susan: california congressman adam schiff comes to "newsmakers" this week. he is the ranking democrat on the house intelligence committee and has been a point person on that for the democrats on the russia investigation. he is in his ninth term in congress and his position on the intelligence committee makes him part of congress' gang of eight, the group that has access to the most secret intelligence information in congress. thank you for being with us. rep. schiff: my pleasure. susan: let me introduce a journalist asking questions this week. jerry self of the washington journal, and nicholas fandos of the new york times. congressman, on the one-year anniversary of the mueller investigation, we start with jerry and questions about korea. jerry: chairman it looked for , the past several weeks that president trump and kim un were on track to have a dozen summit meeting in early june in singapore. then all of a sudden this week,

the north koreans started to make unfriendly noises, saying that if this conversation was only getting rid of our nuclear program, we are not interested. why do you think the north koreans turned around on this, and is the summit meeting in peril now? rep. schiff: i don't think the summit meeting is in peril, and it isn't surprising that we have see this tactic. it would be surprising if things went smoothly. it would be surprising if the north koreans really had some sudden of tiffany and they were ready to come hat in hand and give up their nuclear program and missile program. this is their tradition. they go through broad periods of confrontation followed by short periods of conciliation. when you're in a negotiation they will use various stratagems to seek to improve their leverage at the bargaining table and seek to divide the alliance against them. so we need to fully expect it. if the president was going into

this with some expectation that he had won over kim jong-un by saber rattling, that is a naive expectation. so this is going to be difficult. and of course, when we have been able to successfully enter agreements with north korea they have cheated. one thing that is going to be essential is having a strong verification regime. but i still think this is going to go forward. what worries me is our president seems so desperate now for an agreement, having walked out of the iran agreement, having pledged so much and built up so much of an expectation that things are going to be different and he has this great relationship now with kim jong-un. kim jong-un may have concluded that the president of the united states needs this now much more than he does, and that puts us in a weak edition. jerry: so you think he is too eager to get a deal now, having talked about war for months and months? rep. schiff: i think it is a

real risk. you see him saying things like the north koreans are going to be so happy with this deal. we are going to basically guarantee there is no regime change. we are going to guarantee the personal security of the north korean dictator. that is pretty dramatic promises, concessions, even before you sit down together. and i will add one more than -- one more that deeply worries me. this week we had this inexplicable statement from the president about zte, this chinese telecom and he is basically going to reverse course. this is a company we sanctioned for helping cheat on the iran and north korea sanctions and lying about it to us. so we are going to reverse course and unsanction them because we are worried about chinese jobs? this makes no sense whatsoever except with two possibilities.

one is that the president is so desperate to get a north korea agreement that is willing to give china anything to help, including unsection this company, when our intel committee on a bipartisan basis have concluded there is a very real cyber security and espionage risk of using this equipment. that is one possibility. he just needs to deal that bad there is another possibility, . there is another possibility, which is equally disturbing and that is that the reversal on zte came on the same week that china decided to invest $500 million in a trump-related property in indonesia. the emoluments clause was designed to prevent us from having to wonder, is that the motivation here? but nonetheless we have to ask what is by this otherwise inexplicable change of course? susan: nicholas? nicolas: turning to a more domestic issue, yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the appointment of robert mueller,

the special counsel, closing in on two years of happy i investigation, crossfire hurricane, into president trump's associations with the russians. muchder -- you spent wit of your own time investigating into this. did you see any patterns emerging, and you think this investigation is going to wrap up anytime soon as the president would clearly like it to? rep. schiff: i don't see it wrapping up soon. and part of the reason is that, as we looked into matters, as bob mueller has looked into matters, you find more and more of concern that needs to be investigated. and vetted. so in many respects the investigation has broadened. we saw that with a surge of michael cohen's residence and hotel and office. when i saw that, my gut reaction is it's very unusual to search a lawyer. this was not just a lawyer. this was the president's lawyer.

