Welcome. Thank you for turning out. I know you are turning out for congressman adam schiff, it is my great leisure to introduce the congressman he is the rankinn the house Intelligence Committee. Throughout his tenure, the con focused on the economy, National Security, education and health issues. Previously, he served in californias 21st district. And on juvenile justice and the joint committee on the arts. Andust learned we shared adolescence involvement of music. A former teenage musician. Legislature. G him the congressman served with the u. S. Attorneys office in l. A. For six years. Years as the six federal prosecutor. Harvard law school. He and his wife, yes adam and eve [laughter] they have two children. The council is completely nonpartisan and has an open invitation and has continued to invite the chairman, of the republican chairman of house intelligence. He is welcome at any time. I want to start with something that is certainly being discussed. Here and overseas. It involves our reputation abroad, and also a threat that was outlined more broadly to the Intelligence Committee on the senate side. Interference. We are now seeing, according to the hamilton project, that russian have discussed parkland, the high school in florida more than anything else. We have seen reporting from others that there was involvement and support for the nra by russian intermediaries under the election in 2016, something that still might be subject to investigation more broadly. I want to ask about guns and the american culture. And, how this affects all of us. , we have heardnk from state officials from the school superintendents, from parents and teachers, that young people in this very Large High School are not only traumatized, but are asking we did not hear a single word about guns from the white house yesterday. Us areink if all of still having a hard time recovering from what happened in florida. I have a high school aged son in college aged daughter. I would tell my son, do not worry, this will never happen at your school. That has gotten harder and harder for me to maintain. I do not know how to talk to my son about it. I do not know how any parent talks to their child about it. You cannot say this is a problem somewhere else. It is a problem everywhere. With one of my staff members, wonderful staff on the Intelligence Committee, about the shooting yesterday. He wanted to be on this committee to work on public safety. It seems so strange. 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 . There are number of explanations. Wherever you see a wide gulf between what the public wants and what the public gets, there is usually a powerful special interest in the way. Even the vast majority of and are a members support meaningful background checks and restrictions, but leadership does not. Leadership does not put enough fear put enough fear into the majority of house and Senate Members that we cannot make any progress, or if we are making progress, it is only for mentally in changing attitudes. We have not been reflected in the congress. Todayct that the argument , it is too soon to talk about this. Subject of such ridicule. It shows some progress. We have a long ways to go. As you can imagine for understandable reasons, i tend to view things through a russia prism. It is interesting when you look at a social Media Campaign that the russians took during the 2016 collection that one of the wedges they chose aside from race with the black lives matter and bob mock webpages and advertisements were ads focused on the second amendment. The russians are very big fans of the second amendment. They do not one of their own. They do not want lots of russians running around with lots of guns, but they are really happy we do. They would like Nothing Better than if we were shooting each other every day. Sadly, we are. Sometimes, we need to look at the perspective from the outside to understand the vulnerabilities we have. What the russians or about in the 26 election, even more than helping was to sow Division Within our society. We can our democracy. They view this as a falling to exploit. It was being described as one of the major threats when he addressed of the senate. I was intrigued by the fact that there was no house intelligence threat hearing for the agency chief because when i covered congress, fulltime, first of all, the Intelligence Committee was completely bipartisan. Whenever a majority report was of the in the instance socalled torture report, it was also a minority report at the same time. We can get to the memo in a moment. The time like between the release of the two memos. Which one will be released. The other point being, there was always a threat hearing to the senate and house at the same time. Why is there been no schedule trend hearing before the house intelligence . I do not know the answer. We have asked that we conduct one, but i would say the good news, bad news on our committee is the following. Notwithstanding the chairman and my substantial differences. The other work of the committee has gone on without difficulty, but effectively. We put out intelligence authorization bill, we put him through the house and a very bipartisan basis. The senate has not succeeded in doing so. We were able to pass a very difficult and complex 702, a reform bill that was no easy task. This is in that same category, i would expect of nonrussia related or simply nonrussia centric that we ought to do. I cannot explain it, the senate generally goes first. It always seems to go first. , our hearing usually closely followed after, i hope it will. I hope we can do a variety of other open hearings. It ought to be very nonpartisan. Been advocating for a great many months is one on election security. So that we can bring in the department of homeland security, state elections officials, and we can get a state of the democracy check on how close we are to finishing work that has to be done to protect our polling places. Testimony from the senate side is that russia is involved in the Ongoing Campaign to meddle in our democracy, to undermine our democracy to social media. It was acknowledged and answer the question director wray that the president has never thought a question a ,olution, a program for defense to my knowledge there has never been a principle of meeting or Deputies Committee meeting. You think there will be an adequate defense