Schiff: Kash Patel Is ‘the Guy You Go To When Everybody Else Says ‘No, I Won’t Do It’’

O’DONNELL: “And, senator, with all this going on in the Senate floor, you did something that senators have never done before, to actually go out to the street, in this case outside the FBI headquarters today, to protest the confirmation by the Republican senators of an FBI director who was absolutely unimaginable as being qualified for any form of federal service prior to Donald Trump winning the presidency.”
Schiff: “Yes, we stood outside the FBI headquarters to make a last plea against this — this terrible choice to be FBI director, Kash Patel. Kash Patel is the guy you go to when everybody else says, ‘No, I won’t do it. It’s too immoral, it’s too unethical, it’s too unlawful.’ He’s the guy. That’s why he was chosen. You rise to the level of your utter sycophancy in the Trump Administration. But here’s the thing. I’ve worked with the FBI for decades, ever since I was a federal prosecutor. They’re the premier law enforcement agency. Only in Trump world, a world in which you pardon hundreds of people for beating police officers, and then you purge the FBI agents that pursued them, only in that kind of world does a Kash Patel become FBI director. But that’s the upside-down, terrible world we’re living in at this moment. And Kash Patel has now been given a 10-year term as FBI director. I cannot imagine the damage that he can do if he’s given a decade to do it. And so we find ourselves in really uncharted waters. I think you’d have to go back to Herbert Hoover to find another FBI director so intent on using the powers of that position to go after president’s enemies.”
O’DONNELL: “Yeah. And what we’ve also seen here, obviously, is now the politicization of that position, because it is inconceivable, if there’s a Democratic president sworn in four years from now, that that president wouldn’t immediately fire this FBI director.”
Schiff: “Well, and J. Edgar Hoover here. Yes, you know, we’ll — we’ll see whether this 10-year term, which was meant to insulate the office and allow an FBI director to go from one administration, continues serving into the next, a norm and more than a norm of practice that was changed when essentially, Chris Wray decided he needed to resign because it meant ultimate conflict with Donald Trump, and he felt that it was in the best service of the FBI not to continue as director. Look, when Donald Trump is gone, there’s a Democratic president, I can’t imagine they’re going to want to keep on someone as destructive as Kash Patel. But I couldn’t imagine, frankly, that we would be in this place to begin with. So, we’re in uncharted waters.”