defense. To my knowledge, there has never been a principal speeding or Deputy Committee meeting. Or deputyles Meeting Committee meeting. What happens if the white house does not acknowledge this is urgent . Rep. Schiff i do not think there can be. The russians are a very sophisticated cyber actor. If they want to get into the dnc and 2020, they will get in. If they want to get into the rnc, they will get in there. There is no cyber fix. There is no patch we can implement to protect our institutions. We have seen how even some of the best seven protected institutions have been penetrated by the russians, chinese, and others. There is no perfect cyber cure here. Ultimately, we need a whole government response to this, which we are not going to get as long as the commander in chief does not insist on it, and he is not going to insist on it because he views this as a threat to his legitimacy. Any acknowledgment of what the russians did is a threat to his legitimacy. More than that, what we really need is a bipartisan indeed, nonpartisan consensus that if any foreign power medals again, we will reject it, no matter who it helps and who it hurts. We did not have that in 2016. We had a candidate who was willing to egg on and encourage the russians to hack Hillary Clintons emails, and he trumpeted every daily dump of these emails. That cannot happen again. Somehow, we have to get past this. I am often struck in my work with the terrible it seems like mostly terrible four to of world events. At the very time when the russians decided to be the least riskaverse, to jump into our elections with both feet in a very hamhanded way, it happened to be at the same time where one of the president ial candidates was willing to embrace that, and not reject it. I am certain that had john mccain or mitt romney been the nominee in 2016, they would have said, russia, but out. Butt out. We despise her involvement. Ofare not going to make use illgotten gains. That is not who we are. That is not who donald trump was. And i think that, more than anything else, to protect ourselves in the future, we need to develop that consensus that any foreign interference will be rejected. It could cut in completely the opposite direction. The russians are equal opportunity malevolent actors. They are not republicans and are not democrats. They are just designed in their foreign and cyber policy to undermine the united states. They view the world as a zerosum game where anything good for us is bad for them, and vice versa. I do think that, in fairness, some of the responsibility is also attributed to the Obama Administration for not establishing a more forceful deterrent. I think it goes back to the korean hack of sony, in which there was a minimal response. Around thet others world watched that and determined that cyber is a costfree intervention. There will always be a certain level of plausible deniability with cyber, because even though we are good at attribution, we never want to fully show how we know who did what. To show your need hand, as long as you can establish a deterrent. And you dont need to necessarily respond to a cyber attack with another cyber response. I think the response in north korea should have been on informational response. The North Koreans hate it when south korea responds with information about how terrible their regime is. If we had embarked on an informational response, it would furthern a deterrent to north korean meddling. With the russians, we should have called it out earlier. Senator feinstein and i were the first to make an official at tradition, but it is not the same coming from to matters of congress in the same party as from the administration. While i respect the motive in terms of the Obama Administration, they did not want to be seen as meddling. The American People had a right to know what is going on, and could be trusted to do the right thing with it. They should have defended being more public and aggressive at the time, at least in my view. About let me ask you steve bannon, because he was at your committee yesterday. Concerns, and other concerns. Europe of counterpart, michael republicanyour counterpart, michael conway, was complaining publicly afterward that he had not answered had only answered questions that had been preapproved by the white house. Is it likely that he will be facing a contempt citation, or not . Rep. Schiff i think it is likely he will face a contempt citation. My colleagues, i think, in the gop, on our committee, have committed themselves. They can always an commit u ncommit themselves. The number said publicly that if the Committee Takes no for an answer, it will imperil future investigations. If our committee or others in congress established a reputation that you can come in and say no, you can give no reason or give the flimsiest of explanations, i have to say and i know every week i live to is something even more absurd than the week before. The invocation of privilege was the most absurd. We had the example of don jr. Claiming attorneyclient in conversations with his father, with neither an attorney for client. Foremosts pretty high absurd. But i think steve bannon exceeded the bar. T the white house did is when he first came in, they just instructed him not to answer a whole set of questions. About anything that took place during the transition, anything that took place in the administration. And almost everything that took place after he left the administration, no matter who he was talking to, or about, or with. They did not want to claim the privilege, but they did not want