Long before California Rep. Adam Schiff learned how to mug for television cameras like a pro, he enlisted the help of a William Morris agent to shop around a script he’d penned about the Holocaust. His agent, alas, claimed to find little traction for a project deemed “too depressing” by Hollywood studios. “Then Schindler’s List came out,” Schiff groused, “and I was, like, ‘Come on!'”
Dang that Spielberg, right? Hollywood, though, isn’t for quitters. And Schiff, a nine-term congressman, has already finished a murder mystery and developing a third script, as well. “It’s a spy drama,” he says. “That one is a work in progress.”
In the meantime, Schiff has found other outlets for his boundless creativity. As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, for instance, his imaginative works have helped eradicate any residual trust the public might still have in federal institutions. It’s a series.
It was Schiff, in the midst of the most frenzied days of the Russian collusion nonsense, when swathes of the public were convinced that proof of President Trump’s treasonous relationship with Vladimir Putin was about to drop, who claimed to have incontrovertible evidence of “collusion.”
By this time, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee had become something of a cable news star, exhibiting Herculean stamina while spitting out hyperbolic talking points about the demise of democracy. By one Republican estimate, Schiff had appeared in 123 national television interviews, totaling more than 14 hours of airtime, between January and June 2017. That’s a lot of airtime.
For the most part, his appearances were grounded in well-worn media narratives that his office had almost certainly helped create via selective leaks. The problem was that in the Trump era, drama needs to be continuously ratcheted up to maintain ratings. So in early 2018, not long after taking control of the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff confirmed what every Democrat wanted to hear, which was that Congress had not only uncovered evidence of a criminal conspiracy by the president’s 2016 campaign, but now had an “abundance” of incriminating evidence in its possession.
It was, of course, huge news. But it also turned out to be a spectacular lie. Special counsel Robert Mueller would spend roughly two years digging through accusations of coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to steal the 2016 presidential election and come up with nothing. Nor would the 25-person investigative staff Schiff inherited when the Democrats took back the House discover any evidence of collusion. It was not for lack of trying.
Yet Schiff, who fueled dozens of embarrassing media misfires during this time, causing irreparable damage to the reputation of the press, felt no pressure to explain why his firecracker claim had fizzled out like a damp squib. As far as I can tell, no one in the media even bothered to inquire about the discrepancy until The View’s Meghan McCain brought it up in an interview. Schiff claimed that the proof had been in “plain sight” the whole time, which was the opposite of what he’d told us before.
In more serious times, such crystal-clear dishonesty would be a small calamity for the reputation of a politician. In the Trump era, however, it has transformed Schiff, like so many others, into a hero. The most valued action in the Trump era, after all, is partisan fan service.
After embracing a salubrious lifestyle and losing a lot of weight around 2010, Schiff began competing in grueling triathlons. Sometimes, the California congressman rode 380 arduous miles between San Francisco and Los Angeles for fun. It “helps me maintain my sanity,” he explains.
I learned about Schiff’s extracurricular activities in a glowing article, of which there are many these days, in U.S. News and World Report headlined “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Adam Schiff.” The Massachusetts native, who represents a once-moderate Republican district he inherited after redistricting in 2012, “has been praised for representing the diverse interests of his north Los Angeles-area district.” Among the issues he’s tackling head-on are ways to “reduce helicopter noise.”
While Schiff enjoys all his congressional duties, he tells a local West Hollywood publication that he’s most content working with intelligence agencies. “It’s the least partisan and probably the most productive of all the committees on the Hill,” Schiff explains. “That’s in large part because the meetings are in closed session due to the classified information. There’s no grandstanding because there is no one to grandstand to. We get our work done and don’t use each issue to bash each other.”
The House Intelligence Committee, once widely considered the most independent entity in Congress, is a corrupt pit of partisan discord. Most days, members, pace Schiff’s assertion, seem to do little but “bash each other.” Worse, the committee, tasked with overseeing the nation’s most delicate information about foreign threats, is teeming with unreliable grandstanders. Not only has trust between members broken down, but trust between the intelligence community and members has also broken down.
With plenty of help from his Republican colleagues, Schiff has turned serious concerns about Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election into a sideshow, while his committee has become something resembling a battleground for proxies of the cable news channels. It’s an enormous, consequential mess.
None of this seems to bother Schiff, who is under the impression that he heads the House Committee to Impeach Donald Trump. Unsurprisingly, once Mueller debunked the central storyline of Schiff’s Russia fairy tale, the congressman was adrift and flailing.
