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And so I went to human resources. There are some things I just can't tell you on air. The Betches sub podcast woman's problem if you will

Hello, I'm Amanda Duberman

And this is the Betches sub podcast where CSPAN meets the group chat to help you process and laugh at the biggest topics in U.S.

News and politics. Today we are so thrilled to be here with Representative Adam Schiff, who of course has represented California's 28th congressional district since 2013, but has served in the House since 2001. And most recently he's the author of Midnight in Washington how we almost lost our democracy and still could. Thank you so much for joining us Congressman.

Great to be with you. Thank you so much for coming to talk to us. I just have to ask when you, you know, were younger, did you think you would one day be writing a book with a subtitle?

How we almost lost our democracy and still could.

No, I would have never imagined that. I don't know whether I could have imagined writing a book at all, but certainly not with that subtitle.

I mean, look, I think until recently most Americans didn't believe it could happen here. Didn't believe that really anything we saw last four years was possible here.

And it really stripped us of the idea that we're somehow immune from the siren song of an autocrat or a demagogue, but we proved all too vulnerable.

And I really do think our democracy is on on very thin ice at the moment.

Yeah, that's really the terrifying thing that, you know, even though we're in the midst of the Biden administration, we're still looking at a future that is not nearly assured.

Partly due to some of the lack of accountability that's happened so far.

So, okay, this episode we want to talk to you about your book, which talks about both impeachments.

But to get started, I think we should talk about the latest news in the January 6th inquiry, specifically in light of the news about Mike Pence and the extent of the pressure he was under

to not validate the election. And Steve Bannon's upcoming contempt trial. So we'd love to just sort of get your take on

how are we, you know, where do we stand? Are we any closer to actually hearing from Steve Bannon in the committee?

Well, first of all, I always viewed the the effort to enforce our subpoena against

where council trend witnesses as an early test of our democracy, whether our democracy was recovering from the last four years.

And the fact that the Justice Department not only moved forward, but moved forward, I think with some speed,

is a really important sign because, of course, Bannon wasn't even working in the administration.

So he has no real claim of privilege. Even if he did have a claim of privilege, the privilege holder is the current president of the United States,

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