him to answer. They just said, dont answer. Going toi am not answer. He is a man without a country, neither in league with the white house nor breitbart anymore. We dealt means we with this the way we should. We gave him a subpoena on the spot. That same week, we had Corey Lewandowski come in. Corey lewandowski gave uneven more absurd answer. He said he would not answer the same questions bannon would not answer. He would not answer anything after the day he left the campaign. That he was never part of the administration. There was no claim of potential executive privilege down the road. He just said, i am not prepared to answer those questions today. The committee said, ok, please come back when you find it convenient. No subpoena, no nothing. No talk about contempt. No nothing. I have been urging we bring him back ever since. I had a commitment at the time that we would bring him back. I am trying to make sure we honor that commitment. We see bannon, when he did come back yesterday he had a list of 25 questions that were written by the white house for him to answer. That was all he would be able to answer. I cannot go into the specifics of the questions, except to say you could see both how purposely , helpfully specific and misleading they were designed to be. The thingeathtaking of privilege is, if you would ever accept this as the contours of executive privilege. They were things like, did you ever meet with soandso. If the question was written out for him, the answer was no. There were no questions on the list in which the answer was anything but no. That should tell you something. But then if you followed up and said, did you speak with so and so, the answer was yes. What did you talk about . There was no willingness to answer. Asking the questions written by the white house, you would think they never communicated. That is the misleading nature of what the white house said. I think they were way too cute by half. To the degree there is any legitimate executive religion as to a very small subset, i think they have waived it by having him answer questions in that selective fashion. I think they have also waived it if he has testified to any of these topics before special counsel without indicating privilege. When i asked whether he would invoke privilege before any other body, he refused to answer. So the white house, i think, must know, because they have decent lawyers at the white house, that this is an absurdly broad claim of privilege and they are undermining their own position by making such a claim. I think they feel that if they can just delay long enough, if they can just appeal to the partisan interest on our committee, maybe they can make us go away. Maybe they can out litigate us. It is interesting that the white house views this witness differently than all others. We have had other administration and Campaign Officials who have testified about the transition, about time in the administration. They have made no claim of such privilege. Why is steve bannon different . They do notcause feel they can control steve bannon. I dont know. It does concern me that steve bannon has the same counsel as others in the white house. Where weent, that is are. I think there is no choice for our committee but to move forward with contempt. That mr. Ld suspect bannon has been informed that they would only stonewall so far. They will not allow him to be fined or go to jail. What they wish to draw out process as long as they can. Andrea for security classification in the white house we are reporting that 135 people in the executive office of the president , including assistance to the president , including the general counsel, as of november did not have proper security clearances to handle covert security. How are they doing their job . This includes Division Leaders in the National Security adviser. If they are doing their job, is that a violation of National Security . Or are they being cleared up by the president to do what they have to do . It is very hard for us to gain visibility into what is going on in the white house. When you and others ask the white house these questions, you get a variety of estimations that evolve over time. Andrea is this different than the usual backlog in the time it takes for any new administration to gear up . It certainly seems to me that it is very different in scale. I would imagine at the beginning of any administration, you have a backlog of security clearances. Others,e more time than given the background of individuals we are trying to clear. Here, you are operating on interim after interim clearance, with people in sensitive positions who really have a need to know. There is only one of two possibilities. Either the white house is doing things correctly and restricting access of these people to classified information, in which case they are not getting the information of the they need to advise the president , or they are getting access to information they are not cleared to see. Either way, obviously it is a real problem. And then you add the additional issues of why people may not be having the clearances now. I would assume the vast majority it may be issues of just the time it is taking. Clearly, there are additional problems. We know from public reporting, jared kushner, there are contacts that were not reported the first time are the second time. And you have with rob porter other problems that have prevented their clearance from going through. Alarming ons both the one hand, how some brought a complete lack of seriousness or findings, andr others, there may be serious