Impeachment trial showed President Trumps leadership style. He says it has led to the mismanagement of the pandemic. Programme to todays coming to you virtually. This program is part of the Commonwealth Club virtual series addressing the impact of covid19 on our community and society at large. We would like to thank the members, donors, and supporters for making todays program possible. It is so important to support programs like this right now. Today i am very excited to be speaking with congressman adam schiff, chair of the house Intelligence Committee. National recognition and prominence for his role in the russia and ukraine investigations and President Trumps subsequent impeachment. In the last few weeks, congressman schiff and some of his colleagues have proposed a 9 11 Style Bipartisan Commission to investigate the governments response to covid and see if it ignored key warning signs. If you are watching online and have a question for congressman schiff, please put the comments in the comments field in facebook. Thank you for joining us. How are you, your family, and district doing . Are doing ok. I keep my eye on my 92yearold father to make sure he is doing ok and social distancing, but we are healthy. In terms of folks within my district, like everyone else, really struggling, desperately concerned about their health and the health of their families, the health of our economy and their businesses. Ive had people describe how they put everything they could into building a wonderful business, and now we are at risk of seeing it go away and for good. They struggled through this Small Business program to try to access funds. Others are struggling just to keep a roof over their head. Challengingrmously time. Nonetheless, i think theres a great willingness to endure the hardship, recognition that what we do right now will determine just how long this virus is with suffering andh death accompany the virus. I think my constituents are being responsible and staying home and staying socially distant and the Health Care Workers in my district, like everywhere, are just doing Heroic Service right now. Awe of what they are doing and so grateful to folks delivering groceries, delivering the mail and everything they are doing right now. At the end of the impeachment trial, you put a rhetorical question to the senate, and you said, you may be wondering how much damage the president can do over the next few months before reelection, and then you said a lot, a lot of damage i wonder what you were imagining then and how it compares with what is happening right now. I have to say, those comments really haunt me at this point. Even though i certainly could imagine and we have good reasons to do so, all kinds of ills the president would commit in the next nine months in office, i dont think anyone anticipated that we would very soon lose duringves than we would the vietnam war, and in significant part due to the incompetence of this president. So i think that we grossly underestimated frankly the damage he could do in the next nine months. I did certainly contemplate a president that could either deliberately get us into a war, or bungle his way into a war. That was probably a greater concern than the daily damage he was doing by sewing division in our country, with animosities among our people. But i do not think that i could have expected in my Worst Nightmare that we would have a crisis so large and handled so poorly at such a dramatic cost to the country. Ms. Jeffery the impeachment proceedings and then the trial centered around the accusation that President Trump essentially extorted the president of ukraine, then covered it up. How have we seen the i would like you to do us a favor now mentality play out from the president in this crisis . Rep. Schiff probably the most pernicious echo of what we have heard of what the president was saying and doing during his ukrainian misconduct, when he was telling the leader of another country essentially, you need to announce these investigations of the bidens, and was withholding military aid from that country, a country at war with our adversary, until he could get those announcements. Those and visitations were something he wanted to trumpet on the campaign trail. Flash forward to today, you have the president at the white house basically saying, i do not want to call back governors. I want my Vice President to call back governors, who are not saying nice things about me. And those who have been willing to say nice things about him, the governors of course are in a terrible position, we have seen the Trump Campaign take those statements by governors and put them into campaign ads. So in very much the same way, he has made it clear that states that play ball with him, that are willing to say nice things, that they can use those Campaign Commercials while he will take one view of. And the others he will take a very different view of. That is why we are seeing florida with a republican governor get everything that state asks for in terms of protective gear, while other states like new york, california and elsewhere, michigan, have to really struggle. And the answer is, we simply do not know and we cannot have any confidence that this president or his administration are making those decisions on the basis of science, on the basis of need, on the basis of the best interest of the American People. But as we said during the trial, the one thing you can always count on donald trump for his he will do what is right for donald trump, not what is right for the country. And i think we see that not just in the potential manipulation of aid, but in the ability of the administration to reward friends and punish enemies, in corporate america, in the way that aid is being doled out. We have a we question about california, which ranked second to last in funding, is being penalized because it is a blue state, whereas the red states will be rewarded. That has been the pattern of this