Rep. Adam Schiff defended his leadership of the House impeachment process following the Senate’s vote against hearing from additional witnesses.
Several Republican senators ripped the California Democrat for his leadership during the House impeachment proceedings. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski cited Schiff’s “rushed and flawed” process as the reason she would not support hearing testimony from additional witnesses, such as John Bolton, after days of the House’s impeachment managers demanded that the Senate hear more testimony.
Schiff, 59, defended his decision to rush through the House impeachment despite criticism from Republicans. During a Sunday interview on Face the Nation, he said there was “nothing” he would have done differently.
“When the senator laments that there’s not a fair trial in the Senate, it’s up to the senators to make it a fair trial. It is within their power to make it a fair trial with four votes, with four courageous senators saying, ‘No, we’re going to demand a fair trial no matter what this president may say,’” Schiff explained. “There would have been a fair trial. There would have been witnesses and testimony.”
He added, “There’s nothing that I can see that we could have done differently because, as the senators have already admitted, we proved our case. We proved our case.”
The House Intelligence Committee chairman also defended his decision to drop the subpoena of Bolton’s deputy Charles Kupperman, a move several senators cited when explaining that the House could have called Bolton to testify.
“No, it wasn’t [a misstep] at all,” he said before arguing that turning to the courts for subpoenas of witnesses would have taken too long, adding, “It would probably be one to two years before we would have had a decision on John Bolton. That means the president would have been able to cheat in the next election with impunity because they could have simply delayed and played out the clock.”
It is likely that the Senate would have had the same delay in the courts had they subpoenaed any witnesses, but the possibility of additional witnesses ended on Friday after the chamber voted against hearing new testimony. The Senate will vote to convict or acquit President Trump on Wednesday.