impediments to getting a clearance. At the end of the day, you have a very inexperienced crowd at the white house. And to deny the president the benefit of having people who are fully briefed really undercuts one of the great strengths we the worldsat is finest Intelligence Services that can provide good insights to the president and our decisionmakers. Andrea i want to ask you about the status of the democratic memo. Is it being rewritten . Do you think it will come out . Will there be any value to it when it does . Rep. Schiff i have to tell you, last week i was back in my district, and the Writers Guild awards are hosted at my district. Andrea did you get one for the democratic memo . Rep. Schiff they did say i had the hottest spec script out there. [laughter] sure it is i am not such a hot spec script. I have been doing my best not to hype it the way i gop colleagues did. Memo wereote in our the material facts which were left out, that are drawn from the fisa applications. Discussions with the department of justice fbi and department of justice position should neveremo have been reclassified to begin with. It was false and misleading. They do not happen to like the fisa president s it sets, which i can understand. We are trying to negotiate with them what reductions are necessary to protect sources or methods and specific investigative interests, and they rush to be declassified. We are close to reaching agreement on it. We hope that is finished very soon. What i am trying to gain are thety into is, what concerns of fbi and doj . We want to redact that. And what are political reductions the white house might be insisting on . Ist we are trying to gain that insight. The department of justice and fbi are in a difficult position. They would rather not get further sideways with the president then they would have to. Our committee did vote to declassify this. We are on our part, the minority, taking the prudent half of wanting to make sure we address any legitimate concerns of the bureau and department, and we will resolve that very shortly, so we can get back to where the focus onto be. That is, what do the russians do . What did the campaign do . What did they do in combination . We continue to learn more and more. Todo think it is important underscore what our responsibility is, compared to the special prosecutor. I know a lot of people look at the special counsel and say, if that is going on, do we really need these other investigations . They are so plagued with different problems. It is not bob muellers job to tell the country what happened. It is bob muellers job to decide who has broken the law and who should go to jail. I say that because bob mueller may or may not be able to speak outside of the four corners of an indictment. How is the country going to find out what really happened question mark how is the country going to find out what evidence we have uncovered that may not reach proof beyond reasonable doubt of criminal activity . That is our job. That is our job. Been,ficult as that has and with all the partisan tensions that accompany it, it is still important for that work to go on. We have a lot more work to do. We have interviewed dozens of witnesses. We have gotten tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of documents. There are yet a great many witnesses that we have not brought him, who have very relevant testimony. And perhaps more importantly, i have the benefit or the liability of having been a prosecutor, and worked on whitecollar investigations. It is not just about bringing in witnesses who then deny anything. That is not an investigation. Followupo do the work to find out who is telling the truth and who is not. That often involves the painstaking work of getting banking records and getting telephone records, and getting other documents, and bringing in the smaller witnesses that saw things inconsistent with what the bigger witnesses had to say. That is often the most important work in the investigation, and that work is not going on like it should. And it has to get done. It just has to get done. Need toreally what we be focused on. I hope we never go down this memo path again. I dont think we will. I think my colleagues in the gop recognize it was a big mistake. But nonetheless, they have committed at least our chairman has committed that this is only the first phase and there are more to come. It may not take the form of a memo, but they will take the form it appears of sequential attacks on our institutions, to undermine confidence in the Justice Department and the fbi, and bob mueller, and the state department. I think it is a singly destructive enterprise that gets us no closer to figuring out what the russians did, or what we need to do to protect ourselves in the future. But it is one of the reasons we felt it important to respond on this memo. This is not the end of it. We are going to see more efforts like this to discredit our institutions. Andrea i want to open it up to questions in a moment, but i want to ask you about north korea before we move on. We are hearing, although there are still mixed signals between different members of the cabinet but the Vice President indicated a willingness to talk about talks, to have direct talks with the north. At the same time, there are credible reports that the administration does have this socalled bloody nose option of a limited Nuclear Strike as a deterrent against north korea, which was one of the factors that most likely did contribute in victor cha, after being introduced to the south koreans as our new ambassador, was