“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
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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.”
Jeffrey Toobin: “President Trump said some time ago that he believes his personal finances should be off limits to investigators. In an interview with the Times in July, 2017, he asserted that if Robert Mueller, the special counsel, sought to investigate the Trump family’s business dealings he would be crossing a ‘red line.’ When, later that year, several news reports suggested that Mueller had subpoenaed Deutsche Bank for records relating to Trump’s businesses, the President reportedly told members of his staff that he wanted to fire Mueller in response.”
“It was never confirmed whether Mueller had actually subpoenaed Deutsche Bank, but the President’s aversion to the scrutiny of his business interests caught the attention of Representative Adam Schiff, who will become the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence next year. On a recent weekend, at a busy restaurant in downtown Burbank, in the heart of his congressional district, Schiff talked about his plans for conducting an investigation that will be parallel to Mueller’s, probing Trump’s connections to Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other places around the world.”
“As Schiff described his approach, it became clear that he wasn’t just planning to cross Trump’s red line—he intended to obliterate it.”
“We believe other witnesses were untruthful before our committee. We want to share those transcripts with Mr. Mueller.”
— Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), quoted by ABC News, calling for the release of transcripts of sworn testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in their investigation of Trump campaign collusion with Russia.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told the Washington Post that Democrats will investigate President Trump’s financial ties to Saudi Arabia as part of a “deep dive” on the kingdom when majority control of the House changes hands in January.
Said Schiff: “There are a whole set of potential financial conflicts of interest and emoluments problems that Congress will need to get to the bottom of. Certainly if foreign investment in the Trump businesses is guiding U.S. policy in a way that’s antithetical to the country’s interests, we need to find out about it.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told CBS News that he believes there’s clear evidence that President Trump colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 presidential campaign.
Said Schiff: “I think there’s plenty of evidence of collusion or conspiracy in plain sight.”
Jonathan Swan: “Trump would never admit this publicly, but he told people afterwards that he was impressed by the performance of his Democratic nemesis Adam Schiff. Trump hates Schiff and calls him a horrible liar. But he marveled at Schiff’s tough and surgical opening statement that day.”
“More than six months after the hearing, Trump told an aide how impressive he considered Schiff’s performance to be.”
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.
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