administration and it would not surprise any of us if that was the pattern even during a pandemic. Ms. Jeffery he also made threatening remarks yesterday about those estates with sanctuary cities, in terms of funding. Can you elaborate . Rep. Schiff basically, this digestion or the threat that was implied was that relief funds, covid relief funds would not go out, or not be in a great amount, unless these states agreed to abandon their sanctuary city policies. So basically, he was going to force these states to abandon looking after the most vulnerable citizens, undocumented citizens, if they wanted full aspect full access to health services, funding for protective gear, or relief funds. This was not an isolated act. This i want you to do me a favor aspect. But i also followed on the heels of the president and he was going to end immigration into the country. This is also very consistent with the president and a administration, which is when they need to deflect public attention away from their mishandling. In this case, their deadly mishandling of the pandemic. When they need to rile up their base, when they are losing support, they need to go back to their is xenophobic fame and attacking immigrants in the changes they want to make to immigration policy, but also the director sanctuary cities. Those are the like kind that is extorting or attacking the most vulnerable states and populations in order to placate the base and to further divide the country. Ms. Jeffery you said a minute ago that it is hard to tell if something is of corrupt intent or incompetence. It feels like this is particularly true at this moment. Are you able to untangle those things . I am struck by the fact that in a way President Trump would do himself the biggest favor politically, had he handled this early and well and generously and do the usual things that president s of either party do when there is a catastrophe in the nation. So he is getting in his own way, politically, it would seem. Rep. Schiff this has been the story of his presidency, that is, you can look at them subjectively and say that is not in the president s interest to do, politically. But he does it nonetheless because he thinks it is good for him personally. He also thinks it is good for him politically. But it is part of the myopia of this extraordinary narcissism we see. Everything has to be about him. So right now for example, these daily press conferences. They are not in the National Interest, not in the National Interest for donald trump to be out there postulating that people may be should inject bleach as a way to kill the virus, suggesting new treatments, putting out treatments. That it is not in the least bit in the National Interest. Its not in his political interest either. And only recently did it occur to him, ok, maybe he is overstepping his welcome on peoples tv screens. Maybe this is starting to do him damage. But the entire prism is not what is best for the country with this president. The entire prism is what is best for him. And i suspect, even if these continue to press conferences hurt him, he will continue to do it because personally that is what he wants to do. He cannot turn down something that generates readings. He cannot have the conversation be about something other than him. So i will be astonished if we see a profound departure from what he is doing, even as much as it is not in the interest of the country, and objectively not in his interest either. Ms. Jeffery do you think that is in part because his aides and children are unable or unwilling to actually tell him the truth, or are they living in a bubble of their own creation as well . Rep. Schiff i think it is a combination of things. One of the other points we made during the trial is you are not going to change the president s character or act or lack of character. You will not be able to constrain him. He is who he is. So nothing will change about this president s conduct. For as long as he is in office, he will be as destructive and i think pernicious league selfcentered as he is. That is not going to change. In terms of his family members, i think that Jared Kushner was asked within the last 24 hours about this grim milestone we are crossing, where more people are dying of the virus, and more have died compared to vietnam, and his answer was we are doing a good job. He made a comment in his last press conference at the white house, which was equally revealing in terms of this whole familys blind spot, when he made the observation in trying to criticize governors in various states. That shows why it is important for voters to think about competence when they are voting to elect someone. It is like when don jr. Tries to attack the bidens for using their family name. There is just a lack of selfawareness of this family, which takes your breath away. In any event, they cannot control him. They will not control him. The damage goes on. I think the most we can do in congress is trying to mitigate and limit the damage, try to do vigorous oversight, try to insist on accountability. We need to do that in real time, but it will also be important in terms of the commission you mentioned at the outset, that when this is behind us that we have a truly objective nonpartisan whole of government review of what went wrong, how to protect the country better in the future. In the same way we did after 9 11. Ms. Jeffery i want to come back to the commission in a minute, but i just want to stay on this, something you said reminded me about the president has come out in the last few days, according to some newspapers, that his daily briefings and quorums in which he receives intelligence information, did mentioned the threat of covid19 early to midjanuary. And he kept insisted on being included in those proceedings. I know sometimes that he does not read them all or attended the digestive them, but from your perspective, because you are working on impeachment at that time and on the Intelligence