SAN FRANCISCO — House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told a revved up crowd of fellow California Democrats late Saturday that impeaching Trump shows “no sign” of working given that the Senate won’t convict, saying voting Trump out on Election Day is the better option.
“Now I know that many of you would like to see us impeach this president, and that may become necessary. He seems to be doing everything in his power to make it so,” Schiff told the sold-out dinner held as part of the California Democratic Convention in San Francisco. “But let us not lose sight as we debate the merits of impeachment that, unless the GOP leadership in the Senate finds a backbone it shows no sign of possessing, there is going to be only one way to end this nightmare and to send Mr. Trump packing, and that is to vote the bums out of office — all of them, including the one at 1600 Pennsylvania,” he added.
Schiff, toeing Democratic leadership’s line of preferring oversight to forcibly removing Trump from office, used his 27-minute address to lob political attacks at the president, Attorney General William Barr, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.
“And who, most dangerous of all, and as the top law enforcement officer in the country, opines the president can curtail an investigation into his own criminal wrongdoing any time he chooses if he deems it unfair,” Schiff said of Barr and Trump, triggering one attendee to yell, “Lock them up!”
Schiff’s remarks followed a 41-minute speech from House Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters, the other California Democrat heading one of the six congressional probes into Trump, his 2016 campaign, and his business dealings. Waters is a prominent impeachment advocate who promised shortly after the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s federal Russia investigation report in April not to rally her lawmaker colleagues to the cause, in order to avoid a clash with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. But following Mueller’s first and only public statement on his work last week, Waters has renewed her calls for the president’s ouster and on Saturday night had the room chanting, “Impeach 45!”
“I believe he is not only unfit to be president but dangerous and, if he gets away with everything he’s already done, he will have changed the role of the presidency for the future,” she said. “I realize that others have different views, and I respect each person’s opinion. Right now, only a small number in Congress support impeachment … [But] you don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to recognize that the evidence Mueller cited constitutes criminal conduct.”
Impeachment has been a talking point at the three-day California Democratic Convention, which wraps up June 2.
Pelosi’s own appearance at the event, the largest gathering of Democrats in the state, was briefly disrupted by cries for Trump’s removal.
“Why is it that the president of the United States won’t defend our democracy from this foreign threat? What is the president covering up?” the speaker said, before chants of “impeach” broke out in the convention hall. “I told you this was like coming home for me,” she jested in response.
