Joe Biden must be in pretty deep trouble if he can't count on a notorious partisan like Adam Schiff to defend him. In a shocking new interview, Schiff (D-Ca.) conceded that Biden's classified records fiasco may have compromised national security. 

In an unusual show of reserve, the ordinarily inflammatory Schiff told ABC News that attorney general Merrick Garland had no choice but to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Biden.

Schiff turns?

Schiff said it's important to maintain the appearance of fairness in the justice system, calling Garland's appointment "the right move."

"The attorney general has to make sure that not only is justice evenly applied, but the appearances of justice are also satisfactory to the public," he said.

The contents of the records are unknown, but at least some are believed to deal with Ukraine, a country where Biden's family has infamous and murky financial ties. Schiff conceded that Biden may have exposed sensitive national security information with his failure to secure the records.

“I don’t think we can exclude the possibility without knowing more of the facts," he said, adding, "I’d like to know what these documents were.”

Apples and Oranges?

While striking in a way, Schiff's criticism of Biden was tempered with the usual spin.

He said he would "reserve judgment" on whether Biden should have been more transparent about the records, which were not publicly disclosed until last week despite being discovered by Biden's lawyers before the midterm elections.

Schiff also insisted on "very sharp contrasts" with a strikingly similar scenario involving classified documents and President Trump, whose home was raided by the FBI last year, with Schiff calling the Trump controversy "far more serious."

"But I think it’s important to point out that the Biden approach was very different in the sense that it looks, as far as we can tell, that it was inadvertent that these documents were in these locations,” he said.

Biden finds Schiff's pain threshold

The Biden scandal has caught Democrats on the backfoot after they made Trump's handling of classified documents out to be a grave national security crisis, with Biden himself calling his rival's behavior "totally irresponsible."

The first set of Biden files was discovered at the Penn Biden Center, a shadowy think tank, and additional sets have continued to surface at Biden's house in Wilmington, Delaware.

Some of the records were found in Biden's garage, next to his Corvette.

Biden appears to have done the unthinkable, proving that even a shameless hack like Schiff is capable of embarrassment.