Committee. Was congress aware of the risk this posed . Rep. Schiff congress was doing some things before the pandemic to prepare for a potential pandemic, just as the last administration was doing. I think part of the reason we are in the situation we are in now is because donald trump disbanded the Pandemic Response unit in the white house and National Security council that serves as a tripwire for the danger of the country. In the Intelligence Committee, for the last three years, we have been including in our intelligence authorization act, a Provision Requiring the Intelligence Committee the Intelligence Community to report to us on their posture on this threat, how much more needs to be done to deal with this threat. That bill should have been passed in the house, but the senate because of its dysfunction could not get an intel bill passed until late last year. Then it finally became law. But it became law too late to really help congress assess how the community was postured before this pandemic. Nonetheless, we did get briefings from the Intelligence Community. We did hold a hearing on it. I think we held a hearing on it the very day verdicts were coming back from the trial. Or we actually had a house line hearing that day and we had a committee within a week of that. So we were briefed. I think it is too early to say whether the community did a good job or a poor job in terms of its analysis and reporting on what it was seeing in china. But we are doing a deep dive on the issue right now. We are going through all of our holdings what did they brief us in person, in writing, what were they saying, were there conflicting inputs . We do not know yet with the administration was briefed with. But we can look at what we were receiving. And part of what our focus is is determining, what did we see, when did we see it, was the Intelligence Community will integrated with the health community, the cdc for example . That is not something that is ordinarily viewed as central to an Intelligence Community responsibility. So we are asking the Big Questions about whether there needs to be a really refocusing or restructuring against these giant threats that frankly loomed lesser on the landscape than for example terrorism, or the threat posed by nationstate actors like iran. One of the things we want to come out of our committee and we would like to see come out of the commission report, is an analysis of our whole of government posture, what needs to be done to better protect the country in the future. Those are the things we are studying now. Ms. Jeffery do you feel confident that you were getting forthright briefings from the Intelligence Community, given that President Trump retaliated against those who felt compelled, or in some cases were compelled, to appear before your committee and congress as a whole . Rep. Schiff it grieves me to say that the answer is no, that there has been a tremendous mobilization of the Intelligence Community under donald trump. It has really reached its pinnacle with the appointment of rick grenell as the top until official in the country, somebody with virtually no intelligence experience. He was essentially a twitter troll before he became an a faster in the administration. He did what you did to get a high appointment, you go on fox and his social media and make the most incendiary attacks on the president s opponents and say the most exaggerated claims of greatness on that president. That gets you appointed. He has, in the way the incompetence rises to the top, has been able to rise to the top now. We have seen a change in the quality of what we can count on in terms of reporting on issues like election interference, what are foreign powers like russia doing to try to bring fear to the next election . The pandemic issue frankly looms now far larger. Can we count on Intel Community led by someone whose only qualification is being a loyal part is into president , to be revealing the full analysis of the Intelligence Community on this spread. And how it identified it, how it made congress and the administration aware of it. I just do not have great confidence on that. But we will do the best oversight that we can. We will use the levers we have, including our budgetary power, to insist on answers. At the end of the day, much like with ukraine, we will find out the truth. But the firing of the last director, director mcguire. The firing of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community. The firing of the heads of the counterintelligence sector. The firing of people, threats against other inspectors general, all a sign to have a Chilling Effect on what the Intelligence Community is willing to say to the congress. What congress is willing to say in open hearings to the public. That is a grave danger to the country. Ms. Jeffery i think it came as a surprise to most people that inspectors general, who were supposed to be this firewall against intergovernmental corruption, or malfeasance of other source, could be easily dismissed by the very people they are reporting on. Is that something that happened before . Are there remnants of this in the nixon era . What could congress do, presuming there is a change in leadership in the senate, to fortify those roles and laws . Rep. Schiff good question. The Inspector General system, first of all, which has been really integral to rooting out waste, fraud and abuse of government. With a Great Success record. Is a postwatergate reform, a system set up in the wake of watergate to try to make sure that there were independent watchdogs. But like so many of the postwatergate reforms, they have been obliterated by this president. The independence of the Justice Department from white house interference, for example, in particular cases was a norm. That has been not completely obliterated, when you see the president weighing in on the sentencing of roger stone. When you see his aides intervening in the dark, either in the case of Michael