and i didn't believe that was and i didn't believe that was likely to be the case based solely on concern about potential campaign-finance law violation. and now, i think we have seen in the bank statements that have been leaked or released, that there is a lot more going on here. there were a lot of payments and -- in the multimillions to michael cohen, and he is the -- any claims to be the president's lawyer. so there is a real hornets nest for michael cohen in regard to those transactions. but there is a multiplicity of allegations involving potential financial impropriety, so i think the investigation by necessity has broadened. i would also say this. for those who think the investigation has gone on a long time, having prosecuted

white-collar cases, this case has moved with lightning speed. the number of people have been indicted, the number of guilty pleas already obtained, the nature of those who have been indicted and pled, we are not talking about peripheral characters here. we're talking about the president's campaign chairman, his deputy campaign chairman, his national security adviser, one of his foreign-policy advisers. this is fairly remarkable progress, especially when you look at other investigations the government has conducted, that we have conducted in congress. i participated in two benghazi investigations and those went on for 3.5 years. so this is gone on a fraction of the time of the benghazi investigation, which produced very little. so i think people need to be patient. now certainly the president

wants this over, and its in his interest to make it seem like this has gone forever, and to beat up and badger the justice department and the fbi and robert mueller. he has too much help on the hill doing that, but that is a terrible disservice to the country and we need to insist that we observe the rule of law and the investigations go on to their conclusion because we cannot have a situation where we don't know if a foreign adversarial power has leverage over the president of the united states. there is a national security imperative to get to the truth and i have every confidence the -- confidence bob mueller will. nicolas: the intelligence committee has oversight over the cia. this week the cia has a new director, gina haskell, -- gina haspel, confirmed by the senate. but most democrats opposed her nomination. what was your view of the the haspel nomination, and what

-- and subtlety or controversy which was the record of harsh interrogations after 9/11 by the cia? rep. schiff: i don't think the hearings or her confirmation itself resolves that issue, that we can necessarily say it has been put behind us. i do think that within the agency, as far as i can tell, she has a very good reputation as a good manager, as someone who is completely dedicated to the institution. she is very well thought of. the only issue, but it was a significant issue, was what was her role in the enhanced interrogation program? what was her role in the destruction of the tapes, the recordings of the enhanced interrogations? as a house member i was not privy to her senate testimony closedd session -- in session. if i had voted on her

confirmation i would have had some hard questions for her about her role in those programs. and i would've wanted to get a personal sense from her that she was committed to making sure we never go down that road again. i think she was trying to walk a fine line, which some say she did and others sake she failed to do, of coming out against any repetition of this dark chapter in the agency's history, but also not condemning the people that she worked with at the agency and who believe that they were following the law, or following the orders of the administration. so i would've wanted to have the benefit of that if i had been making a decision on her confirmation. i have to think also one of the things that was weighing on the senators as they were making this judgment is, and this is frankly a big issue in any confirmation in this administration, if we reject her, who comes next? in the worst thing for the agency would be to have somebody

who is essentially carrying the president's water, or a political ideologue installed as the head of the cia. and i think there were some real concerns that if she didn't get confirmed, what comes after could be much more problematic. and so, i have to think that way. for some senators it was enough, for many it wasn't and i don't envy the difficulty of that decision but i do think that the cia is probably in a better place right now than it has been when it was under so much of the president's attacks. i literally ran into somebody on the street the other day when i was in new york who had worked for the agency, and described to me, and the telling of it even though this was over a year ago,

described how devastating it was to her to see that display by the president in front of the the stars representing the fallen when he was bragging about the crowd size at his inauguration. so the agency has been first -- has been through some tough times in the administration, and there is a hope they can put the worst of that behind. jerry: do think the fact that the president chose a consummate intelligence professional suggests that he has put behind him some of that suspicion of the intelligence community that his team had when they came into office? rep. schiff: well i would hope , so. i think the reality is that the president will attack whatever agency is in his personal benefit. right now he has his principal focus turned on the fbi and the department of justice. should the cia produce further evidence of collusion by his campaign, i am sure he will train his sights on them and

claim they are part of the deep state that is up to get him. this president has no ideology except itself. no respect for institutions but self. so, i think the cia is probably breathing a sigh of relief that they didn't have someone there who was going to be interfering with the mission of the agency or undermining it from inside. but i don't think that they can necessarily have confidence that they are out of the crosshairs at any time in this administration. nicolas: let's talk about the fbi and department of justice. you have tried to sound the alarm's about what you see as inappropriate intervention by your republican counterpart on intelligence committee, chairman devin nunes and others , who are making increasingly bold requests about documents from the justice department in the russia case. lawmakers not have a right as

