Rep. Adam Schiff revealed that he’s unfit to lead legitimate impeachment proceedings in the very first moments of the first public hearing his committee conducted. His undisguised personal animus against President Trump and partisan disdain for his Republican colleagues make it clear that he’s incapable of conducting an investigation aimed at discovering the truth.
As Rep. Devin Nunes pointed out during Wednesday’s House Intelligence Committee hearing, Schiff has spent the past three years scrounging for dirt that he could use against Trump. He was so desperate for opposition research that he even fell for a prank by a Ukrainian who offered him nude photographs of the president, making a mockery of the House Intelligence Committee in the process.
Schiff has a history of distorting facts to fit his desired narrative. He spent years repeatedly telling reporters that there was “more than circumstantial evidence” of collusion between Trump campaign officials and the Russian government. Then the Mueller Report exposed those assurances as mere partisan bluster.
Schiff’s perfidy only grew more brazen after he became the de facto leader of the impeachment push. After vehemently insisting that “we have not spoken directly with the whistleblower,” for instance, Schiff was forced to acknowledge that his staff had, in fact, coordinated with the so-called whistleblower before the complaint that led to the current impeachment farce. Schiff also notoriously gave a “dramatized” rendition of the president’s call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that bore almost no resemblance to the publicly available transcript released by the White House.
In his opening statement at Wednesday’s public hearing, Schiff continued his now familiar habit of distorting the facts to fit his desired narrative. His monologue was rife with exaggerations, mischaracterizations, and downright falsehoods — yet Schiff still absurdly tried to maintain the veneer of standing above partisan politics.
Even Democrats directly contradict Schiff’s version of events — the facts of which he insisted “are not seriously contested.”
Schiff repeated the oft-cited claim that the Trump administration’s decision to put the call transcript on a top-secret server was an “extraordinary step.” Yet, President Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice recently admitted that the Obama administration occasionally did the same thing with transcripts of Obama’s conversations with the heads of foreign nations. Moreover, it’s hardly “extraordinary” that Trump would carefully safeguard the sensitive contents of his calls with foreign leaders, considering that his enemies leaked similar transcripts just a few months into his presidency.
If the first public impeachment hearing proved anything, it’s that Schiff has carefully orchestrated a biased process designed to produce the outcome he wants rather than provide the full, contextual truth to the public.
Once the dust kicked up by his deceitful antics finally settles, Schiff should be held accountable, by his colleagues and his constituents alike, for subjecting the country to such unnecessary turmoil. Once Trump released the transcript, the Democrats should have completely dropped their partisan inquisition.
Jenna Ellis Rives (@JennaEllisRives) is a member of the Trump 2020 Advisory Board. She is a constitutional law attorney, radio host, and the author of The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution.
