House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) told NBC News that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) “has no values.”
Said Schiff: “Kevin McCarthy stands for nothing except the perpetuation of his own position. He has no values, and in my view cares about little except for hoping to be speaker one day.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told CNN that President Trump is “acting like an organized crime figure” over a possible pardon for his former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Said Schiff: “This is who Donald Trump is. It’s who he was on the way into the presidency. It will be exactly who he is on his last days of the presidency.”
New York Times: “Mr. Schiff, the California Democrat who leads the House Intelligence Committee, is quietly and methodically maneuvering for a second act. As other Democrats step forward this week for a slate of leadership posts under Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Schiff is biding his time but ruling out few possibilities, including a run for Senate, a Biden administration post or an eventual bid for the speakership or another top House leadership post.”
“There is perhaps no better sign of Mr. Schiff’s ambition than the amount of campaign cash he raised this election cycle for himself and Democrats up and down the ballot: $41 million… For now, Mr. Schiff’s chances of a top intelligence position in the Biden administration appear remote, his allies concede, in large part because of his success as Mr. Trump’s leading antagonist.”
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff told CNN that his committee has no plans to hear testimony from former national security adviser John Bolton before President Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate, arguing there’s “little to be gained” by going that route at this moment.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) told the New Yorker that President Trump “doesn’t give a shit about what’s good for our country.”
Said Schiff: “It’s all about what’s in it for him personally and for his re-election campaign.”
“It comes down to this. We’ve cut through the denials. The deflections. The nonsense. Donald Trump believes he can pressure a foreign nation to help him politically. It’s his ‘right.’ Every Republican in Congress has to decide: Is he right?”
— House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), on Twitter.
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) told reporters that President Trump’s call for China to investigate Joe Biden is “repugnant” and “ought to be condemned by every member” of Congress, Axios reports.
Said Schiff: “A president of the United States encouraging a foreign nation to interfere again to help his campaign by investigating a rival is a fundamental breach of the presidential oath.”
For members: My Conversation with Adam Schiff
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) downplayed the prospects of removing President Trump from office through impeachment, saying the only way he’s leaving office, at this point, is “by being voted out,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Schiff: “We do need to be realistic, and that is, the only way he’s leaving office, at least at this point, is by being voted out, and I think our efforts need to be made in every respect to make sure we turn out our people.”
He added: “Should we put the country through an impeachment? I haven’t been convinced yet that we should. Going through that kind of momentous and disruptive experience for the country, I think, is not something we go into lightly.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) said the Russian government “is likely to try to influence the 2020 presidential election, not through the release of stolen emails and other documents but through faked videos,” the New York Times reports.
He said that a carefully crafted, controversial fake video would be “hugely disruptive and hugely influential.”
“The risk is amplified because if a video is executed carefully, it can be hard to both prove it is fake and show where it came from.”
“I think Bill Barr has all the duplicity of Rudy Giuliani without all the good looks and general likability of Rudy Giuliani.”
— House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), quoted by Politico.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) said that his panel would make a criminal referral to the Justice Department regarding potential false testimony by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of the private military contractor Blackwater and an ally of President Trump, the Washington Post reports.
Said Schiff: “The evidence is so weighty that the Justice Department needs to consider this.”
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Ranking Member Devin Nunes (R-CA) sent a joint request to the Department of Justice requesting that special counsel Robert Mueller brief their committee and provide “all materials, regardless of form and classification, obtained or produced” during his 2-year investigation, the Daily Beast reports.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) signaled that he won’t help Michael Cohen delay the start of his three-year prison sentence, even after the president’s former lawyer claimed he discovered troves of new records that could be useful to investigators, CNN reports.
Said Schiff: “I don’t get involved in sentencing matters as a practice. I never have in Congress and that’s been my policy.”
“House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) said he sees it as a foregone conclusion that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will face questioning by Congress following the release of his report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election,” Bloomberg reports.
Said Schiff: “I think it’s inevitable that Bob Mueller is going to have to testify before Congress.”
He added that his committee has “a statutory requirement that the Intelligence Community, FBI, brief us on any significant counterintelligence or intelligence activity. And it’s hard to imagine something that rises more to that level than this investigation.”
“The House Intelligence Committee devolved into bitter infighting Thursday at a public hearing after all nine Republicans on the panel called on Chairman Adam Schiff to resign from his post, while the California Democrat responded with a blistering account of what he termed ‘evidence of collusion’ between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russian interests,” Politico reports.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): “To my Republican colleagues: When the president attacked the independence of the Justice Department by intervening in a case in which he is implicated, you did not speak out. When he attacked the press as the enemy of the people, you again were silent. When he targeted the judiciary, labeling judges and decisions he didn’t like as illegitimate, we heard not a word. And now he comes for Congress, the first branch of government, seeking to strip it of its greatest power, that of the purse.”
“Many of you have acknowledged your deep misgivings about the president in quiet conversations over the past two years. You have bemoaned his lack of decency, character and integrity. You have deplored his fundamental inability to tell the truth. But for reasons that are all too easy to comprehend, you have chosen to keep your misgivings and your rising alarm private.”
“That must end. The time for silent disagreement is over. You must speak out.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told NBC News that Democrats will subpoena special counsel Robert Mueller’s report if President Trump tries to invoke executive privilege to keep it secret.
Said Schiff: “I’m prepared to make sure we do everything possible so that the public has the advantage of as much of the information as it can.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.