Adam Schiff: If Subpoenaing Trump Associates Fails, We’ll ‘Prosecute the Case in Court’

Appearing Thursday on CNN’s Cuomo Prime Time, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) expressed frustration regarding former White House communications director Hope Hicks’ testimony and warned if lawmakers fail to obtain “answers” from Trump associates as part of their multiple investigations into President Trump and his administration, “then we go forward and we prosecute the case in court.”

A partial transcript is as follows:

CHRISTOPHER CUOMO: Under the guise of ratcheting up conflict and tension, we get to what happened yesterday, which I’ve been calling a fiasco. Not because it was wrong of you guys to bring in Hope Hicks, but because it appears to be a pretty clear indication of where this is headed in this particular procedural method. You got 150 times the lawyer said she couldn’t answer.

You had a smattering of “I don’t recalls” that were keenly germane in terms of revealing anything that might have been damaging. Did it change what you heard in that hearing, yesterday, your reckoning of the best way forward?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: We had Hope Hicks before the intel committee about a year or so ago. She came before the judiciary committee, so I wasn’t there for the hearing today or interview I guess yesterday. I don’t think anyone is surprised the White House is stonewalling in such a comprehensive fashion. They’re going to lose in court. They have no leg to stand upon, and the cases that have gone to court so far they’ve been losing. Clearly, they’re trying to draw this out as long as possible. Hope Hicks gives us a really good test case because their stonewalling has been so dramatic and so unsupported by law.

We have to take this first step to see if we can get answers under subpoena, and if we can’t, then we go forward and we prosecute the case in court. I think it’s necessary, and yes, it’s I think frustrating, and it is also dangerous in terms of a system of checks of balances that the administration would take us down this path. But Congress is really left with no choice except to litigate to make sure we get answers.