House rejects effort to censure Adam Schiff over Trump-Russia investigations
The House has rejected an effort to censure Rep. Adam B. Schiff, turning aside a GOP attempt to fine him over his comments about former President Trump and investigations into his ties to Russia.
Schiff (D-Burbank), the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and the lead prosecutor in Trump’s first impeachment trial, has long been a top Republican political target. Soon after taking back the majority this year, Republicans blocked him from sitting on the intelligence panel.
But Schiff was helped Wednesday by more than 20 Republicans who voted with Democrats to stop the censure resolution or voted “present,” giving Democrats enough votes to block the measure.
The vote was a rare victory for Democrats in the Republican-led House, and they cheered and patted Schiff on the back after the vote was finished and the gavel brought down.
“I’m flattered they think I’m so effective they have to go after me in this way,” Schiff told reporters afterward, referring to his Republican rivals. “It’s not going to deter me.”
Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a newly elected Republican who sponsored the measure, passed Schiff in the hallway after the vote and told him she would try again.
While Schiff and Porter each raised millions of dollars in the race for Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat, Schiff has tens of millions more cash in the bank.
Luna later tweeted that she would remove a portion of the resolution that suggested a $16-million fine if the House Ethics Committee determined that Schiff “lied, made misrepresentations and abused sensitive information.” Some Republicans, including Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, had argued that the fine was unconstitutional.
“Next week, we will be filing a motion to censure and investigate Schiff,” Luna tweeted. “We are removing fine as that seems to be what made these Republicans uneasy. ... See you next week, Adam.”
The resolution said Schiff held positions of power during Trump’s presidency and “abused this trust by saying there was evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia.”
Schiff was one of the most outspoken critics of the former president as both the Justice Department and the Republican-led House launched investigations into Trump’s ties to Russia in 2017.
“By repeatedly telling these falsehoods, Representative Schiff purposely deceived his Committee, Congress, and the American people,” the resolution said.
Rep. Adam Schiff played a key background role in a Washington Post opinion piece that led to Trump’s first impeachment, according to a new book.
Special counsel Robert Mueller, who led the two-year Justice Department investigation, determined that Russia intervened on the campaign’s behalf and that Trump’s campaign welcomed the help. Mueller’s team did not find that the campaign conspired to sway the election, and the Justice Department did not recommend any charges. It did not address the issue of “collusion” directly.
The congressional probe, launched by Republicans who were then in the majority, similarly found that Russia intervened in the election but that there was no evidence of a conspiracy. Schiff was the top Democrat on the panel at the time.
If the House had voted to censure him, Schiff would have stood in the front of the chamber while the text of the resolution was read.
On Tuesday, Schiff told reporters that the censure resolution was “red meat” that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) is throwing to his conference amid squabbles over government spending. Republicans are trying to show their fealty to Trump, Schiff said.
Rep. Adam Schiff withdrew from consideration to join the Congressional Progressive Caucus after his application proved divisive among the group’s members.
Schiff, who is running for the Senate seat to be vacated by Dianne Feinstein, noted that he warned the country during impeachment proceedings three years ago that Trump “would go on to do worse.”
“And of course he did worse in the form of a violent attack on the Capitol,” he said.
In the censure resolution, Luna also cited a report released in May by special counsel John Durham that found that the FBI rushed into its investigation of Trump’s campaign and relied too much on raw and unconfirmed intelligence.
Durham said investigators repeatedly relied on “confirmation bias,” ignoring or rationalizing away evidence that undercut their premise of a Trump-Russia conspiracy as they pushed the probe forward. But he did not allege that political bias or partisanship were guiding factors for the FBI’s actions.
Trump had claimed that Durham’s report would reveal the “crime of the century” and expose a “deep state conspiracy” by high-ranking government officials to derail his candidacy and later his presidency. But the investigation yielded only one conviction — a guilty plea from a little-known FBI employee — and the only two other cases that were brought both ended in acquittals at trial.
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