pulled back and his nomination dropped by the white house, the cause of his objections. What is your view of the use of Nuclear Weapons in this fashion ,hat is being considered despite pentagon concerns . Think there is no such thing as a bloody nose strategy or a limited Nuclear Strike. To confine it to being limited in any way. Even if the North Koreans dont respond through the use of Nuclear Weapons, they have artillery totional cause enormous loss of life. We are already dealing with an erratic and murderous regime. So i just dont think that is an what i do think we ought to be doing is maximizing our pressure on china. I dont think it needs to be done or should be done in a public way, but i think we should be having private conversations with the chinese, who hold the maximum leverage over north korea. Not complete control, by any means, but a phenomenal degree of leverage. And laying out all the things that we are going to need to do, if they cannot get their client under control. And that means dramatically expanding theater missile defense, dramatically expanding our naval presence in the region, embarking on an Aggressive Campaign of secondary sanctions which would hit chinese banks. We should be laying out all the things we will reluctantly feel we need to do to protect ourselves and our allies. That, i believe, gives china a reason to do a lot more. They are not going to do a lot more because the president tweets nice things about president she xi, or malicious things. Theyre not going to do it if president is on another page, the secretary of state on a third, the ambassador on a fourth. We need everyone on the same page, not only within the administration, but with our allies in the region. President and then we have a chn with all of that. It may not be enough. Without all of that, we can be assured it is not enough. And so i think our strategy ought to be linking arms with south korea and japan, and our other allies. It ought to be maximizing pressure on china. It ought to be doing our best to cut off the back door the russians have opened, to fill in what the chinese cut off. And seeing if we can force the North Koreans to the table. So i think we ought to be open to talking with them. I think this ought to be the strategy. We can have ahat limited strike on north korea of a nuclear nature, or a puts us on ature, potentially disastrous course. And none of that should be contemplated until every other option has been exhausted. And i think there is still far more that we ought to be doing diplomatically. Andrea thank you for that. I would like to open this up to questions. Lets start right there in the second row. Nina nina gardner, Strategy International and activist. I just want to thank you for everything you are doing. You are one of the few voices of reason on tv. I want to ask you, what is the strategy as we move forward toward impeachment . Seriously, do we have to wait to a new congress, because the gop seems to have lost its spine . I have just been shocked. I expected it to happen a lot earlier. Go,lease tell us where we because we cannot survive this anymore. Rep. Schiff this may not be the answer you are looking for. [laughter] rep. Schiff but i do get this question a lot. Impeachment case. I have an unusual experience in this area. About eight or 10 years ago, i was on a Judiciary Committee. We impeached a judge from new. Rleans on corruption charges i know you must be imagining new impossible. Uption, he took us to trial in the senate. I was asked to help lead the prosecution. It taught me a lot about impeachment, in a way that few get that lesson, because how often does that kind of thing happen . And one of the things that was driven home to me as we looked into what constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors in that case, we had some issues of if not First Impression, First Impression and a very long time. We had an issue. We impeached him for conduct he had committed, corrupt acts before he was on the bench. Lying during his confirmation and while he was on the federal bench. Some of the threshold questions involved, can you be impeached for conduct that took place before you were elected, or before you were appointed . Obviously, there are relevant applications there. We had to go back 150 years to find an answer. We found a prior judicial impeachment involving a judge who had been impeached in the house on seven counts of prior conduct, seven counts of conduct while he was on the bench, and one on the discount. In the senate 150 years ago, they convicted this judge on all of the counts while on the bench , and the on the discount, but acquitted on all the prior counts. On first blush, it looked like you could not be impeached for prior conduct. But i asked our wonderful staff to do you into the Senate Record and see what they could find out. How many senators spoke about their verdicts and what they had to say . We found that a majority of those that spoke not all of them did, but the majority who spoke said believed they believed you could be impeached on prior conduct, that the quality of the proof on the prior acts was insufficient. They voted to acquit not because they did not think it was constitutional, but because they thought the proof inadequate. The long and short of it is, the senate 82 10 years ago convicted 10 years ago to convicted this judge on the prior and post counts, and lying in confirmation. We have a recent president that you can be impeached for prior conduct. The other thing that was quite apparent is that there is a Legal Standard of