Transcript of Senator Schiff Responds to Trump’s Latest Threats

So we saw what happens when you appoint an Internet troll with no experience to become the director of the FBI. That was on full display when Cash Patel testified, both before the United States Senate and the House. And while it was deeply humiliating for Cash Patel, it was really deeply humiliating for the United States of America. And I truly worry about the other threats that are out there right now that are not being investigated or protected. And we just see how Patel is handling the Epstein files and and other things. This was Cash Patel, just a photo of him, K dollar sign, H right there, wearing the camouflage. He would sell this gear. He would post memes of himself, chop sawing or hack sawing off the face of Democratic politicians. I think I saw him do that with Senator Schiff and other people where he would do memes like that, which is just horrific. Then Senator Shiff got the opportunity to cross-examine Cash Patel. It's like watching, no offense to little babies, like petulant babies who are arguing, but where they cover their ears and go, I don't want to answer. I don't want to answer.

I just am thinking what the career FBI agents who were there were doing while they watched this. Just take a look at Senator Shiff cross-examining, just an unhinged batalga. You can play this clip.

You can take an internet troll. Take it to the bank that the FBI is protecting this country and the state and citizens of the California.

We are doing a historic reform.

That an Internet point of order.

Just try to ask him a question. You said you were going to release the Epstein files. Why aren't you releasing them? Why aren't you releasing them? Just make them public. I don't know. I read all the federal orders. All the courts said they can release the files. They don't need the grand jury testimony. The court said, DOJ, go for it, release the files. Here was another part where Senator Schiff was cross-examining Patel. Let's play.

And let me follow up on Senator Kennedy's question because he I asked you, and I'll be very precise here. You've seen most of the files. Who, if anyone, did Epstein traffic these young women to besides himself? You said himself, there's no credible information, none. If there were, I would bring the case yesterday that he trafficked to other individuals. Kennedy, the information we have, again, is limited. Senator Kennedy said, The answer is no one. You said for the information we have. Is it your testimony today that in all the Epstein files, that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked no one to anyone but himself? Is that your testimony, Mr. Kelly.

I never said Jeffrey Epstein didn't traffic anyone else.

Did he traffic any young woman to someone other than himself? That was Mr. Kennedy's question, Senator Kennedy's question.

I said the information that three administrations have had access to have made determinations that there are no investigative leads that were credible to prosecute and investigate any others. I'm specifically stating we were working on- Well, I'm asking you whether it's your testimony today. You just read it, and I said it 10 minutes ago, so let the record reflect my testimony.

I just want to make sure there's no misunderstanding because there are victims like Virginia Guieffer who have testified otherwise, who have said otherwise. You're telling the American people today that the Epstein List is a single name, and it's Jeffrey Epstein. That's what we're to believe?

That's not what I'm saying. That's what you're saying. You can say whatever you want. Let me ask you.

I don't even know what that was. Let's bring in California Senator Adam Schiff. Senator, you had the opportunity to cross-examine an Internet troll posing as an FBI director, but unfortunately, with the authorities of one, what do you make of it?

Well, that claim that you just played was, I think, what was most astounding, which is the Epstein List, According to Cash Patel, has only one name on it, and that is Jeffrey Epstein. So he basically wants the American people now, after for years saying that there was this secret list of very high-profile people that were the clients of Jeffrey Epstein, he wants suddenly the American people, including the MAGA base, to believe, no, no, there was actually only one name, and that was Jeffrey Epstein. Not the least bit credible, but it wasn't the only thing he said that wasn't believable at What really set him off, what set off that tirade that you started with is I asked him, who made the decision to transfer Jeffrey Epstein's co-conspirator, Jelaine Maxwell? Who made the decision to transfer her to this minimum security Security Prison not fit for a sex offender? And his answer was the Bureau of Prisons. And I said, just them without any input from the administration or from Blanch or Bondi or anybody that's just on their own, coincidentally, after this This interview transferred her to this Minimum Security Prison. Do you expect people to believe that?

But he does expect people to believe that. And it all gets back to the point you started with, which is we have someone Now, who's wholly incompetent running the FBI, someone who is essentially a troll. And I think about the men and women at the Bureau who I worked with when I was an assistant US attorney. They're the Premier Law Enforcement Agency in the country to have such terrible leadership. And the fact that Patel is firing these experienced agents because they worked on the Mar-a-Lago investigation. They worked on the January sixth investigation for no other reason. They're getting fired. So we're losing expertise, and we're gaining incompetence. We're taking people off of important cases, and we're making them essentially an immigration police force. This is a dangerous development for the country because it means really serious, violent criminal cases, terrorism cases, counterintelligence cases are not getting the staffing leadership they need right now.