do those -- do those lawmakers not have a right as members of congress to exercise oversight and request that material? and do you think the justice department has been handling the situation in the appropriate way? obviously, there has been a cycle of confrontation, and the president seems to be siding with the lawmakers rather than his own justice department. are they entirely in the wrong? rep. schiff: i think they are entirely in the wrong with what they're doing in the justice department his own justice department. bect being done as oversight. it is being done as a way of tear down the institution to serve the president. the gop congress has decided they are not going to be doing oversight, period. if they were doing oversight, we would be having hearings about whether this chinese deal in indonesia is responsible for the change of position by the president on zte. we would be having hearings on whether the emoluments clause is being violated in other ways, we

would be investigating any number of allegations of corruption and impropriety within the administration. they're not doing it. trey gowdy says congress should not be doing investigations, which is odd for somebody who led the benghazi investigation. they have decided we are not going to do oversight. oversight what they're doing with the justice department. it is an effort to undermine the investigation, discredit the fbi, the justice department, bob mueller. basically to give the president a reason to start firing people, or to undermine whatever bob mueller finds. and you can see the choreography and it is quite apparent. my colleagues, not just chairman nunes but also the tea party people on the judiciary committee, they demand documents from the justice department. they get the documents. our chairman doesn't even read them. they go back and demand further

documents. they get those and are not satisfied. they continue to escalate their requests, not because they are particularly interested in documents, except to the degree they might be used to undermine the department or assist the white house. the whole goal is to fight. it is to keep escalating the demand until you get the fight. because every time the justice department quite rightly resists providing open investigatory materials that might interfere with the investigation, as if on cue the white house tweets, why won't the justice department provide these documents to congress? it is designed to give the president fodder to attack the department. and it is very transparent. that is not oversight. that is an assault on the institution masquerading as oversight. and sadly, it is having an effect i think in undermining public confidence in those institutions and affecting

morale in those institutions. they are strong enough to withstand it, but nonetheless they are doing long-term damage to our system of checks and balances. nicolas: democrats have a chance to retake the house this fall. what would a chairman shchiff do differently? what would be your first for your ready in this -- first priority in this area and others if you have a gavel? rep. schiff: the first priority of the intel committee is to make sure we are gathering intelligence to protect the country, that our agencies are talking to each other, that we are making the right budgetary decisions. a lot of that work goes on outside the public view, and notwithstanding the differences we have had over russia. but nonetheless, there has been, i think, a falloff in the willingness of the intelligence community to share information with our committee because of the actions of our chairman. so, a lot of what i would consider my mission would be to start to rebuild confidence within the intelligence

committee. the nunes memo was deeply destructive of that trust, because when they used this never before mechanism to selectively declassify intelligence, and did it in such a misleading way, it violated a bargain between our committee and the agencies we oversee, which is you voluntar ilry share with us intelligence, and we will respect it. we won't abuse it, we won't publish it and we certainly won't politicize it. that was so violently done away with, that compact, that there is a real lack of trust now between the ic and our committee. so i would work to restore that trust and i would look at what has been done and what hasn't been done.

how far has the mueller investigation gotten? how far has the senate gotten in their investigation? and then decide what more needs to be done. it is hard to say this point where we will be eight or nine months from now, but that is how i would approach the job. susan: seven minutes left. jerry: there is a debate among democrats about whether candidates and your party, particularly for the house, ought to be talking about potential for impeachment in the midterm elections. what is your counsel to democrats running this year? should democrats be talking about the 'i'word or not? rep. schiff: don't take the bait. there is a reason donald trump is the foremost champion of his own impeachment. he talks about a more than anybody else. he would like to use impeachment is a mobilizer for his base. he would like to suggest democrats aren't interested in governing, they are only interested in getting rid of me. democrats need to continue our focus on what matters most to

people, and that is their ability to put bread on their table, provide for their family, have a shot for the american dream. i think that is why we have had the success we have had and the special elections. the candidates that are winning right now, and the democrats are doing phenomenally well in special elections across the country they are not campaigning , on impeachment. they are not campaigning even on russia. they are campaigning on what they will do for their constituents, and that is a winning formula. that is what i urge my and challengers around the country to do. i think they understand the merit of that and i fully expect that is going to be the priority. avoid how do you continuing talking about elections, he said he would try to restore the trust of the intelligence community? how do you avoid the republicans ending up feeling the same way the democrats have? that you -- you had subpoena