what meets a high crime and misdemeanor, whether it be elements of the potential offense do you even need an offense . But then there is the political standard. And probably the most significant is the political standard. The political standard today, during a gop congress, is, can gop members go back to their gop districts and make the argument that the president s conduct was so incompatible with office that they needed to vote to remove him, and this was not simply about nullifying an election that other people did not like . If they cannot make that argument, there is no impeachment. And one of the reasons why i have urged my colleagues in the house not to be taking up impeachment resolutions on the , if the time comes where we find sufficient evidence, and the special prosecutor finds that the special counsel finds evidence that rises to the level of high crime and misdemeanor, it is important for people to know that is not something we were seeking from the very beginning, that we were embracing from the very beginning. That it was a reluctant conclusion. It is because of what this will put the country through. I think early talk about impeachment before we have finished our investigation makes that case more difficult, if the evidence comes to support it. Is, we need to finish the investigation. We need to do a credible investigation. We need to finish it. We need to let bob mueller do his job. A big part of what i consider my job right now is making sure we stay the hell out of bob muellers way. We look at the facts and we decide, does that meet the constitutional standard . That is, i think, the process that we need to follow. Andrea robert . Slaven from the atlantic council. Thank you for your work. I know you are trying to stay out of bob muellers way, that i would be interested in your assessment of how he is proceeding in his investigation. Whether you have a sense that he may be collecting information that he would not bring to the public until after our november elections, for example, waiting to see if the house changes hands, and if there might actually be a more reasonable prospect of impeachment then there is now, with republican control. The other question i have is whether there is any coordination between what you are doing and what the senate is doing, and if you have a sense of what their goal is in their investigation, and how it might differ from yours. Thank you. To say iff i have have been very impressed with what i have seen of bob mueller and his investigation. He has assembled, i think, a phenomenal team. I am deeply jealous of the team he has put together. I have a phenomenal staff. They are bright, and they work 24 7, 7 days a week, and they do it with no windows. We all work in a bunker three floors below the capital. We have no wall. I hope we never have a wall. Nonetheless, they are terrific, but they are largely analysts. Our job generally is analyzing what the intelligence agencies are doing. And they are not trained to be investigators. Bob muellers team are a group of trained investigators who have a variety of skill sets that are very important right now. I worked on whitecollar cases. But there is a very special skill set for working on Money Laundering investigations, and another skill set for working on other investigations. He has got, i think, a very capable team. Im also very impressed at how buttoned up their operation is. You learn very little about what comes out of their shop, as it should be. We have only the most limited visibility. We have tried to coordinate really only in the sense of not bringing people before our anmittee where it would be impediment to his investigation. We are working on the timing. We could not afford to say we are going to go into hiatus until you are done, because there is some urgency of our task as well. But from what i can see, and the conduct in terms of the guilty pleas and indictments, it seems like a very orderly process. And moving at lightning speed. Notng worked on cases like this, because no one has worked on a case like this but cases of much smaller magnitude they can take years. I think he has worked at a dramatic pace on it. I am sure he realizes he does not have the luxury of an extended, unlimited clock. In terms of the senate and our own investigation, there is certainly some effort at coordination, but it is limited. And frankly, i can understand the reluctance, if there is reluctance on the senate part, to get too close to our committee, given the problems we have had. If i were on the senate committee, i would probably feel the same way. But we do our best to coordinate. Are twoenate, there investigations the senate intel investigation, which is focused on the issues within our charter what did the russians do . What did the Trump Campaign do . The senate Judiciary Committee is embarked on an investigation that looks different. It looks more like the investigation our chairman is doing on his own. That is, it is an investigation not of the russians, but of the investigators. Of course, this is a familiar tactic of defense counsel, to put the government on trial. When i urge my colleagues on our committee is, we should not view ourselves as prosecutors and defense counsel. We should all be investigators. The president is not their client. The American People are their client. And our client as well. Of that is a little bit what i think about the different bodies. What i have added from the beginning, which was more attractive at the beginning, is we ought to be doing this joint late. It should be a bicameral, bipartisan