matter what homeland has done, or is doing. And the white house this is urgent. I do not think there can be. Thisussians are a verys sophisticated cyber actor. If they wanted to get into the dmz, in 2020, they will get in. If they want it they will get it there. There is no cyber fix for this. Theres nothing we can implement to protect all of our institutions. The beste how some of protected institutions happen penetrated by the russians, chinese, and others. There is no perfect cyber cure here. Ultimately, we need a government response to this which we will not get as the commander in chief does not insist on it. He will not insist on it because he views it as a threat to his legitimacy. Any acknowledgment of what the russians did at is a threat to his legitimacy. What we need is a bipartisan, partisan consensus that is we will reject it. Net who it helps and who it hurts. We did not have that in 2016. We had a candidate who is willing to egg on and encourage the russians to hack Hillary Clintons emails, and they be richly rewarded. Trump didnt every day a daily dump of these emails. That cannot happen again. Somehow, we have to get past this. By work with the terrible it seems like mostly terrible for 280 of world events. To 80 of world events. Our elections with both feet. Me at the same time where one of the president ial candidates was willing to embrace that. Not rejected. I am certain that had john mccain, mitt romney been the nominee in 2016. They would have said russia but out. We do not need your help, we do not want your help, we despise your enrollment. We do not make use of your illgotten gains. That is not who we are. That is not who donald trump was. I think more than anything else, to protect ourselves in the future we need to develop that type of consensus. That any for interference will be rejected. It could cut in the opposite direction. Opportunity level and actors. Theyre not republicans and they are not democrats. It is in their policy to undermine the united states. They view it as a zerosum game. Anything that is good for us is bad for them and vice versa. In fairness, some responsibility is also attributed to the Obama Administration for not more forcible deterrent. I think it goes back to the korean hack of sony. In which there was a minimum response. I more forcible think that others around the world watch that and determined that cyber is a cost free intervention. Certainll always be a level of plausible deniability with cyber because even though we are quite good attribution, we will never want to fully show our hands about how we know who did what. Need to show your hand as long as you can establish a deterrent. You do not need to respond to a cyber attack with another cyber response. I think the response and north korea should have been an 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 have been a deterrent to further north korean meddling. We shouldve called the russians out much earlier. We were the first to to make an official attribution, but it is not the same, coming from two members of congress from the same party as it is from an administration. While i respect the motive in terms of the Obama Administration, they do not want to be seen as meddling. The American People had a right to know what was going on. They should have defended being more public and aggressive at the time. Let me ask about steve bannon. Tell your concerns and other members concerns. Your republican counterpart Michael Conway who has been technically in charge of the investigation, was complaining publicly afterwards that he had not answered and only answer questions that had been preapproved by the white house. Be facing a he will contempt citation or not . I think it is likely. Colleagues on our committee have committed themselves. They can always uncommitted themselves. A number of them have said publicly that if the Committee Takes no for an answer, it will future investigations. If our committee and others in congress established a reputation that you can come in and say no, and you can give no reason for saying no, or give the flimsiest of explanations. Know everyay, and i week i live to think that something more observe absurd the week of four. The indication of privilege yesterday was the most absurd and we have the example of don jr. Claiming attorneyclient privilege when neither our attorney nor client. The bar is pretty high for most absurd. I think steve bannon of exceeded the bar. What the white house bid, when they first came in, they just instructed him to not answer a whole set of questions about anything that took place at during the transition or the administration. Almost everything that took place after he had left the at administration, no matter who you was talking to or about war or with. R about they just said, do not answer. He came into committee and said, i will not answer. Neither in league with the white house or in the in league with breitbart anymore. I guess that means we deal with this is way we should. We give him a subpoena on the spot. That same week, we had Corey Lewandowski come in. He gave an even more absurd answer because he said he would not answer the same questions been in wooden answer and you would not answer anything after the day he left the campaign. He was never part of the administration. There is no claim of executive privilege, road. He said im not prepared to answer these questions today. The committee said, oh, ok. Please come back when you find it convenient. Knows a peanut, no talk about subpoena, no talk about contempt. With steve bannon, when he came back, he had a list of 25 questions that were written by the white house of for him to answer. That was all he would be able to answer. Specificso into the of questions, except to say, when you walk through them, you could see both how purposefully and hopefully specific and misleading they were designed to be. Breathtaking the claim of privilege is if we would ever accept this as executive privilege. They were things like, did you ever meet with so and so. If the question was written out for him to answer, the answer was no. There were no questions on the list to which the answer was anything but no. That should tell you something. If you said deuce did you speak with someone so, the answer was yes. What did you talk about . No willingness to answer the question. You would think they never communicated. That