00:00I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed, after a very brief remark, to engage in a colloquy with Senator Schiff of California.
00:08Without objection.
00:10And just one quick point of fact into this maelstrom of faux outrage about Democratic obstruction,
00:17and that is that the proposal that has been made to the Republicans to resolve the customary August jam-up where we clear nominees
00:29would actually put President Trump ahead of the number of appointees that the Republicans had allowed President Biden at this same time in his presidency.
00:41So you can take what's being said here with a bit of a grain of salt.
00:45What I wanted to discuss here with Senator Schiff, Senator Schiff was an assistant United States attorney,
00:54which is one of the prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office.
00:56I was a U.S. attorney.
00:57U.S. attorneys have a higher but slightly more ceremonial role.
01:02I think assistant U.S. attorneys would be swift to confess.
01:07And AUSAs do a lot of the direct work.
01:12And one thing that Senator Schiff and I have both noticed with respect to this Epstein saga
01:16has been that the Deputy Attorney General of the United States went out and did a direct witness interview
01:22with Epstein's co-conspirator and Trump's friend, Ghislaine Maxwell.
01:29And if you don't know the backdrop to this and how things ordinarily work in the Department of Justice,
01:37it's hard to fathom how very weird that was.
01:42So we would like to take a minute and describe from our perspective how it is that in regular department business,
01:52the engagement with witnesses takes place.
01:55And I'll turn it over to the former assistant U.S. attorney to give his description of how and when a prosecutor would go into a room with a witness.
02:06But as I do that, let me just say that the Deputy Attorney General of the United States virtually never, ever, ever, ever, ever does.
02:15For somebody at that level to be involved is truly bizarre.
02:19And with that, let me give Senator Schiff a chance to engage in his part of the colloquy here.
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