Trump uses FBI and Justice Department to escalate his long-standing feud with Adam Schiff
When Trump was out of office, Schiff was a member of the House committee that investigated his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
Now, with Trump back in the White House and Schiff in the Senate, the president is using the full force of the federal government to try to turn the tables on his longtime nemesis.
Last week, FBI Director Kash Patel declassified and released internal FBI interview notes from a former House Intelligence Committee staffer who first accused Schiff in 2017 of directing illegal leaks of classified information about Trump and Russia.
The allegations from the former staffer had already been investigated in Trump's first term by federal prosecutors, who questioned the staffer's credibility. But that didn't stop Trump from using the claims as a basis to call on Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the California Democrat.
'I'm looking at Pam because I hope something's going to be done about it,' Trump said while speaking at the Kennedy Center on Wednesday. 'It was a hoax created by the Democrats, but in particular, Schiff, crooked Hillary, the whole group.'
And last month, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, a Trump ally, referred Schiff to the Justice Department over allegations of mortgage fraud. Schiff's lawyer blasted media reports of a grand jury investigation, calling the claims 'transparently false, stale, and long debunked.'
The attacks on Schiff are the latest example of how Trump and his government have carried out a campaign of retribution against a wide swath of the president's perceived political enemies, ranging from former Trump officials to members of Congress to the prosecutors who brought cases against Trump while he was out of office.
CNN reported this month that the Justice Department opened a grand jury investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James over the civil actions she brought against Trump and the National Rifle Association. That came after the Trump administration launched an investigation into allegations of mortgage fraud against James, similar to those leveled against Schiff. (James' attorney said they were 'baseless and long-discredited allegations.') Trump has called for James to be prosecuted for years, too.
Trump has a long history of attacking Schiff, going back to 2017 and the Russia investigation. He's accused the California Democrat of treason and called for his prosecution on numerous occasions.
Trump's calls last year to prosecute Schiff and the other members of the House January 6 committee prompted outgoing President Joe Biden to issue a preemptive pardon to everyone who served on the panel.
Trump's attacks helped Schiff become a household name and a fundraising juggernaut in Democratic circles for his work investigating and impeaching Trump, leading up to his successful Senate campaign in 2024.
Schiff has long embraced his role as a MAGA villain, making it clear — often through defiant speeches — that he has no intention of backing down. When House Republicans voted to censure Schiff in 2023 over his allegations about Trump and Russia, he called it a 'badge of honor.'
'Ever since I led his first impeachment, he's threatened me with jail and prosecution and called me a traitor and accused me of treason, blah, blah, blah,' Schiff said last month on CBS' 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.'
'So, I just want to direct this, if this is the right camera,' he continued, turning to face the camera directly for full effect: 'Donald, piss off.'
Schiff is also making preparations for a legal fight. Preet Bharara, the high-powered former US attorney for the Southern District of New York, this month was named as Schiff's personal attorney, issuing a statement on Schiff's behalf earlier this month following reports that the Justice Department had tapped DOJ official Ed Martin to investigate mortgage allegations against Schiff and James.
'Any supposed investigation led by him would by the very definition of weaponization of the justice process,' Bharara said.
Martin, who was tapped as director of the Justice Department's Weaponization Working Group in May after his confirmation to be US attorney for the District of Columbia fizzled out, appeared Sunday on Fox News to talk about the probes, suggesting the investigations of Schiff and James could be far-reaching.
'These referrals are criminal referrals significant enough that they would warrant using all the tools,' Martin said Fox News' 'Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.' 'If somebody did something wrong, we're not only going to hold them accountable, we're also going to look at everything else that they've been doing.'
The new documents declassified and publicized last week came from interviews the FBI conducted with a former intelligence committee staffer in 2017, 2019 and 2023 as part of an investigation into classified leaks. The interview notes, known as 302s, were declassified and sent to Congress last week by Patel — who himself was a senior aide on the intelligence committee in 2017 working for then-Chair Devin Nunes.
The FBI notes, which were obtained by CNN, were first reported by Just the News, a site run by conservative journalist John Solomon, who along with Patel was named as Trump's representative to the National Archives in 2022.
'We found it. We declassified it. Now Congress can see how classified info was leaked to shape political narratives — and decide if our institutions were weaponized against the American people,' Patel wrote on X, sharing Solomon's story.