is the misleading nature of what the white house presented. To the degree that there is any legitimate executive privilege 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 on these topics before special counsel without indicating privilege. And i asked whether yet vote privilege before any other body, he refused to answer. The white house must know because they have decent lawyers. This is an absurdly broad claim of religion. They are undermining their own position by making such a claim. They feel that if they can delay appealough, if they can to the partisan interest on our committee, maybe they can make us go away. Maybe they can out weight out wait us. The white house of use of this witness differently. Who hadhad others testified about the transition and administration, and they made no claim of such privilege. Why is steve bannon different . It may be because they feel they cannot control steve bannon. I do not know. It does concern me that steve bannon has the same counsel as others in the white house. In any event, that is where we are. I think there is no choice in our committee but to move forward with contempt. Mr. Bannonpect that has been informed that they will only stonewall so far. They will never allow him to be fined or go to jail, but they do wish to draw up the process as long as they can. The security of classified information in the white house, we are reporting that 135 people in in the in the executive office of the president , including assistance to the president , including the general counsel as of november did not have proper security clearance to handle. How are they doing their jobs . Leadersludes a division and the National Security council as well as the deputy National Security advisor. If they are doing their jobs, is that a violation of National Security . Are they being cleared by the president to do what they have to do . For us toery hard gain visibility into what is going on in the white house. Ask the and others white house these questions, you get a variety of explanations that evolve over time. It is different from the usual backlog and the time it takes for any new administration. It certainly seems to me it is very different in scale. I would imagine at the beginning of any a administration you have a backlog of security clearances. Some take more time than others given the background individuals were trying to clear. Here, where you are operating on interim after interim of people in with sensitive positions who have a need to know, there is only one of two possibilities. Either the white house is doing things correctly and are shifting access of these people, in which case and they are not getting the full benefit of the information they need to advise the president , or theyre getting access to information they are not cleared to see. Either way, it is a real problem. Then you add the additional issues of why people may not be having the clearance now. The vast majority may be issues of the time it is taking, but with others, clearly we have seen there are additional problems. Reportingom public that theyre are all kinds of contacts of them not reported the first time. Problemshave other that have prevented their clearance from going through. Alarming ons both the one hand how some brought a complete lack of seriousness or candor to their filings. There may be serious impediments to them getting clearance. At the end of the day, you have a very inexperienced crowd at the white house. The president the benefit of having people who are fully briefed, it really undercuts one of the great strengths that we have, the world finest Intelligence Services that can provide good insight to the president and our decisionmakers. 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 . Last week i was back in my district. I went to the award ceremony. The mc did say i had the hottest spec script out there. [laughter] im not so sure it is such a hot scripts. I am doing my best not to hype it the way my gop colleagues did theres. Werewe wrote in the memos the material facts that were left out in the majority memo. They were drawn from the pfizer applications from the fisa applications. The fbi and department of justice position is that the gop memo should never have been declassified to begin with. It was false and misleading. They do not like the classification and the president thatit sets precedent it sets. Whate trying to figure out reductions are necessary to protect sources or methods or investigative interests. The rest should be declassified. We are close to reaching an agreement on it. What i am trying to gain visibility into is what are the concerns of fbi and doj. Political redaction that the white house might be insisting on . What we are trying to gain is that insight. Obviously, the department of justice and fdr are in a difficult decision and fbi are in a difficult decision. 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. We do think it is important to 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 . 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. As difficult as that has been, 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 in, 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. You have to do the followup 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. That is really what we need to 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 that is being considered, despite pentagon concerns . Rep. Schiff i think there is no such thing as a bloody nose strategy or a limited Nuclear Strike. There is no way to confine it to being limited in any way. Even if the North Koreans dont respond through the use of Nuclear Weapons, they have enough conventional artillery to cause enormous loss of life. We are already dealing with an erratic and murderous regime. So i just dont think that is an option, and 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 xi, or malicious things. Theyre not going to do it if the Vice 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. And then we have a chance, even 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. But the idea that we can have a limited strike on north korea of a nuclear nature, or a nonnuclear nature, puts us on a 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. So please tell us where we go, 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. I tried an 