Chris Wallace Presses Schiff: ‘Are You Willing to Admit That You Were Wrong’ on FISA Process?
After speaking with FBI Director James Comey and White House special adviser Pam Bondi this morning, Chris Wallace talked to Adam Schiff and asked about the IG report he pressed Comey on.
As Wallace discussed impeachment with the House Intel Committee chair, he brought up President Donald Trump wanting him to be called as a witness in his impeachment trial.
Schiff remarked, “This president does nothing if not project onto others his own misconduct. In terms of whether I’m a witness, I’m not a fact witness in any way, Chris, and the president knows that… This is merely his common tactic, and that is he can’t defend his gross misconduct. He can’t defend his abuse of power.”
Wallace also brought up the IG report and said, “You defended the FBI’s use of FISA warrants to surveil Carter Page in a lengthy memo.”
He showed video of Schiff saying in February 2018, “It’s important for the public to see the facts that the FBI acted appropriately in seeking a warrant on Carter Page. They are not part of some deep state, as the president apparently would like the public to believe.”
Wallace noted the serious errors in the FISA process found by IG Michael Horowitz and asked, “Do you still think that the FBI acted appropriately as you said there?”
“I think this is consistent with the IG report,” Schiff said, “that they were right to seek a FISA on Carter Page and there wasn’t some deep state conspiracy. There was no spying on the Trump campaign, there was no effort to, based on political bias, open the investigation, it was properly predicated. But there were nonetheless serious abuses of FISA, which were not apparent two years ago, but which have become apparent now with 170 witnesses interviewed and 2 million documents were viewed by the IG.”
Wallace directly asked him, “Are you willing to admit that you were wrong in your defense of the FBI’s FISA process?”
“I’m certainly willing to admit that the inspector general found serious abuses of FISA that I was unaware of,” Schiff said. “Had I known of them, Chris, yes, I would have called out the FBI at the same time. But I think it’s only fair to judge what we know at the time, not what would be revealed two years later, but yes, there were very serious abuses of the FISA process, they need to be corrected, we need to make sure they never happen again.”
You can watch above, via Fox News Sunday.