power and a lot of pressure from your party behind you, that you wouldn't just be trying to dig up as much as you could out of the intelligence community and the fbi that might be damaging to donald trump and might advance a narrative of collusion or obstruction? in other words are the democrats doomed to end up in just as partisan a place where a place that is perceived to be as partisan? rep. schiff: know, and if for smart, we won't be. we will win on the strength of how terrible a job the republicans are doing. i think that requires us to focus on governing, focus on producing for the country, and running committees like the intelligence committee in a responsible way. we have been hamstrung on the committee because from the outset of this investigation, the majority decided it had a different mission. it wasn't following the facts

wherever they may lead. it was defending the president at all costs. you can see that just this week. just this week, the senate intelligence committee, which has worked on a much more bipartisan basis, announced that they were confirming the conclusions of the intelligence community that the russians had intervened and they had intervened to help donald trump, to hurt hillary clinton and to , sow discord in the united states. that was a fundamental conclusion of the intelligence community which has been ratified now by the bipartisan work of the senate intelligence committee, by the minority on the house intelligence committee, by bob mueller's own investigation and reflected in the indictment of the 13 russians by the intelligence , agencies that have continued to work on this issue. the only outlier are house intel dispute the basic conclusion that the russians

were aiming to help donald trump, something that is obvious to anyone who is looked at the facebook as we published recently. that is a very clear window into where republicans on our committee have been, which we are going to put out any favorable report to the president and tear down any actions by the justice department that is favorable to the president. that is their mission. and confronted with that we had little choice but to part company. but i think if we had the opportunity to run the committee, we will choose to run it in a very different way and bring back bipartisanship to the committee, as well as focus on the work that the country has really charged us to do. jerry: let me take you back to something you mentioned in your first answer. another big event in the last couple of weeks was the trump administration's decision to withdraw from the iran nuclear deal. i'm curious about your analysis. the iranians and europeans act as if they want that deal to survive despite this blow to it. do you think it will survive or

has president trump essentially killed it? rep. schiff: he may have killed it. they are certainly going to work hard to kill it, and a lot of it will depend on whether the administration follows through with the threats john bolton has been making which is sanctioning , our european allies. that would be an incredibly, singularly destructive thing to do. are we going to sanction our closest allies in the world for keeping their word when we broke ours? if we do that and the europeans go back and impose full sections on iran, what incentive does a run have to stay in agreement -- iran have to stay in agreement? it is possible china and russia will then develop a much stronger relationship with iran? i don't think we are going to deter china from staying in business with iran, or russia for that matter. what we may end up with is the worst of all worlds.

we have isolated ourselves, we have alienated our allies and iran may well go back to enriching and still have china and russia doing business with iran. so we will have a weaker sanctions regime, and iran the -- that goes back to enriching, greater likelihood of military conflict in the middle east, and in the midst of all that we have both made reaching a deal with north korea more difficult, but undermined our leverage with north korea because the president feels that having walked away from iran and potentially put us on course for another nuclear problem, he needs to at least show that he can resolve one and and not have to nuclear problems on his hand. jerry: an hour leverages undercut because north koreans don't think the american word is worth what it once was? rep. schiff: the north koreans have every reason to worry that if they enter into an agreement

with us and comply with its terms, this president or the next can just decide we are going to break the deal. but maybe even more significantly, the north koreans may feel donald trump really desperately needs this agreement now. we can agree to something that is merely the appearance of a deal, the appearance of nuclear disarmament and this president , will be so eager, he will call it a win no matter what its terms. susan: we have 30 seconds. the core behind the russian investigation is the integrity of the american electoral process. how confident are you in our election process? rep. schiff: not nearly as confident as i should be and we need a whole of government approach to protecting elections where the president tasks each cabinet members what are you , doing at the state department to deter the russians? the defense department? what are you hearing from the