investigation. We are interviewing the same witnesses the Senate Intel Committee is. We are duplicating a lot of effort. Given that we both have very limited staffs, it would be much more efficient if we were working together to parse a lot of the tasks. That is water under the bridge at this point. It had we been doing this right, we would have had a 9 11like commission. And we would have had a joint senate and house intel investigation. Leslie my name is leslie warner. I work on the House Foreign Affairs Committee Democratic staff. At times i am an optimist and i think we will be able to get through this time. Measuresstion is, what do you think need to be taken, first of all, to rebuild trust within [indiscernible] second, to rebuild trust with our sharing allies. And more importantly, rebuild trust in the American People. Andrea may i also follow up and ask about the level of distrust with our allies because of some of the things that have happened . Rep. Schiff first of all, i am an optimist. These days have strained even the most optimistic among us, but i remain optimistic. We will get through this. We are, i think, a strong and resilient country, and we will get through this. We have been through worse. I always come back to something bill clinton once said. There is nothing wrong in america that cannot be cured by what is right in america. And there is an awful lot right in america that will see us through this. Struck i thelly parallels between what we are seeing and what took place during watergate, when there was similar partisan discord and conspiracy theories, and the country wondered whether it would recover. We will get through this. The dysfunction and therust on our committee, distrust the American People have toward its institutions, the distrust our allies have for us it will take time. As i mentioned on our committee, our staff continue to Work Together well on the nonrussia related issues. In my view and you can write the rankingmy being member we were on a good bipartisan track on russia until what is called the midnight run. If the chairman of your committee doing an investigation is to close to the white house, they cannot be objective. And they have not been. He has not been. That is a real problem. I dont know how you overcome the problem. We are trying to keep our focus on what we need to do, and we make progress. Until this probe is over, that will be the case. Committee ande the intelligence community, there has been some lasting damage. This memo didnt lasting damage. This Intelligence Committee is now very wary of sharing information. There is a deep distrust, i think, of the leadership of our committee. And in our chairman. I think sources of information will be more reluctant to share with the Intelligence Committee if they think it will not be respected and the partisan winds change may be revealed. To mitigateke time our relationship with our allies. It has been strained from time to time. You have the president suggesting the british were in league with the deep state in this country to spy on him at trump tower. Ourrelationships with sister intelligence agencies are so strong, they will survive this. Indeed, the men and women around the world that works together to try to protect ourselves, our common interests, our common citizens have never stopped working together. There may be, in some cases, and on some issues, the greater reluctance to share. So if there are sister intelligence agencies that have particularly russiarelated information, they may be more reluctant to share. I hope not. I hope they will continue to do so. But they cannot be encouraged by what they hear the president say , because of course all of our allies know exactly what russia is up to, and they know this is no hoax, no witchhunt, no charade. This is serious business. They see the russians interfere in their own countries every day, and they were doing it well before 2016. But time cures a lot of things. Time will cure this. One of the arguments i make frequently on our committee is, we need to be thinking, all of ,s, beyond this administration about the longterm impacts of what we do or dont do. We need to be thinking about that. So we will get past this. We will take our lumps along the way. Were will come a time when have, in my view, a Different Administration that will restore and our the trust position in the rest of the world. Not just the ic, obviously. Walking out of the climate pact was devastating to our local leadership. The derogatory things that are , thebout nato disrespectful things that are set about europe and the encouragement of brexit, and all those things have had an impact, indelible. That is administration, a new administration, can quickly begin restoring our standing. Elizabeth Elizabeth Bodie and barren from the rand corporation. Given the difficulties and issues you and others have raised, what can congress to to better support organizations like the Global Engagement center and the state department in the mission to counter foreign state propaganda . Theea and the rest of departments. [laughter] i you know, we peoplert by appointing to carry out the functions at the state department, by making sure the state department has the resources do its job, but publicly supporting its mission. There are numeral there are innumerable things that need to be done. This is one of the great challenges, frankly, as a icymaker, and that is there are deep problems within every agency right now. It is hard to know where to begin. The public cannot focus on everything all at once. How do