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 syst