intelligence community in terms of russian plans? secretary of homeland security, what is your interaction been with the states? how ready are they? this isn't happening because for any cabinet members to be raising this issue with the president, he views as a threat to his legitimacy, so while there is good work being done at the state and local level, there is not nearly enough being done at the federal level and that makes us more exposed than we should be. susan: how about the reaction from facebook at all on the private sector in election integrity? rep. schiff: i think facebook is taking some of the right steps to ensure any advertisers other platforms are less subject to manipulation and subject to more disclosures. facebook has a lot more work to do. our intelligence agencies will need to work in much more" operation with the technology

i think there is also risk to the technology itself -- the voting technology itself and people in silicon valley believe it is more vulnerable than vendors of the technology would have us believe. >> thank you for being our guest this week. rep. schiff: thank you. >> "newsmakers" is back, our guest was adam schiff, the lead on the house intelligence committee and their point person on the russian investigation. it is the one-year anniversary of the mueller investigation. we heard the representative talk about timing. let me put out the senate putting out the report on the stage one of their investigation, which conflict with what the house republicans did. where is all this? what should the public know about the state of this as the president is pressing, let's get this done? >> the congressman said bob mueller is not anywhere near wrapping up. that obviously bothers the

president and the white house, but also means if that is the case, bob mueller is headed toward a difficult decision point in the next couple of months, which is if he is not going to finish up this summer, he probably has to go quiet, not get involved in the midterm campaigns, try not to be a part of that campaign anymore than he is and kick the completion of this investigation until after the midterm elections. that will prolong the investigation. >> not only will it make the white house go crazy, but risk the political strategy, which suggests -- the white house suggests it has gone on too long. it risks a vacuum of real information from bob mueller on the american public and that probably doesn't want to wait around forever. jeff: it can be used to mobilize voters -- republican voters.

>> how significant is this story about the crossfire hurricane and the possible -- inside the trump campaign? how does it add to our understanding of the story? nicholas: having been an author on the story, i would like to say it is significant. the president and his allies have singled in on one idea, which is that there was an informant working for the fbi that was going and interacting with members of his campaign and reporting back. that individual has not been identified yet. devin nunes, the chairman of the intelligence committee, seems to be after information about that information and his allies on capitol hill are trying to get

that person's identity out there or discover the extent to which they were interacting with the campaign. i suppose the upshot is if they can get that information, they could build a case selectively that the campaign was being spied on inappropriately. in reality, based on what we know, it is common for the fbi to have outside informants who bring information and will spend time with sources and report back. >> it becomes political -- >> as everything does in this investigation. >> one minute left, i want to bring it back to north korea. the white house is now trumpeting possible candidate for nobel prize and north korea is expressing skepticism about the meeting. where is this going? jerry: the congressman was basically right in that this is what you have to expect from the

north koreans. today zig and then they zag. it has been that way for three decades. the idea that we will march happily into a summit meeting and solve this problem by august was always going to be unrealistic. i think the north koreans are possibly signaling this isn't going to be as easy as you also to think, so don't get carried away here, or the chinese have asked them to slow down or there is internal push back inside north korea against kim jong-un, people inside his military saying you are moving too fast to take away the prize we have been seeking for three decades, which is nuclear capable at two knows what is going on, but it is a useful signal that this is not going to be some easy cakewalk toward denuclearization of the peninsula. >> that is it for our time. thank you for your questions for congressman schiff this week.

>> here's a look at some of our live coverage to more. discussed theerts threat of it touches this eases. -- diseases. the house is act were generous reaches. it starts at two. on c-span2, secretary of state mike pompeo talks about u.s. policy towards iran under presidents trump's decision to withdraw from the iran nuclear deal. dark money in political campaigns here at at 3 p.m. eastern the senate returned stupid sitter the nomination of dana the uncle to serve on the consumer product safety commission. voter outreach efforts with state and all officials and three.

-- on c-span3. david o'sullivan says the u.s. decision to with draw from the here brand new new deal has strained transcend plenty -- transatlantic. stepversation on the next or iran and the key players in the region. this is underlined in. arbara. good morning. good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. it is seven minutes past 12:00 so it is no longer the morning. i will not hide from you that it is with a slightly heavy heart that i take the stage this morning. this is never where we had hoped we would be. maybe we should not be entirely surprised, but that does not stop me from feeling the need to express my extreme disappointment at where we now are.