you prioritize the problems . In a normal situation, the hollowing out of the state department, the undermining of our diplomatic mission, the weakening of the arsenal in our toolbox, would be front and center. But it is just one of an innumerable number of things. When an alleged affair between the president and a poor and star and barely can break areugh, you know where you in the state of affairs. A porn stardent and barely break through, you know where you are in the state of affairs. Congress can insist on proper funding. We need to continue to bring in the secretary of state of state and others from the state department and say, how are you resourcing this . What actions are you taking . We should bring in people throughout the state department to talk about the problems they are encountering, as a way of shedding light on the work that needs to be done. Courtney ranch, a former constituent from your district. A question for you and andrea about the role of the media and amplifying what is happening on social media. You forgot a very important part of your biography, which is that you are also the chair of the press freedom caucus. Importance of the social media and interference from russia, which appears to be mainly in the media environment. But doesnt the Mainstream Media play an Important Role in deciding to amplify what is on social media . There is not inherent value in the fact that a Million People tweeted something. That is amplified because the media says it is important, or because policymakers decide to look at social media as an indicator of public opinion. Isnt there something that could be done by the media and politicians to get away from using that as an indicator of public sentiment, that would decrease the power of russia on that platform . And also, related to that, with the Foreign Agent registration act, can you talk about how you are going to ensure that any attempt to regulate media, foreign media, with that act how are you going to make sure it is clear that that act is not going to restrict legitimate journalism . Rep. Schiff these are great questions. My wife always tells me, rightly, my answers are too long. You are not making it any easier for me. That the ways in which we now get information is one of the most vexing problems our society faces. There are lots of elements to this. There are lots of reasons we are in the place we are right now, with a bitterly divided public, with a bitterly divided congress. Some have to do with how we finance campaigns. Some have to do with how we jerryrigged districts. It is how we get our information now. We all get our information from different places. And increasingly, People Choose the information they want to hear. When i was in college, this is i remember rushing back to my dormitory to see Walter Cronkites last broadcast. That was a time when the country had a fairly broad set of objective facts that we could agree on. Itll had differing opinions about what to do with that, but at least we could agree on the basic facts. Then we moved to a model where we had different cable stations, and people would tune in to the station that was more reflective of their views. Now, information has been so democratized that you can live in a particular information bubble online. I used to say that most young people get their news from facebook. Now you can actually say most people. Most americans get their news from facebook. It is a revelation when i tell constituents that when they go to their Facebook Page and i go to mine, and we see those stories that pop up below, they are not the same stories. I think people are under the impression we are seeing the same thing when we go on our Facebook Page. We are not. One of the things that was hammered home to me as we began looking into this issue visavis russias manipulation of social is there is certainly one profound issue about how our social media and our opinion can be perniciously influenced by foreign bad actors, by amplifying things so we only think things are trending. Is far broader than foreign manipulation of a platform. The much greater concern may be the fact that these algorithms show us what we want to see to keep us on the platform. The longer we are on the platform, the more advertising can be sold to us. This was not done perniciously, it was done because it is good business. The impact is that if my Facebook Page shows me news that only came from fox, i would be much less likely to go on facebook all the time. For my conservative friends, the opposite would be true. If they got nothing but daily popping but daily kos up, my republican colleagues would probably not on facebook much. Showing ushms are what we want to see. Not exposing us to contrary opinions or if they do, for the purpose of ridicule. Looking at the russian use of this horrible shooting in florida, they would often hashted progun control ags with antiguncontrol stories that were designed to ridicule the movement in favor of gun safety legislation. This is the far broader societal issue. Here are subsets of that the Mainstream Media is pulling things from social media, we saw that during the 2016 election, that fake persona that we are residents of st. Petersburg pretending to be residents of florida, how would they know . There was no way for them to know this was bogus. I do think one of the things that is going to come out of this is a profound distrust for information we get through social media, and we should be distrustful. We should be skeptical when we see things that are trending that this is not being manipulated. There