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 orleans on corruption charges. I know you must be imagining new orleans corruption, impossible. [laughter] 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 dig 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 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 eight to 10 years ago 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 floor is, 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. So my view 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. Barbara Barbara 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. Rep. Schiff i have to say i 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 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 committee where it would be an 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. Having worked on cases not 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. In the senate, there are two 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. But that is a little bit of 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. So my question is, what measures 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. I am continually struck i the 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. In terms of the dysfunction and distrust on our committee, the 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 this off to my being the Ranking 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 too 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. In terms of the committee and 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. That will take time to mitigate 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. Our relationships with our 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 us, 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. There will come a time when we have, in my view, a Different Administration that will restore a lot of the trust and our 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 said about nato, the disrespectful things that are said about europe and the encouragement of brexit, and all those things have had an impact, but not one that is indelible. A Different Administration, a new administration, can quickly begin restoring our standing. Elizabeth Elizabeth Bodie 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 . Andrea and the rest of the departments. [laughter] rep. Schiff i you know, we can start by appointing people 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 policymaker, and that is there are deep problems within almost 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 pornstar and barely can 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 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. You talk about the importance of 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. I think 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. A big part of 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 how old i am 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. People 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 media, is there is one profound issue about how our social media and our opinions can be perniciously influenced by foreign, bad actors. By amplifying things so we only think things are trending. The problem 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 kos popping up, my republican colleagues would probably not on facebook much. We get what we want to see. The algorithms are showing us 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 combine progun control hashtags with antiguncontrol stories that were designed to ridicule the movement in favor of gun safety legislation. This is the far broader societal issue. There 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 actually very 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 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 so much at home. We do. This is going to 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 we posted 200 twitter accounts 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. Nelson i will give a quick question, nelson cunningham. You made an important point that many people overlook. There may never be a mueller report. We think that because kenneth star did a report, there will be a mueller report. The provision under which mueller was reported makes no provision for a report. It says he will speak privately 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. Rep. Schiff it is a very good question. At this point, completely unresolved. Rod rosenstein wrote a memo 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 Mueller be able to release 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. One of 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 of information 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 the 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 were not likely to know if he were fired and replaced by someone else. It is a concern 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 invited chairman nunes to come and would welcome him being here at any time of his choosing. Thank you so much. [applause] 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. [inaudible] later the Justice Department announces indictments stemming from the russian investigation. Adam schiff sent out this tweet. Today, president s day, on the cspan networks. Cspan, landmark cases live from the Constitution Center in philadelphia. At 7 30 p. M. , the portrait unveiling ceremony for former president barack obama and first Lady Michelle obama. Then a panel on comparing watergate to today. On cspan to that eastern, the savanna book festival. At 9 00, indepth fiction edition with colson whitehead. At 6 30, callers explore the relationship between ronald reagan, george bush, and russian leader mike kelly gorbachev. Watch today on the cspan networks. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. Cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies. Today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and Public Policy events in washington dc and around the country. Cspan is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. The Nuclear Posture review is a military study conducted every four years that assesses the u. S. Nuclear arsenal and weapon strategy. The National Defense university in washington dc
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