Flynn or roger stone. Or establishing effectively political investigations, potentially even prosecutions, as you see with the attorney generals discrediting statements against his own Inspector General at the Justice Department, who found the russia investigation was probably properly predicated. There was problems with the pfizer application but the investigation itself was properly initiated and had nothing to do with Christopher Steeles dossier. The attorney general attacking his own Inspector General shows a profound a breakdown in that postwatergate norms and reforms. The intelligence bill we are drafting now, and it we will have a provision that provides a that you cannot fire Inspector Generals, except for a good cause. We will also have requirements that if you fire the Inspector General, congress will need to be informed of what they were working on when they were fired. We are trying to find out from the office of the director right now what was Michael Atkinson working on when he was fired by the president . The law says when you fire in Inspector General, this is law. You have to give 30 days notice to the congress. The president fired the Inspector General, and in that 30 day period he put him on immediate administrative leave, so he could not fulfill the last 30 days. That may have given the opportunity to the Inspector General to make sure the investigations that were ongoing were not precipitously closed or made to disappear. So we are going to be putting this statute of protections up for the Inspector Generals going forward, things we did not think would be necessary because without president s would never do with this president is doing. Indeed, we are working on our committee, with other committees, on a package what we are calling our own postwatergate reforms. These are things that will be necessary when this president is gone, to make sure our democratic norms and institutions are codified, protections are codified so they can never be assaulted the way that this president has. Ms. Jeffery have you found bipartisan support for such a line of thinking thus far . Rep. Schiff i have always felt, and i have been saying it for the last couple years, as we have been working on these reforms, that given the sleeve like devotion of particularly the House Republicans. Kevin mccarthy does not cross the street without asking donald trump. That sycophantic slave devotion to the president is not going to lead to better reforms. Any kind of safeguards like we are talking about would be viewed as a criticism of the president , and they lack the courage to do it. However, when this president is gone, i fully expect there will be bipartisan support for the reforms, because republicans, like democrats, recognize what kind of catastrophic damage ths president is doing the president is doing, they just do not have the courage to say anything about it when he has a grip on the base of the Republican Party. But i think that will change. One encouraging sign on the idea of a 9 11 commission. I have introduced a bill to accomplish that. Republicans in the house have introduced legislation as well to establish the commission, very much like what my bill would do. So i think it is encouraging, even if it is not in the same bill, there is support for the same concept. Ultimately though, will make that happen is not the bipartisan or lack of bipartisan support in the congress. But rather what happened with the 9 11 commission, and that was also opposed by republicans at the time. They thought that the Bush Administration would get too much blame for 9 11. What made that a force to be reckoned with, something that could not be denied, where the victims that came together and became a very potent force that demanded answers and demanded reforms and and better protected country in the future. The maid legislation happened, they made the commission operate in an effective and nonpartisan way, the mid the congress adopt the recommendations of the commission and i suspect that will happen here. It will take the victims of this virus, the brave and courageous Health Care Workers, who have been on the front lines, and many others to provide the Critical Mass necessary to insist on accountability. Ms. Jeffery remember how 9 11, how the family members and survivors did bind together and it was sort of a unique situation because the People Killed in the trade center and so forth, and a lot of highflying finance types, whatever their relative power was. But it was the wall street community, the Business Community that was engaged. Then you have the survivors of firefighters and police officers, and victims they have gone on and on on that in pennsylvania, but do you think as we look across the landscape, do you think survivors who are Trump Supporters, even if they lost family members, will take part in an effort toward accountability with people who are crossing regional, racial and other divides . Rep. Schiff this virus is not going to discriminate on the basis of Trump Supporters or opponents, it will kill lots of both. I think anyone who has been victimized by this, and you will be hardpressed pretty soon to find a family that does not know somebody who lost their life from this virus, they will want answers. They will want answers on behalf of their loved ones that transcends politics. The Commission Legislation i introduced would not have the commission begin its work until early next year. Now, it was obviously my hope that early next year we would have a different president. But i have to start thinking of the commission, next year, so that it would not be a political issue in november. If you tried to do this kind of Commission Work now, preelection, and might be nearly impossible. But i think when the election is behind us and we have mostly turned to the corner on the worst of the virus and we can begin to look for objectivity, that is the time that will be right and we will have the Critical Mass necessary