'She Couldn't Be Trusted To Be On TV!': Adam Schiff Tears Into Jeanine Pirro At Tense Judiciary Hearing

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At today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) voiced opposition to Jeanine Pirro, nominee to be U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C.

Transcript

00:00West Central County rejects her, rejects her.

00:03He does not need it, unqualified, disqualified, scandalous, questionable, accountability, and a liar.

00:15Now Senator Shale.

00:18Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

00:21It's certainly, I think, come to all of our attention that the bench is held in a lower

00:27regard today than probably at any time in our lifetimes.

00:32So there are a lot of reasons why that is the case.

00:35But it is, I think, all the more incumbent, given the lack of public confidence in a truly

00:39independent judiciary, that we really carefully examine each of the nominees that come before

00:45this committee and ask ourselves the question, is this going to contribute to the solution

00:50and increase confidence in the judiciary, or is it going to contribute to the problem?

00:54And it seems to me that too many of the nominees we have examined, like Émile Beauvais, will

01:01only bring further discredit and a lack of public confidence in the judiciary.

01:07Is it really likely that members of the public, for example, are going to have confidence that

01:14decisions that a U.S. attorney, in this case, Pirro, are being made on a truly non-partisan

01:24and impartial basis?

01:26We're going to face the same crisis of confidence in the bench now in the Justice Department,

01:32and we are.

01:34She may be a capable Fox News commentator.

01:37That is really not the criteria we should be using to pick someone for such an important

01:44office.

01:44I spent almost six years in the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles.

01:49I venerate the work that's done by the Justice Department, at least I have in the past.

01:54I have the most profound concerns over what I see the department doing now, the extraordinary

02:00breaches of every policy of the department on both sides of the aisle, the dismissal of

02:06corruption cases because an allegedly corrupt public official is beneficial to the president

02:15on unrelated policy matters.

02:16I don't know where this is heading, but putting Pirro in this position of responsibility is

02:24just going to contribute to the problem.

02:26I mean, if you look at what those who know her best had to say about her, as my colleagues

02:32pointed out, Fox had to pay Dominion $787 million for defaming that voting system, and after

02:42reviewing one of Pirro's monologues after the 2020 election, Fox News executive Jerry Andrews

02:48emailed network executives that her monologue was rife with conspiracy theories and BS, and

02:57is yet another example of why this woman should never be on live television.

03:01I mean, even her own people on Fox thought she could be trusted to be on TV, on their own

03:10network.

03:10And after the show was briefly taken off the air, Fox News producer Justin Wells described,

03:16they took her off because she was crazy.

03:20Optics are bad, but she's crazy.

03:25Well, her own executive producer also described her as nuts.

03:32Are we going to put someone that even Fox, and I'm not a particular fan of Fox, but even

03:37Fox thought was crazy, nuts, couldn't be trusted on live television, we're going to trust her

03:42with the lives and liberty of people in the District of Columbia?

03:48Her confirmation is only going to add to the lack of public confidence in the Justice Department.

03:57I asked her in my questions for the record if she stood by these comments she made that her

04:05own executives thought were nuts and crazy and not worthy of being on television, and she

04:11would not respond.

04:12That should give us a lot of pause about putting someone in a position of responsibility like

04:21that.

04:22I would just appeal that when it comes to the Justice Department, when it comes to the bench,

04:27that we raise the bar a little.

04:28Let's not put people on the bench who are encouraging Justice Department lawyers to say F you to the

04:36court, or dropping legitimate corruption cases, or lying so badly on national TV that they cost

04:45their own network hundreds of millions of dollars.

04:47We could do better than that, and I would hope and urge that we will, and urge a no vote on Pirro.

04:52Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

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