Schiff on Homan: “Who takes 50,000 in cash in a bag, if they’re doing something legitimate?”
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined MSNBC’s Alex Witt Reports to discuss Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to weaponize the Department of Justice (DOJ) against his political opponents and the administration’s hypocrisy on DOJ investigations in the wake of a bombshell report detailing the closing of a bribery probe into White House Border Czar Tom Homan.
Schiff slammed Trump for pressuring the Attorney General to bring baseless cases against his critics – including himself, former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James – and for filling DOJ and FBI leadership with loyalists who have undermined serious investigations while dismissing corruption among Trump’s allies. Schiff also slammed FBI Director Kash Patel for his testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Epstein case and the firing of senior FBI agents who investigated Trump.
View the full interview here.
Key Excerpts:
On Trump pushing Attorney General Bondi to pursue baseless charges:
He made it very clear that he was firing the U.S. Attorney of Virginia for not bringing a meritless mortgage fraud case against Letitia James, and he’s basically out in the opening pressuring his Attorney General, sending a message to other U.S. attorneys out there that if they don’t do his will, they don’t do his bidding and bring meritless cases against his enemies, they could be fired. And this is unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Nixon had his enemies list, but it wasn’t so exhaustive and blatant as this, where he was ordering, in front of the whole country, the Justice Department to go after his enemies. In my case, for impeaching him, leading his first impeachment, for serving on the January 6 Committee. And what he wants to try to do is not just go after me and Letitia James or Lisa Cook, but rather send a message that anyone who stands up to him on anything, anyone who has the audacity to call out his corruption will be a target, and they will go after you. It’s an effort to try to silence and intimidate people, but I refuse to be silenced or intimidated.
On weaponization of the Justice Department:
I served for almost six years in the U.S. Attorney’s Office. I venerated my experience in that department, all the hard-working men and women who are doing, I think really, really important work on serious cases. But this just casts a shadow over all of it. We’ve seen top leadership at the department devastated. We’ve seen three top people, Trump criminal defense lawyers, appointed to the top positions of the Justice Department. They’re running things. When you see, for example, Todd Blanche personally intervene in the Epstein case, someone Blanche who acknowledged that he has a continuing duty to his client as Trump’s criminal defense lawyer, then it’s the interest of the American people that suffer. You’re seeing the same devastation at the FBI, where senior FBI agents are being fired or pushed out, so the nonpartisan leadership at the top is being pushed out. It’s gone. And instead, you have this now fully weaponized department to go after the president’s enemies. And in the case of Tom Homan, to run interference against investigations that are a serious and warrant investigation. So, you have both the dismissal of charges against the president’s allies like Eric Adams, the dismissal of investigations against Tom Homan and pressure to bring meritless investigations against the president’s enemies.
On the investigation into Tom Homan:
These people should have never been confirmed for these positions. And there’s only a limit to what Democrats can do, given that we don’t have the votes in the Senate to defeat them. We need some Republicans of good conscience to turn down the RFK Jrs. that are going to endanger the public health. The Pete Hegseths that are going to endanger the national security and to call for the resignation of people like Tom Homan. I mean, how can you have a top enforcement official, the border czar, like Tom Homan, who took $50,000 from undercover agents in a bag, in a bag with the apparently, reportedly the promise of helping deliver federal contracts when he was going to take a position in the Trump administration. How can you have that person in leadership? He should be gone. And I hope my Republican colleagues will join me and others in demanding that the videotape of him taking the bag, literally holding the bag, be shown to the public. We also, I think, got to hear the audio conversations of him making those promises in a change for that 50,000 in cold cash. I mean, who does that? Who takes 50,000 in cash in a bag, if they’re doing something legitimate?
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