WASHINGTON: After nearly a year outside the White House, Donald Trump continues to engulf the Republican Party, commanding attention and influence, as he contemplates another race for the presidency.
And still Trump’s affair is Rep. Adam Schiff.
Schiff, the chairman of the intelligence committee that rose to national prominence for investigating interference in the Russian election and leading the first Trump impeachment, says the former president’s continued presence on the national political stage is nothing short of democracy. .
As a key member of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Uprising at the Capitol, the Congressman whom Trump ruthlessly mocks with derisive nicknames is turning his attention to Trump’s role in that deadly riot.
We want to show the nation how January 6th came to be – and not only in terms of the mechanics of that day, the involvement of white nationalist groups… but how this big lie about our elections has led thousands to attack them. In an interview on C-SPAN’s Book TV, which airs a week from Sunday, Schiff says it’s government.
How did the president know who was coming to this rally and what did he do when he found out?” Schiff asks. “Why did it last so long? And so there are a lot of important unanswered questions.
As the committee paces its investigation, it’s a familiar role but also a new chapter for Schiff, the federal prosecutor turned congressman whose life’s work is now largely defined by the man he calls American. Calls a clear and present threat to democracy.
Last winter, Trump was impeached for the second time on charges of inciting a riot. But House prosecutors, like Schiff in the first trial that focused on election interference involving the Trump campaign and Ukraine, failed to win a sentence in the Senate.
This time, the California Democrat says the select committee hopes to uncover the latest information about Trump’s involvement on the day of January, as he rallied a crowd of his supporters to the Capitol and reverse his election defeat to Joe Biden. Encouraged to fight like hell. The riots and subsequent deaths included Trump supporter Ashley Babitt, who was shot and killed by police, and several officers who later took their own lives following the most serious attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812.
In a new book with a weighty title, “Midnight in Washington, How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Can”, Schiff writes his own personal, amusing account of that day: Donning gas masks in the House Chamber, preparing to flee. Being forced as soon as the crowd came closer.
Republican aides warned him that he needed to stay out of sight because of his recognizable role as a Trump critic. But during the hours that followed, as the House returned the Electoral College votes for Biden, Schiff came to see Republican lawmakers, in suits and ties, as an institutional threat as serious as rioters. , who had made his way into the building in one attempt. To reverse the election.
The special committee is drilling not only at Trump, but also on the presidents of potential Republican Representative Kevin McCarthy of California and other allies in Congress, who uphold the claim that the election was somehow rigged or illegitimate, although each state has has proven its results accurate, and dozens of court challenges went nowhere.
I’m trying to convey the fragility of our democracy—something we’ve taken for granted—but something that has been torn to pieces over the past four years, Schiff said of his book.
He expects the committee to give a definitive report, just as the 9/11 Commission did a comprehensive investigation into the 2001 terrorist attack on America.
Trump scoffed at refusing to participate in the committee. Two prominent GOP lawmakers, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kizinger of Illinois, have been essentially rejected by their party for joining the panel and investigating it.
Trump says Democrats are drunk on power, and he is urging some of his former employees and administration officials not to comply with subpoenas or other requests for testimony. He is basing that stance on claims of executive privilege, even though he is no longer in office. This week, the panel announced it would vote to hold former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt for defying a subpoena.
Trump said in a recent statement that the Radical Left Democrats tried Russia’s witch hunt, they tried to fake impeachment, and are now trying to use Congress once again to persecute their political opponents .
Schiff tweeted this week that the panel is “doing no foul and expects Biden’s Justice Department to prosecute criminal contempt cases for compliance.
The goal, Schiff says, is for the committee’s final product to be a historical record, not as a way for the American people to go through that tragedy, but also as a way to make recommendations on how to move forward as a country. How do we protect our democracy?
With Trump languishing at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the weight of another White House run and garnering large crowds visiting early voting states, Washington waits and decides to take his next steps. thinking about.
Schiff acknowledged that he and other Democrats were not prepared for Trump’s popularity, and still five years on the struggle to mount a compelling counter-argument for Trump to entice voters who left the party.
More immediately, Democrats face the prospect of a House Republican takeover in the next midterm elections, with McCarthy to replace Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
If Kevin McCarthy ever became speaker, essentially Donald Trump would be speaker, Schiff warned.
He and Democratic allies have assembled a package of post-Watergate-style legislation aimed at bolstering the nation’s civic infrastructure and tightening ethics rules for the post-Trump era. But in the face of Republican opposition, the Senate is unlikely to pass.
Schiff described America’s experience as a wider “global struggle going on right now between autocracy and democracy. People around the world used to see us as a beacon. Now they see people as police officers outside our Capitol. beating up, he said.
So many things that we thought could never happen in this country have already happened.
Disclaimer: This post has been self-published from the agency feed without modification and has not been reviewed by an editor
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