The staffer, whose name is redacted from the notes and whom CNN is not naming because he hasn't made the allegations publicly, told investigators that he believed Schiff and Democratic staffers on the committee were leaking classified information about Trump and Russia in 2017.
In the 2023 interview, the staffer accused Democrats on the committee of 'treasonous' activity, going further than his prior interviews. According to the notes, the staffer alleged that at a 2017 staff meeting, 'Schiff stated the group would leak classified information which was derogatory to President of the United States President Donald J Trump. Schiff stated the information would be used to indict President Trump.'
While these FBI interview notes contained new details about the allegations of leaks coming from the House Intelligence Committee, the staffer's allegations were already investigated by the FBI during the first Trump administration as part of a leak probe into numerous media reports containing classified intelligence from 2017.
In fact, the information the staffer provided to the FBI drove the Justice Department's investigative steps in the leak probes — including obtaining the phone and email records of Schiff, California Rep. Eric Swalwell, multiple congressional staffers and their spouses, according to a Justice Department inspector general report on the investigations released last year. The Justice Department also confidentially obtained phone and email records of multiple journalists as part of the probe, including from CNN.
But the inspector general found that prosecutors in the US attorney's office for the District of Columbia conducting the investigation concluded the former staffer 'had little support for their contentions that certain individuals could be leaking classified information and may not have been credible.'
In subsequent search warrants, the inspector general wrote, 'the Department noted that the Committee Witness was of 'unknown reliability.''
The staffer who brought the leak allegations to the FBI was fired from the committee in 2017, which he told other aides happened because 'there was an expectation of leaking and he refused to participate,' according to the FBI interview notes.
But a former senior congressional official with firsthand knowledge told CNN that characterization was false. The congressional official says the staffer was fired for cause stemming from travel-related incidents that dated back before 2017.
The former intelligence committee staffer did not respond to CNN's requests for comment.
A spokesperson for Schiff said the allegations that the California Democrat leaked classified documents were 'absolutely and categorically false' and an attempt by the Trump administration to detract from the uproar over the Jeffrey Epstein files.
'These baseless smears are based on allegations that were found to be not reliable, not credible, and unsubstantiated from a disgruntled former staffer who was fired by the House Intelligence Committee for cause in early 2017,' the spokesperson said.
The staffer also alleged that Swalwell — a former member of the intelligence committee who was removed from the panel with Schiff in 2023 by then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — was a source of leaks from the committee.
'A particularly sensitive document … viewed by a small contingent of staff, as well as Schiff and Representative Eric Swalwell,' the staffer told the FBI, according to the 302s. 'Within 24 hours of (the House Intelligence Committee) reviewing the document the information contained in the document appeared in the press.'
Asked about the allegations, Swalwell shared with CNN text messages that the staffer sent years later in 2021, saying that he hoped the California Democrat stayed on the intelligence committee and requesting to be connected to Swalwell's political staff.
'This is an effort by Kash Patel — who listed me as his top enemy in his book — to try and silence me. It won't work,' Swalwell said.
The leak investigations from 2017 were ultimately closed with no charges filed, according to the inspector general.
The FBI's decision, beginning in 2017, to secretly obtain the records of members of Congress, congressional staffers and reporters sparked outrage when it was disclosed in 2021 — including from Patel himself, who was also a Republican staffer on the committee when his records were secretly obtained.
Patel filed a lawsuit in 2023 over the move against Trump's prior top DOJ and FBI appointees, including former FBI Director Christopher Wray. The suit was dismissed by a federal judge last fall.
