Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said President-elect Trump has “no shortage of nerve” for asking Attorney General Merrick Garland to block the release of special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on his classified documents and election interference cases.
“They have no shortage of chutzpah. No shortage of nerve,” Schiff said during a Monday evening appearance on MSNBC’s "The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell."
“But for the attorney general to grant it, I think, would be indefensible for the reasons that you mentioned,” he added.
Smith’s two-volume report could be released as early as Friday if Garland doesn’t decide to seal the documents.
“Historically, these reports are made public. These reports and the investigation underlying them are funded with taxpayer dollars and the public has a right to know," said Schiff, who served as the manager during Trump's second impeachment trial and was a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
“It is astonishing to me as we sit here, Lawrence — the crime was committed four years ago, and in four years’ time, the Justice Department could not bring that offense to trial, not as against the main perpetrator in Donald Trump," he said Monday.
Trump’s team has had the opportunity to review the report, which outlines his efforts to block the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election and the storing of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after leaving the White House.
In response to the assertions, the former president’s legal team requested Garland fire Smith — who has already agreed to resign before Trump returns to the Oval Office. Instead, Trump's lawyers argue the president-elect’s incoming attorney general should decide on whether the report is released to the public.
The special counsel has dropped the cases against the president elect, citing a Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
Schiff urged Garland to deny the Trump team's request.
“If the attorney general were to decide here to allow this report to be buried, the lack of justice would be followed with a lack of any kind of accountability by the Department of Justice for those most responsible for inciting that violence,” the California Democrat stated.
He added that evidence obtained by Smith should be preserved in archives or some form of public record to “raise the bar for those who might otherwise seek to bury or destroy it.”