to do the work the way it should be done. We should have epidemiologists, scientists, experts in governance, a broad crosssection of nonpartisan people participate in the work for this commission. And with the most important object being, how do we protect the country in the future because this will not be the last pandemic. But we can make it the last of that as this costly to human life and to our country. Ms. Jeffery that is a deeper dive further out form of accountability. What kind of accountability can congress muster now under these circumstances . You and i had talked a little bit about the Intelligence Committee work, how it is particularly challenging because of the protocols that are not easy to overcome. But the Oversight Committee, what can it do and frankly not do in the immediate future . Rep. Schiff i think there are two kinds of oversight going on in congress that will be very important in realtime. The commissioner has an afterthefact review, but onsite is important. At the committee we established last week will be made by a partisan select committee and it will be predominantly focused on the Economic Issues and problems we have seen identified in the Small Business program, for example, where Large Businesses are taking advantage of a program set up for Small Businesses. Where you have Small Business customers going to the back of the line at the banks, because the banks are playing favorites among customers and rewarding the most lucrative. Those are obviously flaws in the implementation of this program. So we must have a realtime oversight to make sure that money reaches those businesses. And likewise, you know, i am hearing about from people in my district that there are stimulus checks going out to people who are deceased. Because it is on the basis of who filed a tax return last year, even though they may have subsequently passed away. It is important in any number of respects to have oversight of money. Obviously, we are deeply concerned with the 500 billion fund, or industry, given the president s predilection for rewarding his enemies and the fact that he fired the Inspector General, he was going to head the Oversight Panel overlooking expenditures. So one of the things that is very much like character that only highlights the need for that kind of oversight, the committee, as you may have seen in the last two weeks, there is an investigation going on on awarding the 10 billion contract of computing to a competitor of amazon. Amazon is rightly concerned of the contract went to a competitor when there was a lot of expectation that amazon was in the best position to get the contract, because the president wanted to punish jeff bezos, their ceo, also the publisher of the washington post. We have not seen the president intervene with the Postal Service. He has been trying to raise postage rates to punish jeff bezos. So this is consistent with the president s abuse of power. So those issues need to be looked at and overseeing in realtime. There is a host of other issues, the lack of ppe, the lack of ventilators, lack of testing, why there is no National Testing strategy, and each of the congressional committees are doing oversight in their jurisdictions. So in my committee, the Intel Committee, we are looking at how we our posture to deal with the pandemic threat. Where did they see it, when did they report it, what did china know, what were they saying . How are other nations exploiting this, like russia in the last president ial election, in order to help President Trump sees on different fissures in our society to manipulate public opinion. I have no doubt they will do the same thing again on the cleavage of the election, which will be a pandemic. We can already see it growing between the protesters, the president egging them on about reopening, and governors who are saying it is dangerous for the citizens of my state. So we are looking at that constellation of oversight issues in my committee. Each of the committees, though, will need to do realtime oversight in their areas of jurisdiction. Ms. Jeffery forgive me for asking, but how can they do that right now when you just mentioned that it was you have been told not to meet, at least in larger groups, but there is no proxy provision yes, there is are you able to hold here . Maybe not in intelligence hearings, but may be the committee that john cliburn is heading up, will that be able to hold hearings virtually . Rep. Schiff i think that it will. We are working on the capability of doing virtual hearings. I did a virtual briefing in the Intel Committee just this week. Now we called it a briefing because we do not authorize yet to do virtual hearings, but it was just like a virtual hearing in the sense that we had two top former officials testify before the committee or brief the committee. We recognize the members to ask questions in the videoconference. So very much like a regular hearing, except done at a distance. Now, i will not sugarcoat it, it is very difficult at a distance to do. Meaningful oversight at least, when you are dealing with those who do not want to share the answers. You know, the briefing we had four people willing to come forward and share their knowledge, there is a lot that can be done usefully that way and a lot that can be done on the basis of unclassified information. But much of what we will be doing in the Intel Committee will be classified and therefore we cannot do it at a distance, even we certainly do not have this occur video capability among all of our Members Around the country have secure video capability among all of our Members Around the country to have such a hearing. So we will come together again in a responsible way, but in the meantime we are doing the kind of oversight we can, by requesting or requiring information by teleconference, by using the budget where necessary to compel answers. You know, one of the Powers Congress has is you do not answer my question, you do not get your