Watchdog demands investigation after Schiff used footage of floor speech to launch Senate campaign
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The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust watchdog group filed a complaint Friday saying Rep. Adam Schiff should be investigated for using footage of himself delivering a speech when announcing his run for the US Senate.
Schiff’s two-minute video shows the California Democrat speaking to senators in his role as impeachment manager during the first impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump.
House members are prohibited from using House and Senate video for campaign purposes, even if the footage is from a news outlet.
‘This is a clear violation of the House Ethics Rules and federal law. Representative Schiff has been in Congress for more than two decades and certainly knows that official government resources cannot be used for political purposes,’ FACT Executive Director Kendra Arnold said in a statement.
‘Rep. Schiff must immediately remove the video and stop the distribution of the images, and the Congressional Ethics Office must act quickly to investigate and sanction Rep. Schiff for this violation,” he added.
The watchdog group Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust filed a complaint Friday saying Rep. Adam Schiff should be investigated for using footage of himself delivering a speech when announcing his run for the US Senate.
Schiff announced a candidacy Thursday, launching a bid to take the place of incumbent Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 89.
Schiff’s ad video heavily promotes his prominent role in Trump’s first impeachment trial.
“I wish I could say the threat from MAGA extremists is over,” he says in the two-minute ad. ‘It is not. Today’s Republican Party is gutting the middle class, threatening our democracy. They are not going to stop. We have to stop them.
Schiff is the second Democrat to officially enter the California race, while Feinstein has not said he will withdraw.
It comes two days after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy removed Schiff, the former chairman, from the House Intelligence Committee, and the California Republican accused the Democrat of lying about Russiagate and the veracity of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Rep. Adam Schiff announced Thursday that he was running for the Senate, pitching a bid to speak over the spot for 89-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
The 89-year-old incumbent, Senator Dianne Feinstein, has yet to announce her retirement, but Representatives Katie Porter and Adam Schiff have already announced their intentions to run for her seat.
With Schiff’s entry into the race, there will likely be a lengthy primary.
Earlier this month, Rep. Katie Porter said she would run.
At the same time, Rep. Barbara Lee told lawmakers that she plans to enter the race, though she did not make an official announcement. Axios reported.
And it could get ugly.
A ‘source close to Adam Schiffcalled it an ‘incredible mistake’ for Porter to announce his candidacy at that time, as California was recovering from dangerous rains and flooding.
NBC reported in the same story that Schiff had met with Feinstein to tell him that he planned to run.
Feinstein told the Los Angeles Times in December that he planned to serve out his term and would announce his plans for 2024 ‘at the appropriate time’.
For months, Feinstein has been plagued by reports that her memory is fading.
If he were to leave his post early, California Gov. Gavin Newsom could name a temporary replacement. The state’s other senator, Senator Alex Padilla, was first appointed to his post, taking the place of now Vice President Kamala Harris after she was sworn in.
Earlier this month, Democratic Rep. Katie Porter announced via video posted on Twitter that she was seeking the seat, arguing that “California needs a warrior in the Senate.”
Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat who served as Sen. Bernie Sanders’ national co-chairman in the 2020 presidential primary, told NBC he would make the decision to run for the Senate in the coming months.
Schiff became one of the most high-profile House Democrats during the Trump years, so much so that he earned the nickname from the former president, “little pencil neck,” which Schiff included in his campaign launch video. .
His fellow Californian, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, named him lead impeachment director during Trump’s first impeachment trial in January 2020.
He pointed to that role Wednesday during a news conference after McCarthy removed him and Rep. Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee.
“The cardinal sin appears to be that I led the prosecution of your master at Mar-a-Lago for withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid from Ukraine, a nation even then at war with Russia, to extort that country to help to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign,” Schiff said.
McCarthy said he removed Schiff because he “lied to the American public.”
‘When Devin Nunes published a memo, [Schiff] he said it was false. When we had a laptop, he used it before an election to [play] politics and say it was false and said it was the Russians when he knew otherwise’, said the speaker of the Chamber.
“He used his position as president, knowing that he had information that the rest of the American people don’t, and he lied to the American public,” McCarthy continued.