You know, is Donald Trump intentionally trolling the FBI by picking the worst people to run it right now? He said he wanted retaliation and retribution. And what better way to do that than literally pick Cash Patel, who's written books and has posted about his distaste and hatred for the FBI Also, if I was a career guy at the FBI and I found out that a 22-year-old kid, Thomas Fugate III, who was an intern and a gardener with no experience, was now getting one of those senior positions. I had a report to a former intern who's now... What's Fugate running? He's doing domestic counterterrorism. I don't even know how the morale exists at all in the FBI. Then I read that lawsuit that filed last week by Driskill and Evans and all those other top leaders who were saying all that Patel and Bonvino cared about was social media likes and reposts over investigatory work. So I don't know. It feels like he wants to destroy the FBI by doing so. Where are the victims?

I think that's right. I think that's right. And to put that incompetence in charge of the FBI really helps to hollow it out. And people are leaving the FBI in droves or losing this expertise. And what's more, around the country, as FBI agents show up as witnesses in important cases, juries are not believing them because they think the FBI now is just essentially a political tool of the President. And that's terrible. In those pleadings that you were talking about, this lawsuit that was filed by three well-respected senior FBI agents. And they basically said in the complaint, Patel told them that if they worked on an investigation of Donald Trump, that they were going to get fired. And he said, that is possibly illegal, but we're going to do it anyway. And there's nothing you can do about it. That's basically now our FBI leadership. And you're right, you put someone like that in charge, people are going to flee the agency. It's going to degrade. And I guess that's what the President wants. It's part of his retribution campaign.

It's a great point. I never even thought of it. So I want to highlight it here that there are thousands of cases taking place or more across the country where FBI agents have investigated something. They've then turned over the file working in concert with the United States attorney's office. An indictment is brought. Eventually, if the case goes to trial, that FBI agent has to testify. And if you're the criminal defense attorney, you're out there, and this is probably going on now across the country, you're taking all of these posts and the trolling and all the things that Patel and Bonvino and their concealment, and you're going to cross-examine the FBI agent He was going to have... And the case may not even be about any Trump-related. It may be about drugs. It may be about counterterrorism, right? But you're going to start showing, wait a minute, this is what they're doing with fishing boats in Venezuela without giving evidence. This is what they're I'm doing with immigrants. I'm supposed to trust you. And you look at a jury that represents a cross-section, and all you need is one to hang that. And you could probably pick them out easily right now in these very serious cases.

I think that is absolutely the case. I talked to who assisted US Attorneys when Trump was present the first time, and it was nowhere near as bad then. And they were telling me, yes, defense counsel are making the arguments in court that the President's people are coming after me for X, Y, or Z reasons, and it's already affecting their ability to prosecute cases. Now you have an addition to this troll as FBI director, you have some of these real rabid partisans being appointed as US attorneys, and you have people leaving those offices, too. It's just really decimating the whole Department of Justice. And meanwhile, it's not like the threats have gone away from around the world or domestically. But nevertheless, this premier agency is just being crippled.

I want to talk about the economy quickly, although it doesn't have to be quickly. We can't do the interview all day. Obviously, your time is precious. You've got the Fox poll showing that 52% of Americans right now view the economy right now as worse under Trump than it was under Biden. The entire MAGA Republican campaign was to basically vilify the other administration's economy and say they were going to make things more affordable and make housing more accessible and all of these things. But it seems all they're interested in doing is chopping down the trees around the White House to build the 90,000 square foot ballroom or to change the Rose Garden to Club Rose Garden or Donald Trump gallivanting in the UK as they put on the Disney Princess version at Windsor Castle for him to try to appeal to ego. And Americans are suffering while to me, you have all these symbols of Trump flaunting his wealth now that he's achieved with the quid pro quo and just rubbing it in our faces, it feels like.

For sure. Just the other day, Forbes came out with their, I don't know, 1,000 Richest People. And Trump had moved up by over 100 spaces. He's already made billions of dollars in the first eight months of this administration Administration. He's made more money in eight months than he made in his entire life before that. And it's just graphed. It's just using the instruments of his office to grab money. He's getting 16 million from CBS over a bogus lawsuit. He's getting 12 million from ABC over another bogus lawsuit. He's getting a third Air Force One from the gutteries. So while people on the ground are still trying to pay their rent and figure out how they're going to pay for those ever more expensive groceries, I guess the President would say they should take solace in the fact that he now is a third Air Force One. He has a palace in the sky, courtesy of gutter. That's not helping anyone. People's personal economies are really suffering right now. Donald Trump's personal economy is the only one that is doing well. And I think this is why people are really souring on him as we I see these prices continue to climb.