budget. So there are ways for us to get answers in writing, over the phone, answers by other means. That we can go in and review, even if we cannot do it in person. Those limitations, many of them are less of an issue than other committees. For example, the Oversight Committee looking at the problem with protective gear. You know, they did a bipartisan briefing of where Administration Officials acknowledged that there were shortages of protective gear, shortages of tests, shortages in re agents, shortages in swabs. Basically refuted all of the false happy talk that we get with these White House Press briefings. It is almost gone. That is important oversight. It is less visible to the public, which is a problem because a very important point of the oversight is getting good information out to the country. And when the president is propagating false information, saying there is abundant testing and everybody can get a test when they want, saying there is no problem with hospitals getting protective gear when they cant. That is an issue. And the president must the Inspector General for reporting back to hospitals around the country are telling her that they cannot get the gear that they need, it is important that the public be properly informed. It is imperfect to say the least. It will continue to get better as we find workarounds. And we will just have to identify a way to do it in person as soon as possible because there are some elements of oversight we cannot do any other way. Ms. Jeffery do you think that remote or proxy voting will be coming down the pike soon . When you think about it, it is amazing there was not a provision for this in the cold war. Or just because of travel time. Rep. Schiff yes, first of all, i do think we will develop the capability to do remote voting. Your authorized you authorize a particular member to vote in a particular way. It will not be proxy voting and terms of giving a person your proxy, they can build however they want, but rather specific and limited. Then i think we will develop the capability for remote looting, depending on how long this persists. I think that will be important and i think it is doable both constitutionally and technologically. We have to look at some constitutional issues in that the constitution requires we have a forum for certain workers at the house and it specifies that you can do that ms. Jeffery right. Rep. Schiff by think that one of the justices said so eloquently, the constitution is not a suicide pact. It needs to be interpreted in a way to ensure the survivability of the public, and if remote voting is necessary, then the constitution does not say otherwise. And with the cold war, and the interest of yours today to know that there have been members for years working on a related issue, which is the survival government issue. So if, for example, one of the airplanes from 9 11 had successfully hit the capital and killed a substantial number of members, such that a quorum was not present of any kind, it talks about how to continue government. A former worker who worked on years for that, the former Congress Never followed through with that and perhaps did not want to contemplate its own demise that way. But this is new impetus for us to think and to plan and to put in place procedures for whatever makes crisis that may face the nation. Ms. Jeffery i think that Congress Needs to watch more espionage, actionadventure movies, i think. Rep. Schiff as somebody who literally represents hollywood, i could not agree with you more. Ms. Jeffery nicely done. You one thing that came up when you spoke with my colleague, david, a week or so ago during the impeachment hearings, was that you were shocked. It was obvious when you started making your arguments to the senate, that they had not watched the house hearings. That they had not watched the full of them, but seemed to have it mediated through fox. Do you feel like that is going on with this crisis . Rep. Schiff well, i do not know if that is going on for the members of congress with this crisis because they are hearing from constituents also. So even if on fox they continue to push out information, they do get an ear load i am sure right now from constituents who cannot get access to resources, those businesses that feel like they are not being favored compared to the bigger businesses. I think that they are getting an ear full, and of the shooting. I think it was a refreshing surprise, in some respects, that those who initially may have been amazed i did not come into the senate wearing horns, because the only knew me through fox, some of the republican senators. You know, it was encouraging that by the end of the trial so many of them were acknowledging the truth, even if they could not bring themselves and muster the courage to convict the president , they acknowledged publicly that he was guilty of what he was charged with. That is progress on the house, because House Republicans have begun such a cult to the president that they are not capable of acknowledging the facts staring them in the face. But we did have to operate from the premise which turned out to be all too accurate that the senators were not watching the hearings from the house. They were getting the top line from fox, which was completely misleading. So you could see at times the astonishment when we would put on the case and we would play testimony from those hearings, and show the documents. They were surprised by how powerful the case was. And it was typified by something Lamar Alexander said it near the end of the trial, when trying to justify the unjustifiable, that is why he was voting not to hear from witnesses, as responsible as the house is to prove its case. And those acknowledgments at least of the truth, i think where an improvement on the kind of gas lighting going on within the administration. From people like devin nunes my John Ratcliffe and others in the house it was at least refreshing to hear in a number of