Trump, though, has effortlessly given him another bite at the apple. In the now-famous July 25 phone call, the president asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the family of his political rival, Joe Biden. It was also reported at the time that an explosive whistleblower report existed, detailing a quid pro quo suggestion by Trump. Moreover, the administration attempted to bury the report.
After months of resisting pressure from the left flank of her party, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally announced on September 24 that she would support an official impeachment “inquiry” into the president, though it wasn’t hard to imagine this is where the country would have end up regardless once the Democrats gained control of the House in 2018.
Excitement was once again in the air. “Adam Schiff is the right man for the moment,” argued a New York Times op-ed written by an editor of the Lawfare blog, a clearinghouse for tasteful high-end impeachment pornography. “In all the ways that matter for this particular moment, Mr. Schiff seems to be coming off as the opposite of a slick political operator bent on betraying the country.”
Did any honest members of the public really see it that way? Schiff had already initiated his impeachment efforts with the same brand of ham-fisted dishonesty he’d employed during his Russia collusion work.
First, Schiff told national news media, not once, but twice in the same day, that his office hadn’t directly spoken to the whistleblower before he filed his complaint against Trump.
As the New York Times and others would later report, this was not true. Schiff’s staffers had indeed advised the whistleblower, but to what extent, we still don’t know. The congressman had also been aware of the complaint’s accusations before they were made public, stoking Republican suspicion that Democrats orchestrated a setup.
Perhaps that is what it was. Many ordinary people are already suspicious that members of the intelligence services are working with Democrats to get rid of the elected president. This would remain a concern even if interactions between the whistleblower and Schiff’s office were as innocent as the congressman claims, and considering his history, this seems highly unlikely. His lie immediately infected the entire proceedings with a needless level of partisanship.
Perhaps Schiff lied because he had gotten away with it in the past, or maybe because he’d never experienced any consequences for his deceit. But it says a lot about his recklessness that, even while knowing that the whistleblower’s charges would become a massive story, and possibly initiate efforts to remove the president, the congressman lied about his involvement. In fact, it sure seems like something a slick political operator would do.
Yet Schiff wasn’t done. There was further mendacity to come.
The impeachment effort finally seemed to officially begin when acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testified in front of the House Intelligence Committee on Sept. 26. To mark the occasion, and unwittingly to ensure no new hint of bipartisan decorum crept in on his watch, Schiff opened the proceeding by dabbling in experimental theater.
“I have a favor I want from you,” Schiff said, reading from a paper to create the illusion that he was quoting Trump verbatim. “And I’m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good. I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand? Lots of it, on this and on that.”
Anyone who feels compelled to put words into Trump’s mouth is already failing at his job. Schiff, however, argued that he was merely conveying the “essence” of Trump’s call with Zelensky, which “reads like a classic organized crime shakedown.” That dishonest, clever idea of capturing the invented “essence” rather than relaying the actual truth is a cardinal and defining characteristic of the congressman now running the show.
The essence he made up comported exactly with Democrats’ talking points regarding the call. Schiff’s “parody,” as he later called the speech, was, considering the evidence, highly misleading. The president did not ask Zelensky to “make up” dirt about Hunter Biden. Instead, he asked Zelensky to investigate Biden family dealings with Ukrainian energy interests. Though it might well exist one day, there was no evidence that Trump threatened Zelensky if he failed to do so.
“It would be funny if it wasn’t such a graphic betrayal of the president’s oath of office,” Schiff would say about his imaginary presidential conversation. The congressman should probably steer as clear of comedic scripts as he does of his constitutional duties. How seriously can we take someone who thinks performing a “parody” during an impeachment inquiry is appropriate?
In many ways, of course, Schiff accomplished his objective. The Russia collusion narrative dominated our politics for nearly two years, hampering the Trump presidency. The Ukraine scandal will almost surely dominate the next year.
Then again, the impeachment effort also sparked a cascade of unintended consequences for Democrats. Because the mainstream of the party has been unable to form any coherent policy messaging other than an obsession with the president, the far-left has been gifted the opportunity to rush in and fill the policy vacuum with its extreme agenda. What that means for the country when Trump is gone is yet to be seen.
If we concede that Trump leads a charmed life by circumstance, undoubtedly one of his greatest gifts has been the quality of his political adversaries. Not every president gets bequeathed a frustrated screenwriter as a foil. Irrespective of your views of Trump, Washington has now become a place where partisans vastly outnumber institutionalists. The only real accountability is tribal. If Schiff proved anything with his big moment, it’s that he’s as comfortable lying and abusing his power as the president.
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at the Federalist.
