'Pathetic': Senator rebukes Trump's 'don't look at me' buck-pass on Signalgate

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) tore into President Donald Trump's attempt to deflect blame for the "Signalgate" scandal, asserting he had nothing to do with the highly sensitive attack plans shared with a reporter in a group Signal chat with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and a group of high-ranking national security officials.

"Here we are in this — it is an extraordinary moment," CNN anchor Erin Burnett told Schiff on Wednesday evening's edition of "OutFront." "And you just heard President Trump saying this is all a 'witch hunt,' and he does appear to be referring to Signal sometimes as a like some sort of a conference call. It's a bit unclear. What do you say to him?"

"Well, President Truman was, 'the buck stops here,'" said Schiff, an attorney by training who previously served on the Intelligence Committee when he was in the House. "Donald Trump is 'the buck stops anywhere but anywhere near me.' That effort at deflection, I really don't know. You know, I wasn't involved. He's now claiming Hegseth wasn't involved. It is really pathetic."

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"What it tells all of us, what it tells the national security professionals, what it tells people in the Pentagon, what it tells the American people is there will be no accountability in his administration," Schiff continued. "He isn't going to hold people responsible. He doesn't want to fire people. He doesn't even want to talk about it. He wants to put this off as another witch hunt. Another hoax is kind of a go-to deflection. But don't look at me. Whatever you do, America, I'm not responsible."

This kind of attitude, said Schiff, is "just going to breed further mistakes."

"We can't have any confidence this is going to be rectified," said Schiff. "If all of those people on that chat are basically saying, there's nothing to see here. Okay. Yeah, it should have been classified. They can't even admit that [Congressman] Jim Himes properly read the very guidance that the intelligence community gives on a discussion exactly like this one. And the DOD guidance, although [Director of National Intelligence] Tulsi Gabbard tried to deflect, is almost exactly the same. This was heavily classified, or it should have been, and there's no escaping that."

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