He had promised, as you pointed out, that on day one, he was going to bring prices down. But his tariff policies are driving them up. Everything else he's doing is driving those policies up. And it's just making life even more difficult for average families.

And finally, I want to get your take on Brandon Carr, FCC Commissioner, wrote Project 2025 roadmap on this. He's posting memes of the office, raising the roof or Jack Nicholson laughing and mocking. He's like actually playing a villain. It's just weird to see this behavior from any human being, yet alone the leader of the SEC, Commissioner, gloating about getting a talk show host or a late night talk show. It's like Jimmy Kimmel kicked off the air and the chilling effect that that has. And then you have, obviously, you have Next Star wanting to do their big merger where they need FCC approval to clear that 39% ownership cap. You've got Sinclair saying that Kimmel needs to issue an apology and donate money to the Kirk family. I went back and watched. I'm like, What are we doing here? Obviously, we condemned what happened in the most serious of terms, but to use that as a pretext to violate everybody's First Amendment rights, it just seems that's what they want to do more than anything.

So true. Brennan Carr is now just another anti free speech, pro-Maga voice that happens to be chairing this important commission that gets to decide whether a news organization gets a licensed to broadcast. And for someone in that role to be such an overt partisan, to try to be censoring speech the President doesn't like. And it comes after a long series of similar a tax on the First Amendment. So you have the SEC threatening to withhold the ability of Paramount to merge with Skydance unless the CBS pays off the President. So CBS pays off the President, $16 million to supposedly settle that litigation, that frivolous litigation that President brought against CBS. So the merger can go through. And then you have that same guy who was holding up that merger, potentially holding setting up the acquisitions of these local stations, Necstar and Sinclair, who both want to acquire other media companies. But no, they're not going to get approval from the SEC unless they can do something to show their endearment to the President. And what better way than trying to pull Jimmy Kimmel off the air? So you have Stephen Colbert off the air. You have Kimmel off the air.

Immediately, Colbert off the air. Next year, you have this suppression of free speech, and they're just getting started. They're going to go after nonprofit organizations. They're going to threaten those organizations' tax exempt status. Trump is already taking aim now at NBC, threatening NBC. Of course, he sued the New York Times, which just got thrown out. The judge there in powerful terms, said, This is not a complaint. This is a propaganda filing, masquerading as some a civil complaint. But it does show, I think, cumulatively, the First Amendment has never been more at risk in this country than it is today.

Before we go, Senator, I see signs of hope out there, whether it is peaceful protests, whether it's the fact that people don't like this. Trump's approval is plummeting right now. It's not that this is being embraced and he's being viewed as this is what we've always wanted. But from your point, what you're seeing, reasons for hope, you see Democrats fighting back, coming back from the summer with some fight in spirit. What do you see?

There's a lot of reasons for hope in what we're seeing. I mean, just today, The fact that the court throughout this phony baloney propaganda lawsuit by the President against the New York Times, and not just threw it out, but castigated it, shows, okay, at the district level, there's still some independence. There's still a check and balance that's working. Seeing people take to the streets to protest the militarization of Washington, DC. Thousands of people take the streets or millions of people take the streets on no King's Day to show, no, we're not going back to the days when we answered to a king. Those actions give me optimism. Seeing prosecutors resign rather than doing things that are unethical, seeing a CDC director who's been fired, willing to come before Congress and tell the American people what they're doing is dangerous to your health. What they asked me to do before they fired me because I refused would have been dangerous to your health. That is to make decisions about vaccines, not based on science, but based on their anti-vax conspiracy theories. So there are lots of heroes who are coming out every day. And the American people, I think, are standing up every day.

In Chicago, there are plans to make sure that kids can get to school from immigrant families. So other parents are taking them to school so that their parents don't get arrested, bringing their kids to school. And they're making food deliveries to folks rather than have them risk going out shopping and getting arrested. So lots of people stepping up right now. Each of us needs to step up in our own way to mitigate the harms that are going on until we can put an end to them.

Senator Adam Schiff, thanks for joining us as always.

Great to be with you. Thanks for having me.

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