WASHINGTON — Democrat Adam Schiff stood on the Senate floor as an impeachment manager in the House of Representatives nearly five years ago and made a passionate case that Donald Trump should be removed from office for abusing the power of the presidency. “If the good doesn’t matter, we’re lost,” he told senators, his voice cracking at one point.
The Republican-led Senate was not convinced, and neither were the senators voted for acquittal Trump on the Democratic-led impeachment charge over his dealings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump would survive one second impeachment a year later after his supporters stormed the Capitol and tried to overturn his defeat.
Now Trump is went back to the White House, politically stronger than ever and with a firm grip on what a united Republican Congress. And Schiff, one of Trump’s biggest opponents, will be sworn in in the Senate on Monday as part of a Democratic caucus that is moving toward the minority and has so far been reluctant to oppose the returning president, leaving more to wait and see. is. approach in the weeks before he is sworn in.
Like California’s newest senatorSchiff says he won’t shy away from familiar territory — opposing Trump when he sees fit. But he also hopes to be known for his bipartisanship, having campaigned in Republican parts of his state and worked to learn more about rural issues that were not in his portfolio in his urban Los Angeles House district.
“I think being out there and letting people get to know me and pushing the envelope a little bit helps overcome some of the stereotypes of Fox News,” Schiff said of the conservative news channel’s focus on him when he Trump challenged in his first term. He says he also sees this information as a way to understand the direction Democrats are moving forward after losing in the November elections.
Schiff will be sworn in weeks before the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3 as he fills the seat of former Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who died last year. He will enter the Senate together with his Democratic House colleague early this week Andy Kim of New Jersey, who is serving the term of former New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez after he was convicted on federal charges of bribery and resigned.
Bipartisanship was important to Feinstein, who often worked across the aisle and developed close relationships with other senators. But her work with Republicans also drew frequent criticism from California’s liberal voters.
Feinstein “was able to do a few things at once, which I’m going to have to try to do as well, and that is working with others to get results for the state, working across party lines to get things done, and at the same time Time to stand up and defend people’s rights, their freedom and their values when these things are threatened,” Schiff told The Associated Press in an interview ahead of his swearing-in.
He says that in the age of Trump, these priorities will often conflict, “and so I’m going to have to try to do both.”
Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, who has spent time with Schiff as he prepares to join the Senate, says he thinks Schiff has the “right approach” of asking questions of other senators and refraining from ” to express an opinion at every opportunity’.
“Everyone knows his abilities, but he also understands that he is a freshman,” Schatz said, and it is appreciated when “someone of his stature understands that he is joining a team here.”
Still, Schiff, who was that? censored who was criticized by Republicans in the House of Representatives last year for his involvement in investigations into Trump’s ties with Russia, will not immediately be able to shake off his long-standing role as the main Trump antagonist. The former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is better known than most of his fellow incoming freshmen, and he has challenged Trump on social media in recent weeks and criticized some of his Cabinet nominees as many of his fellow Democrats have chosen to remain silent to stay. .
Schiff posted on X last week that he is the candidate for FBI director Kas Patela former GOP staffer on the House intelligence panel, is “more suited as an internet troll than FBI director” and the “Senate should reject him.”
He could become part of the story, just as Trump has vowed revenge on people he considers his political enemies. President Joe Biden has done just that been considering preemptive pardons for aides and allies like Schiff who tried to hold Trump accountable for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump once suggested that Schiff should be arrested for treason, calling him an “enemy from within.”
However, Schiff says he doesn’t think that’s necessary. He said Biden should not use his remaining days in office to defend him or others in Trump’s crosshairs.
And the former prosecutor has long experience defending himself against Republican attacks. Following the House censure, which occurred when fellow California Rep. Kevin McCarthy was speaker and Schiff was already running for Feinstein’s Senate seat, Schiff traveled to McCarthy’s district and met with local leaders. When a conservative news outlet asked him there what he thought about McCarthy calling him a liar, “I replied something along the lines of, well, coming from Kevin, I’m sure he means that as some sort of compliment,” said Schiff. .
Schiff is unlikely to similarly go after his colleagues in the Senate, which he says is “culturally a very different place than the House of Representatives.” He has already tried to connect with Republicans, including new Senator Tim Sheehy of Montana, with whom he has talked about working together on wildfire legislation important to both states.
And he could potentially win some grudging respect from more experienced Republicans in the Senate, some of whom praised him during the 2020 impeachment trial even as they strongly disagreed with his premise and voted not to convict Trump.
After the first day of arguing, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina shook his hand and told him he did a good job. South Dakota Senator John Thune, who will be The Senate majority leader said at the time next year that Schiff “was passionate and his case was well stated.”
Schiff said he got the sense that some Republican senators were “a little surprised that I wasn’t this caricature,” and also that the Senate is a more collegial place than the House of Representatives.
“I don’t think it was a hurtful introduction,” he said.
___