No impeachment near, leading Dem contends
Democrats feverishly looking to send President Trump to an early retirement should step back and take a deep breath, a leading California Democrat said Thursday.
With the GOP controlling both houses of Congress, nothing is going to happen until Republican members are presented with examples “of very specific conduct that says their vote (to impeach Trump) is justified,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, told The Chronicle’s editorial board. “My Republican colleagues are nowhere near ready to make that conclusion.”
On Tuesday, Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier of Hillsborough said in a tweet that the president “is showing signs of erratic behavior and mental instability that place the country in grave danger. Time to invoke the 25th Amendment,” which allows a president to be removed from office.
Other Democrats, including Reps. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, and Brad Sherman, DSherman Oaks (Los Angeles County), have long called for Trump’s impeachment, and the number is likely to grow after the president’s controversial comments this week in response to the death of a protester during a white supremacist event in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday.
But both impeachment and the 25th Amendment are political decisions that would require Republican support that doesn’t now exist, Schiff said, either among legislators or the people who voted for Trump.
If Trump were removed, it couldn’t look like an effort to nullify the results of the last election, he added, which means it is one case where it is better to have the GOP running Congress.
An impeachment effort “would have far more credibility if the effort was led by a Republican Congress,” Schiff said.
But unlikely doesn’t mean impossible, and Schiff ’s work as the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, which is looking at the possibility of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible links to the Trump campaign, could play a major role in any future decision.
“Certainly, possible collusion with Russia” and proof that it happened would be something that could change the way Republicans look at the president, Schiff said.
The House investigation is very different from the one being carried out by former FBI director Robert Mueller, who was appointed as a special counsel to look into possible Russian involvement in the election.
Mueller’s job “is to conclude if any laws have been broken and who should be prosecuted,” said Schiff, a former federal prosecutor. “Any information that comes out will likely be in indictments.”
The House investigation, though, is “a full public investigation,” a transparent look at what happened and what can be done to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“I think that’s equally or more important than putting people away,” Schiff said.
The House probe has had its problems. The committee’s leader, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, had to recuse himself from the Russian investigation in April after he came under a House ethics investigation for potentially mishandling classified documents. The fact that it’s a GOPled committee investigating the actions of a Republican president and his staff doesn’t make political consensus between the parties any easier.
“We’re working together reasonably well,” Schiff said, which is important when it comes to putting together a final report from the committee, something he admits won’t be coming anytime soon.
Schiff said his main effort is not only to determine what, if anything, Russian operatives did in the 2016 election and to see that it doesn’t happen again, but also to ensure nothing happened that Russia could use against the Trump administration or use to influence future policy.
“We owe it to the country to make sure the Russians have no lever against the administration,” he said.
Schiff is a graduate of Monte Vista High School in Danville and graduated from Stanford before heading to Harvard Law School. His high-profile slot on the Intelligence Committee has raised his visibility in the state and nation and sparked his political ambitions.
If Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., decided not to run for re-election in 2018, “I would certainly think about (running for Senate), but I’d hate to lose her.”