WATCH: Sen. Schiff Calls Out Trump’s Unqualified Pick for Director of Intelligence, Slams Blanche’s Politicization of Justice Department

Washington, D.C. - U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined MS NOW's The Briefing with Jen Psaki to react to President's Trump's decision to nominate corrupt and unqualified Bill Pulte for Director of National Intelligence. Schiff noted that Pulte only has no qualifications for the role - except for his willingness to weaponize the government to help Trump.

Schiff also spoke about the president's possible nomination of Todd Blanche as Attorney General; he highlighted that Blanche has continued to politicize the Justice Department and put the president's interests above the American people.

Additionally, the Senator emphasized the urgency for the Senate to pass the War Powers Resolution, after it passed in the House, and hold the administration responsible for the Iran war.

View the full interview here.

Key excerpts:

On Trump's nomination of Bill Pulte for Director of National Intelligence:

What went through my head is this is such an in-your-face move by the president, because, of course, the president knows this guy has no qualifications to lead the intelligence agencies. But one, and that is that he is willing to weaponize any access to government data to be used against the president's enemies. That's his only qualification.

[…] The other result, though, is we saw Gabbard politicizing elections in Georgia, the DNI has no role in domestic elections. It has a role in trying to prevent foreign interference, but nothing that we saw in Georgia indicates that was her purpose. We've also seen her pushing out false conspiracy theories about people within the intelligence community and getting people fired or taking aim at the president's political opponents. That is exactly what Pulte did at the housing agencies, so we can expect a lot more of that.

On Todd Blanche's possible nomination for Attorney General:

The Attorney General, acting Attorney General, Blanche was his criminal defense lawyer and has never been able to shed that role. He is still Trump's criminal defense lawyer. He is still looking out for his personal client. That is, how do I make sure that Donald Trump doesn't face any criminal or civil liability for his tax returns? That is priority number one, priority number two, or three, or somewhere down the line, the American people. That is just not where Blanche is coming from. He just wants the job too badly.

On the passage of the War Powers Resolution in the House:

[…] The longer this dragged on, when it exceeded the limit under the War Powers Act, and blew through that, when the president said, we have a cease fire, it doesn't apply, and then we're still bombing, and they're still bombing our allies. Well, as long as this continues, we're going to gain more Republican support. And these resolutions are pretty simple. They basically say that this war has to come to an end, unless you come to Congress and you seek congressional authorization.

On the California Elections:

As is the case often in California elections, we're going to have to wait a while to see the final results, and there's nothing nefarious about that. The president, and I've even heard Speaker Johnson so mislead the country and say there's something inherently suspicious if the results after Election Day, as more ballots come in, are different than on election day. There's nothing suspicious about that. It's just that different types of people vote at different times.

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