republican senators acknowledged that yes, truth is a still truth, facts still matter, even if they do not have the courage to act on them. Ms. Jeffery have you seen any conciliatory movement within the california delegation when it comes to the pandemic . I mean, you know, you mentioned Kevin Mccarthy earlier. Who is extremely partisan. Devin nunes in the california delegation. So you and Maxine Waters and others, do you ever come to an agreement about what must proceed in terms of representing the state of california . Rep. Schiff candidly, as unless i have known Kevin Mccarthy he has been the same, a 100 political animal. And truth of the matter is, it does little damage to him as it does to donald trump. We have had a Good Relationship in the pretrump era. We Work Together well and we produced bills every year. He was really a nonideological john boehner type of a country club republican. I think that, though, when the midnight run interlude blew up on him, when in the wake of james comeys testimony early in the russia investigation, he got to an undisclosed location in the middle of the night and said he had information to share with the white house, and that press conference about it. It was revealed he got information actually from the white house. Or was at the white house. He was forced to step down from being chair of the committee. If you like that was a traumatic experience for him, so much so he decided that he was going to be all in with the president and has been ever since. So it has really been down the rabbit hole, i think, in an irretrievable fashion. But there remains good people within the gop and congress. I do think though that even the otherwise normal rational members of the gop, history will be very unkind to them because they lack the courage to stand up to this unethical president when the country needed them to. And they will have to answer for that. And i will say it has been one of the biggest disappointments i have had of the trump administration, that is i had a much higher views of my republican colleagues, of their commitment to their own ideals, commitment to the constitution. They do not represent the Republican Party anymore, they represent the personality of the president. So i think when the president is gone, i have to hope they will return to being republican once again. And that we can find common ground. But in the meantime, we focus on what we can get done. Even through the worst of the russia investigation, the most difficult parts of the ukraine investigation, the Intel Committee on a bipartisan basis, year after year, produced our annual authorization bill, which sent out all the budget, the new privacy protections, the Civil Liberties reforms that is a controversial topic, nonetheless we got our work done and we will continue to get our work done, even where there are profound differences about what the president is doing with the country. Ms. Jeffery covid, as we have been made aware of, has taken every inequity in our society and magnified it and increased it. I am wondering what you think are the most likely changes, perhaps even before a change in the administration, if that happens, to occur that would help mitigate some of this . Do you think there is a chance at that kind of sick leave could be universal, is there a chance at the republicans it would back off trying to take down obamacare . What, if any of these, old may have a chance of being viewed by those members of congress and more conservative constituents . Rep. Schiff i am glad you asked of the question, because i think when we look at what the pandemic is revealing about american society, it is exposing in a whole new graphic, undeniable and deadly way just how many justices injustices and inequities and disparities there are in our system of government, in our society at large, that need to be remedied. And there is an urgency now, when you look at the mortality rate of africanamericans from the covid virus. It is just staggering, the death toll. Of course, there are reasons for this, having to do with access to health care. And i have no doubt that when we do the postmortem on the financial recovery, that minority institutions, businesses will have persistent difficulties in accessing capital through the Small Business program. And in the same way that there has been persistent difficulties with access to capital in general. So in every sphere of american life, this pandemic is making life more difficult. And indeed, even ending life among those communities that are most at risk. And we have to look at this crisis through the prism of how do we build back better, how do we build the country back better than what we found before the crisis hit . That addresses the lack of health care among so many, that addresses the lack of access to parental leave, the lack of access to capital, and any number of problems facing america. The gap between rich and poor. The degree to which of the wealth of the last quarter century has gone to a handful of families in the country. And what poor morality that is. I really do think that our horizon has to be broadened by this tragedy, to build the country back better. One thing i will say about what we ought to do right now, and this is something i have been advocating the last two months without success, but it is starting to gain traction thanks to the work of one of my colleagues, and that is a couple months ago in discussing the crisis with friends in europe i was struck at the approach that germany, france and other European Countries were taking, but also Asian Countries like singapore, where the government was guaranteeing payroll. That was for businesses large and small. That seemed to me much more equitable, much more efficient. You did not need a separate program for Small Businesses and one for large industry, you did not need to overwhelm unemployment compensation, you did not need it so many people unemployed. And when the virus does pass, then