CNN's Annie Grayer and Sylvie Kirsch contributed to this report.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Speaker Johnson vows to stop California's redistricting push — but ignores Texas doing the same
House Speaker Mike Johnson says he plans to derail California's proposed congressional map after Governor Gavin Newsom unveiled a proposal to redraw the state's electoral boundaries. Newsom and California Democrats proposed new congressional lines on Friday in an attempt to eliminate potential gains in Texas, where Republicans backed by Donald Trump launched a nationwide redistricting battle with nakedly partisan ambitions ahead of midterm elections in 2026. Johnson accused Democrats of an 'illegal power grab.' 'Gavin Newsom should spend less time trampling his state's laws for a blatant power grab, and more time working to change the disastrous, far-left policies that are destroying California,' Johnson wrote Monday. 'Newsom obviously wants to launch a presidential campaign on the backs of disenfranchised California voters, but it will not work.' But unlike California, Texas lawmakers in the state legislature only need to vote on the maps before they are signed into law by Governor Gregg Abbott. Newsom, meanwhile, must hold a special election this fall so voters can decide whether to suspend the state's independent redistricting commission until the end of the decade to advance the new map. Johnson's statement followed the return of a group of Texas Democrats who left the state to break quorum in the state House, leaving Republicans without enough members present to vote on legislation during a special 30-day legislative session that was requested by Abbott. Dozens of Texas Democrats declared victory on Monday after staying out of the state for more than two weeks, blocking Republicans' Trump-led gerrymandering campaign. But redistricting is on the agenda for a second special session. Texas Republicans are expected to quickly take up — and pass — a new congressional map that would create five more districts likely to elect Republican candidates, which would give the GOP 30 of the state's 38 seats in Congress. In a statement on Monday, the Texas House Democratic Caucus said that members returned 'to launch the next phase' in the redistricting battle. Democrats' return to the state will allow them to create the 'legal record necessary to defeat this racist map in court, take our message to communities across the state and country, and inspire legislators across the country how to fight these undemocratic redistricting schemes in their own statehouses,' Texas House of Representatives Minority Leader Gene Wu said in a statement. GOP lawmakers were explicit that the new map was designed to improve 'political performance,' an act of political or partisan gerrymandering — in which a controlling party carves out maps to 'pack' likely opponents into a few districts, or 'cracks' them across multiple districts, thereby diluting their voting power. Critics accused Republicans of gerrymandering a map on racial lines, effectively letting Republicans choose their voters rather than the other way around. While out of the state, Abbott and state Attorney General Ken Paxton and GOP members of Congress put pressure on law enforcement to haul absent lawmakers back to the state capital in Austin. 'We killed the corrupt special session, withstood unprecedented surveillance and intimidation, and rallied Democrats nationwide to join this existential fight for fair representation — reshaping the entire 2026 landscape,' Wu said. California and Texas, the nation's two most populous states, remain at the forefront of the brewing redistricting war, as Trump pushes Republicans to redraw electoral lines for control of the House of Representatives to avoid a repeat of 2018 midterm elections — when Democrats regained control of Congress and impeached him twice. Democrats — who accused Republicans of illegally diluting the voting strength of Black and Latino voters — are planning to retaliate, triggering a race to reshape the electoral map by the time Americans cast their ballots in 2026. Newsom has stressed that bypassing the state's redistricting commission would be temporary, and that the state would only redraw its congressional boundaries if Texas shot first. At a rally in Los Angeles last week, Newsom said Trump is 'trying to rig the system' and, 'as a consequence, we need to disabuse ourselves of the way things have been done.' 'We have got to recognize the cards that have been dealt,' Newsom said. 'And we have got to meet fire with fire.' Johnson called Newsom's plans a 'slap in the face to Californians who overwhelmingly support' the state's redistricting commission. 'Unlike other states, California must shred its own Constitution to succeed in its desperate gambit to 'end the Trump presidency.' Voters in California and across the nation see through this partisan stunt,' he said. Johnson said his office and the National Republican Congressional Committee will 'use every measure and resource possible' to take on California. The Republicans' congressional campaign arm criticized Newsom's move, accusing the governor of 'shredding California's Constitution and disenfranchising voters to prop up his Presidential ambitions.' 'The NRCC is prepared to fight this illegal power grab in the courts and at the ballot box to stop Newsom in his tracks,' chairman Richard Hudson said last week.
Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump Says Only U.S. Votes by Mail. Here Are the Facts
A vote by mail ballot for the 2024 general election, sent to all registered voters in Los Angeles County, photographed October 28, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. Credit - Jay L. Clendenin—Getty Images President Donald Trump said he will "get rid of" mail-in ballots and voting machines before the 2026 midterm elections—and he's spreading misinformation on social media about the voting methods ahead of time. 'I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we're at it, Highly 'Inaccurate,' Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES,' Trump posted on Truth Social Monday morning, adding that he will sign an Executive Order eliminating them before the 2026 election. 'We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting. All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED.' Trump reiterated those claims during an Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House on Monday, once again dubbing it 'corrupt' to reporters. Absentee voting and vote-by-mail allow people to send in their ballots via the postal service. Not all states allow it, and the laws vary in each state that does. Some states permit universal mail-in voting, for example, where anyone can vote by mail for any reason. Others allow it in specific circumstances. Lots of other countries vote by mail Despite what Trump claims, the United States is not the only country that utilizes mail-in ballots. In fact, multiple other countries do, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Germany. The International Institute for Democracy & Electoral Assistance (IDEA), an intergovernmental organization that works to protect democratic institutions, found that 34 countries allow postal voting—12 of which allow it for all voters, and 22 of which allow it for some voters. IDEA found that the COVID-19 pandemic created an incentive for these countries to upscale their mail-in ballot infrastructure for public health reasons, but most have kept these avenues open for citizens. Read more: Voting by Mail Dates Back to America's Earliest Years. Here's How It's Changed Over the Years Although Trump says he will use Executive Order powers to end the practice, the U.S. Constitution directs state legislatures to determine the "times, places and manner" of holding elections, which is part of the reason why only some states have vote-by-mail practices, and each state with vote-by-mail has different requirements. There's no evidence that mail voting is corrupt Trump's post continued by reviving well-worn rhetoric—that mail-in voting is used by his opponents, Democrats, for corrupt purposes, despite no evidence to support this claim. 'Democrats are virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM. ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING, and everybody, IN PARTICULAR THE DEMOCRATS, KNOWS THIS,' Trump said. 'I, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, WILL FIGHT LIKE HELL TO BRING HONESTY AND INTEGRITY BACK TO OUR ELECTIONS.' This is not the first time Trump has attacked mail-in ballots as a form of voting. During the 2020 election—which Trump lost to former President Joe Biden—Trump heavily attacked the use of mail-in ballots and suggested, without evidence, that mail voting would lead to 'massive fraud, and abuse,' and discredited physical ballot drop boxes. He also threatened to deploy law enforcement to polling places on Election Day. Trump's rhetoric made it seem that mail-in ballots were a Democratic plot and the election would be 'rigged' as a result. When he lost the 2020 election, Trump was quick to blame mail-in ballots, drop boxes, and voting machines, claiming that the system was corrupt. Though research shows that partisan rhetoric made voting by mail a more 'Democrat' thing to do in 2020 and 2022, experts—including the Brennan Center for Justice, the Bipartisan Policy Center, and the Center for Election Innovation and Research—have debunked Trump's claims and found that vote-by-mail methods only expand voting options for voters, and that the 2020 election was not marred by corruption. In the 2024 election, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission found that though mail-in ballots were not quite as popular as during the COVID-19 pandemic, they still accounted for nearly a third of ballots cast. And, in part motivated by Trump's claims of fraud, at least 19 states have passed new mail voting restrictions in place to make the practice more difficult since 2020, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Contact us at letters@
Los Angeles Times
15 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Mississippi becomes fourth state to send National Guard troops to D.C.
WASHINGTON — Joining forces from three other Republican-led states, the Mississippi National Guard will deploy 200 troops to Washington as part of the Trump administration's ongoing federal policing and immigration overhaul in the nation's capital. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said in a statement Monday that he has approved the deployment of approximately 200 Mississippi National Guard Soldiers to Washington, D.C. 'Crime is out of control there, and it's clear something must be done to combat it,' Reeves said. Mississippi joins three other states that have pledged to deploy hundreds of National Guard members to the nation's capital to bolster the Republican administration's operation to overhaul policing in the Democratic-led city through a federal crackdown on crime and homelessness. West Virginia said it was deploying 300 to 400 troops, South Carolina pledged 200 and Ohio said it will send 150 in the coming days, deployments that built on top of President Trump's initial order that 800 National Guard troops deploy as part of the federal intervention. Trump's executive order that launched the federal operation declared a 'crime emergency' in the District of Columbia and initiated a takeover Washington's police department. The administration has ordered local police to cooperate with federal agents on immigration enforcement, orders that would contradict local laws prohibiting such collaboration. 'D.C. has been under siege from thugs and killers, but now, D.C. is back under Federal Control where it belongs,' Trump wrote on his social media website a day after issuing his order. 'The White House is in charge. The Military and our Great Police will liberate this City, scrape away the filth, and make it safe, clean, habitable and beautiful once more!' National Guard members in the District of Columbia have been assisting law enforcement with tasks including crowd control and patrolling landmarks such as the National Mall and Union Station. Their role has been limited thus far, and it remains unclear why additional troops would be needed. Over the weekend in Washington, protesters pushed back on federal law enforcement and National Guard troops fanning out in the city. Scores of protesters gathered in the city's Dupont Circle on Saturday and marched to the White House. Brown and Pesoli write for the Associated Press.