is no easy answer to this. This is why, of all the problems, it is the most vexing. We are not going to be limiting speech, we are not going to be telling people where to get their information, and you are right to point to the fair issue. I was happy when they required rt, the kremlin propaganda arm, to register. You can see that being abused as a way of restricting legitimate purveyors of information and one of the most pernicious things we see going on is by the president s demeaning of our media, the demeaning of the idea that there is something called objective fact, he has given a useful model to on a kratz around the world who now use his own vocabulary of to autocrats around the world who use his language to disparage threats against their regimes. I never thought that this caucus i cofounded with mike pence about 16 years ago would need to focus a much at home. We do. Be a longterm, difficult challenge for the country. I know time is short, and i just want to add, because it could become a model, yesterday i know time is short, and i just want towe posted 200 twitts on our website that are connected to russian bots, so we are trying to be more proactive that we have a lot of work to do and so do facebook and the major platforms. We have time for one more question, one more quick question. I will give a quick question, nelson cunningham. You made an important point that many people overlook. There may never be a molar report. We think that because tenets star did a report, there will be a miller report there will be a mueller report. The provision underwent under makesmueller was reported no provision for a report. Privatelyu will speak to rod rosenstein. There is no provision for a public report. In your view, should Congress Look at this issue and think about should we have reports in cases like this where there is an investigation into what could be high crimes and misdemeanors that would require the special counsel to give a report to congress . You have the example of the james comey report which was so controversial. It is a very good question. At this point, completely unresolved. Memoosenstein wrote a justifying the firing of james comey for speaking out too much, for giving too public a report about the clinton email investigation. One of the issues i have raised with the Deputy Attorney general is how are we going to deal with this when the investigation comes to an end. Will there be a report to congress and what will robert releasebe able to publicly . I have to think and i have to hope that the publics interest and need to know is so profound that what Robert Mueller finds will be shared with congress and congress will be empowered to share with the country. The things i fear, particularly since we are limited in what our majority allows us to investigate, and what and there are limits on the senate side as well. Robert mueller will be in possession we do not have, we will be in possession of information Robert Mueller does not have. The public should get all that information. I hope we have the benefit of this work at the end of the day. I do not know at this stage if we could move legislation like that. I would love to see Something Like that coupled with something to protect Robert Mueller from getting fired or Rob Rosenstein from getting fired. The greater concern ive had of her last few months is Rob Rosenstein. The most effective way to cripple Robert Mueller is not by firing him, it is by giving him a new boss that tells him he cannot look at this, you cannot look at that and it is time to close up shop. If the president is given the opportunity to appoint a yesman, that is very well what we might get. We would have no visibility. What Rob Rosenstein is telling Robert Mueller we do not know. We would not let we were not likely to know if you were fired and replaced by someone else. And one of the reasons i would view the firing of Rob Rosenstein the same way i would view the firing of Robert Mueller, as its own form of saturday night massacre that would bring about a constitutional crisis in the country. You are right to point out there is no guarantee of a report to the congress or the country. At the end of the day, we need to insist on one. I want to thank everyone on behalf of the council and reiterate that the council has comeed chairman nunez to and would welcome him being here at any time of his choosing. I should also say that the congressman is on his way to join his colleagues in munich at the security conference. Rep. Schiff thank you. Mitt romney has announced he is running for senate, the seat currently held by orrin hatch who is retiring. At theney will speak utah republican partys lincoln day dinner tonight. We will take you there live when his remarks begin around 9 00 eastern. Online atso watch cspan. Org and on the cspan radio app. This weekend on american , saturday on cspan3 at 8 00 eastern on lectures in history, former Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder at virginia commonwealth university. I have a definition that i use for politics. Can anyone guess what that is . I said one word would define politics. Money. Give me something that is a proposition before any tribunal that does not involve money. Sunday at 10 00 eastern, from the west point center for oral propositionhistory, henry thomat medic during the vietnam war. My grandfather served in world war i, my father served in world war ii, always for a black man. Service youmilitary hope would confirm your bona fides as a redblooded american citizen entitled to railamerica,m. On on reel