you now go find employment because people got to retain the jobs they had, even if they could not perform the work right now. That kind of a payroll guarantee is i think the best approach. Ms. Jeffery do you think it is via payroll or a universal basic income kind of starting up now . Rep. Schiff those are two good models for us to explore. I was attracted to the payroll model, particularly, because it has an effect of preserving employment. Preserving that connection. And, you know, they are not mutually exclusive. The stimulus checks are a form of universal basic income, if you made them monthly. And so but i particularly think that the payroll guarantee is the right approach. You know, germany has maintained, with only a slight increase in unemployment, their free pandemic employment. America made a choice to have millions of its people, a huge percentage not seen since the great depression, now go on the unemployment rolls. That is not good for america. I really think this is the right approach and i will continue to strongly advocate for it. Ms. Jeffery one of our listeners wants to know, will Congress Save the post office . Rep. Schiff we have to save the post office. This is also a very good question that has more than one aspect to it. First of all, millions of good middleclass jobs are in the post office, including a lot of veterans who serve in the Postal Service. And a lot of people during the pandemic have been completely reliant on the Postal Service. Or work at home, for medicine, for food and supplies. This is a terrible time to be talking about letting the Postal Service go under. But there are people using the pandemic for all kinds of policy objectives that they could not accomplish at any other time. Some in the private world have always wanted to privatize the public service, but they would be more than happy to have the federal government handle the routes. Able rural the opportunity to degrade the Postal Service or have the Postal Service fail also serves another gop objective, and that is to disenfranchise people who vote by mail. One of the grave concerns i have about the november election, frankly, which eclipses the concern i have over another round of foreign interference is the opportunity the pandemic who have already been pushing voter disenfranchisement to take it to a completely different level. Mitchars, it has been mcconnells political Business Model of disenfranchising voters, and Kevin Mccarthys as well. The more restrictive voter id laws, and the more polling places closed and urban centers, the more can be done at the state level to limit the franchise, the better for them lyrically. That has been their whole calculus, and the president said the secret thing out loud, which is if more people vote, if more americans vote, if more people eligible to vote actually vote, republicans cannot get elected. He literally acknowledged this, admitted this. That is a reason for them to change their incredibly divisive, xenophobic platform. It is not a reason to disenfranchise voters. I think it is vitally important t as we take up the debate take up and debate new packages that we deal also with the. Ealth of our democracy likewise, that we have polling stations open days or weeks before election day, that we make it easy and safe, that we not force people, as the wisconsin gop tried to do, to choose between their health and their vote. Ms. Jeffery do you think Election Protection will be part of the next stimulus bill . So far, it seems like for better or for worse, they want to really stick to stimulus itself. Representative shift i think we have to insist in the next legislation that we have to protect the health of the American People, protect the health of our economy, and protect health of our democracy. I think we need to fight to make sure that these provisions are part of the next big reform package that we take up, and that will no doubt make it a theggle, but i think American People have a right not only to be able to vote but to know where their elected officials stand on the willfully if they are trying to obstruct peoples ability to vote in this country. So if republicans are determined to disenfranchise people, it ought to be abundantly clear what they are doing so they can be held accountable at the polls , and it underscores the central that everye sure american is able to vote in november so that we dont see a repetition of so many of the ills we have seen over the last four years. My last question to you, and ifis election related Vice President biden picks senator Kamala Harris to be his Vice President ial pick, will you toss your hat and for the senate seat . Thatsentative schiff would be up to the governor. Herrnor newsom would choose successor. I appreciate the question, but at the moment, im going to worry what is instantly on my plate, and theres a lot of my plate in terms of what we talked about in terms of intel and meeting the basici appreciate tn that front over the last several months. President isice going to have a difficult choice. There are a number of accident candidates, candidates, including senator harris. Maybe you are holding out for attorney general . [laughter] you are really not making this easy for me. This is my job. Thank you so much for joining us. The audience for watching and participating live, thank you. And to watch more programs or support them, visit Commonwealth Club. Org online. Shiftyou to cumbersome and our viewers. Congressman schiff and our viewers. Coronavirus response briefings from several of the nations governors, next. New yorks Governor Andrew Cuomo leads off reviewing the results of a statewide antibody study. Thelso announced that for first time in new york city history, the Transit System will be periodically shut down during overnight hours for a deep cleaning. After that, Florida Governor ron desantis followed by Governor Phil Murphy of new jersey. Now, heres governor cuomo. Good morning. Pleasure to be with