A 9/11-style inquiry into Russia’s role
Burbank congressman Adam Schiff occupies high political ground. He’s the top Democrat on what’s become one of the most scrutinized committees in Congress — House intelligence. The chairman is a fellow Californian, Republican Devin Nunes of Tulare. Read an edited excerpt of an interview with Schiff below, or listen to it online at latimes.com/opinion.
You’re dealing with questions about Russian interference in the election. And you’ve suggested a 9/11 style commission to look into all of this. What would that do?
As it is, we have two intelligence committees doing the work, one House, one Senate. We want to make sure that any conclusions that the committees reach are supported by the evidence. But here’s the problem: We’re not going to have a situation where everyone agrees; there certainly will be frequent disagreement between me and the chair.
A 9/11-style commission would take the investigation completely out of the political realm. You would have people who are truly independent of the political process. And most important, when they were done with their work, it would be something that would be broadly accepted by a now deeply divided country.
[Besides interference] there are other issues that we’re also investigating. There is of course the very serious set of allegations that there were U.S. persons colluding with the Russians, allegations that there may be Trump people who colluded with the Russians. Those are among the most serious issues we’re looking at.
We know the Russians did this, and that much is very clear. It wasn’t China, it wasn’t some 400-pound fat guy. We know that this was the Russians, but we should keep an open mind about whether U.S. persons were involved.
What did you think when President Trump accused President Obama of wiretapping him?
Well, I didn’t think I could be shocked any more by what the president says, but I have to say, this took my breath away.
It had elements of fantasy, elements of paranoia. When you couple it with another tweet he sent out at the same time about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bad ratings, it also had just a flavor of, “Is this person living in the real world?”
Who does that? I mean, who makes that kind of accusation? And certainly not a president of the United States.
When he says things like this, he loses more and more credibility that he will simply never get back. And that’s a real problem for the United States, for our security, for our place in the world.
And from a constitutional point of view, someone who doesn’t respect the judicial branch, who thinks the press are the “enemy of the people,” who will accuse his predecessor of gross illegality — from a constitutional perspective he also seems to be a president who doesn’t know right from wrong.
We’re at a singular time in history where we’re finding out just how fragile our democracy is. You grow up as I have in the latter part of the 20th century and you believe that everything is quite solid and we have this brilliantly written constitution. And all of a sudden you realize the constitution is extraordinarily written, but it’s not self-executing. And there are certain norms of behavior that have guided us and made that democracy work. Those norms are being thrown out on a daily basis; it’s really quite fragile.