Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) dodged a question about Hillary Clinton’s leaked Wall Street speeches on Monday during a CNN interview.
Host Wolf Blitzer played a clip of Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence grilling Clinton over recently-leaked transcripts of speeches she gave to Wall Street firms that were revealed by WikiLeaks.
The U.S. government has formally blamed Russia for hacking and leaking emails posted to sites like WikiLeaks to interfere with the 2016 election.
Blitzer asked Schiff to explain the content of the transcripts. Schiff quickly turned the conversation to Pence instead of Clinton.
"I assume you’ve read those transcripts," Blitzer said. "What was your take?"
"You know, I haven’t read the transcripts. I’ve seen the excerpts that had been published," Schiff said. "I don’t know what to make of that, frankly, except that this is Mike Pence trying to distract from all the problems his running mate has. And I know Mike very well. We came into Congress together, and I have to say, it’s sad to see him continue to embrace Donald Trump, even after this past week."
"I think it can’t help but injure his reputation, but he’s being a dutiful soldier here and the best I think the Trump campaign can do is point at these transcripts and say, ‘Look there, not here,’" Schiff added.
Blitzer then pointed out another piece from the transcripts.
"There’s transcripts also have her saying, ‘Look, it’s one thing, you have to have a public position, but you have to have a private position as well, which could be different,’ and that seemed to suggest according to her critics that she was being two-faced," Blitzer said.
"You know, that’s the criticism they leveled, but again, not really seeing what was involved in that conversation, it’s hard to tell," Schiff said before comparing Clinton to Abraham Lincoln, as Clinton herself did during the debate on Sunday.