ICYMI: Sen. Schiff Calls Out Trump’s Unqualified Pick for Attorney General, Talks Need for Significant Supreme Court Reforms on Talking Feds

San Diego, CA - In case you missed it, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined Talking Feds podcast with Harry Litman for a live wide-ranging conversation about Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's upcoming confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the costs of President Trump's illegal war in Iran, and Trump's politicization of federal assistance for blue states including California.

Schiff also spoke about the corruption and partisanship of the Roberts Supreme Court - underscoring the need for significant reforms, including Court expansion, term limits, and an enforceable code of ethics for the justices.

View the full interview here.

Key Excerpts:

On Todd Blanche's upcoming confirmation hearing for Attorney General:

[…] I remember vividly meeting with Todd Blanche when he was nominated for the position he is currently in, not the acting position, but when he was nominated to be the number three in the Justice Department. And as Harry mentioned, I had spent almost six wonderful years in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles. I care deeply about the department. And having gone through Trump one, I think I said something along these lines to Mr. Blanche. The hearing was coming up, I think the following day. "We know all the same people, it's a small A-U.S.A network around the country. I know a number of people that serve with you in the Southern District of New York. They have good things to say about you. I have no doubt you have the experience to do this job. My question is different, though. My question is, what will you do the first time you're asked to do something unethical, immoral, or potentially illegal. Do you have the gravitas, do you have the stature, do you have the character to say no?" And his answer was one I would then hear from a great many other people who came up for confirmations for judge or other things. His answer was, "I don't think I will ever be put in that position."

[…] Now, we have someone who doesn't resemble at all the Todd Blanche from the Southern District of New York. There have been so many compromises along the way that I think he has concluded, as a great many have, "I'm all in. I made my bed with this guy. There is nothing left me to do but be all in." To the point where he stands before the country at the podium at the Justice Department, and auditioning for the role as Attorney General, says that the president has not only a right but a duty to go after his political enemies and to use the Justice Department to do it. And I listened to that, and I thought, what happened to that guy? But this is a story that I've seen play over and over again with other people in other positions. And it all takes me back to something Harry and I have talked about before, something the historian Robert Caro once said in an interview when he said that "Power doesn't corrupt as much as it reveals. It doesn't always reveal us for our best, but it says a lot about who we are." And my conclusion is that Todd Blanche really didn't change when he was with the Southern District, we just didn't know who he was. We just didn't know what decision he would make when he was put in that position, and now we do.

On the need to reform the Supreme Court:

[…] I don't want my kids, who are in their 20s, to have to live their entire lifetimes under a right-wing, socially right-wing Court like this one, partisan Court like this one, devoted to big wealth, as this one is. We're going to need to expand the Court. Now, I remember making this argument when I was on the House Judiciary Committee. And it got up the ire of the Republicans, as you can imagine, for the reason you mentioned, which is, Roosevelt tried to do that. "You're trying to pack the Court like Roosevelt tried to pack the Court," to which my response was, "You already packed the Court. You already packed the Court." There is more than one way to pack the Court. You can pack it as Roosevelt tried by adding justices, or you can pack it as Trump did, and McConnell did, by withholding justices. But you have packed and stacked the Court, and the only question now is whether it gets unpacked and unstacked. And so, I would not have entertained a remedy like this ten years ago. But as I don't want a whole generation to have to suffer under this totally unrepresentative body, I think we need to change the Court.

[…] I do believe the most consequential reform, if we could bring it about, would be to put a term limit on the Supreme Court, such that justices would serve say a period of 18 years, or whatever the appropriate term would be, and then they would be rotated back onto a court of appeals or district court. I think this would be constitutional, because the justices would still have life tenure on the Court. There is no constitutional requirement that you have life tenure on a particular court. The court system wasn't even established at the time of the Constitution. Here's the rub, though. The rub is it would be this Supreme Court that would adjudicate the constitutionality of a term limit. Which is why expansion of the Court is necessary for any meaningful reform of the court.

On the consequences of Trump's illegal war in Iran:

[…] This is a huge strategic defeat for us already. How ever this ends, that is a huge strategic defeat. Iran understands too that it has all the leverage right now. So, there's supposedly 60 days to reach a nuclear deal. They're not even really talking about a nuclear deal, and the nuclear deal they're talking about looks a lot like the JCPOA that Trump tore up. Except now Iran also has the ability to close the strait, something it didn't know it had during the JCPOA. So, the administration is going to struggle just to get back to where we were before the war, during the JCPOA. It is a terrible outcome, and indeed, one of the other criticisms of the JCPOA was it didn't deal with Iran's sponsorship of terror, it didn't deal with its missile threat. Well, neither does what Donald Trump is talking about. So, hard to see how this ends in anything but a strategic, enormous setback.

[…] So, it's an unmitigated disaster, and it's been costly to us. We've lost 13 servicemembers. There are more at risk all the time. Americans have had to pay the price of this war at the pump and in innumerable other ways. So, hard to find anything positive yet that has come out of this war, and it is once again an illustration of how unwise it is to get into a war with Iran without thinking through the consequences, without having the public support.

On the Trump administration targeting blue states:

[…] There is incredible hostility to the state from the president, obviously from the White House. We see it reflected in innumerable ways. They're canceling our wind projects, they're canceling our renewable energy projects, they're canceling our health care funding. They're refusing to provide disastrous assistance to thousands and thousands of Californians who lost their homes in Los Angeles in these two terrible fires. It is not just California, though. There is kind of a, if there's a war going on, it's against all blue states. Certainly, some more than others, and California has a particular place of ire for the president, maybe because he loses so handily here. But we've never seen this before. We saw some of it Trump one. But we've never seen it like this before.

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