Trump’s not going away — AND neither is investigator Schiff
By LISA MASCAROan hour ago
FILE - In this July 27, 2021, file photo, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., questions witnesses during the House select committee hearing on the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill in Washington. Schiff, who rose to national prominence leading the first President Donald Trump impeachment and probing Russian election interference, sees nothing less that democracy at stake with the former president's his continued presence on the national political stage. (AP Photo/ Andrew Harnik, Pool, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly a year out of the White House, Donald Trump continues to circle the Republican Party, commanding attention and influence as he ponders another run for the presidency.
And still circling Trump is Rep. Adam Schiff.
Schiff, the Intelligence Committee chairman who rose to national prominence probing Russian election interference and leading the first Trump impeachment, says there’s nothing less than democracy at stake with the former president’s continued presence on the national political stage.
As a key member of the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 Insurrection at the Capitol, the congressman whom Trump mercilessly mocks with derisive nicknames is turning his attention to Trump’s role in that deadly riot.
“What did the president know about who was coming to this rally and what did he do when he found out?” Schiff asks. “Why did it go on so long? And so there are a lot of important unanswered questions.”
As the committee ramps up its inquiry, it’s a familiar role but also a new chapter for Schiff, the federal prosecutor turned congressman whose life’s work is now defined in large part by the man he calls a “clear and present danger” to U.S. democracy.
Last winter, Trump was impeached a second time, accused of inciting the riot. But the House prosecutors, much like Schiff in the first trial that was focused on election interference involving the Trump campaign and Ukraine, failed to win conviction in the Senate.
This time, the California Democrat says the select committee expects to uncover fresh information about Trump’s involvement that January day, as he encouraged the mob of his supporters to head to the Capitol and “fight like hell” to reverse his electoral defeat to Joe Biden. Deaths in the riot and its aftermath included Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by police, and several officers who later took their own lives after 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 Could,” Schiff writes his personal, gripping account of that day: Preparing to don a gas mask in the House chamber, being forced to flee as the mob approached. https://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Washington-Almost-Democracy-Still-ebook/dp/B0925DRH7F
Republican colleagues warned him 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 to tally Electoral College votes for Biden, Schiff came to see Republican lawmakers, in “suits and ties,” as an institutional threat as serious as the rioters who bludgeoned their way into the building in an effort to overturn the election.
The special committee is drilling down not just on Trump, but also potentially Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California and the president’s other allies in Congress who perpetuate the claim that the election was somehow rigged or illegitimate — though every state has certified its results as accurate, and dozens of court challenges have gone nowhere.
“I’m trying to convey the fragility of our democracy -- something that we always took for granted -- but something that in the last four years has been dismantled piece by piece by piece,” Schiff said about his book.
He expects the committee to deliver “the definitive report,” much as the 9/11 commission produced a comprehensive examination of the 2001 terror attack on the U.S.
Trump scoffs at the committee, refusing to participate. Two prominent GOP lawmakers, Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois have essentially been disowned by their party for joining the panel and its probe.
Trump says the Democrats are “drunk on power,” and he is urging some of his former staff and administration officials not to comply with subpoenas or other requests for testimony. He’s basing that stance on claims of executive privilege even though he no longer holds office. This week, the panel announced it would vote to hold former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt for defying a subpoena.
“The Radical Left Democrats tried the RUSSIA Witch Hunt, they tried the fake impeachments, and now they are trying once again to use Congress to persecute their political opponents,” Trump said in a recent statement.
Schiff tweeted this week the panel is “not messing around’ and expects Biden’s Department of Justice to prosecute the criminal contempt cases to force compliance.
The goal, Schiff says, is for the committee’s end product to be a “historic record as a way of exposing to the American people what went into that tragedy, but also as a way of forming recommendations about how do we move forward as a country, how do we protect our democracy.”
With Trump ensconced at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, weighing another White House run and visiting the early voting states to rally big crowds, Washington is waiting and wondering about his next move.
Schiff acknowledges that he and other Democrats were ill prepared for Trump’s popularity, and still five years on struggle to mount a compelling counter-argument to woo back voters who left the party for Trump.
More immediately, Democrats face the prospect of a House Republican takeover in next fall’s midterm elections, elevating McCarthy to replace Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“If Kevin McCarthy were ever to become speaker, essentially Donald Trump would be speaker,” Schiff warns.
He and Democratic colleagues have assembled a package of post-Watergate style legislation aimed at shoring up the nation’s civic infrastructure and tightening ethics rules for the post-Trump era. But faced with Republican opposition, it is unlikely to pass the Senate.
“So many of the things that we thought could never happen in this country have already happened.”
Trump Says If Republicans Don’t Make the Big Lie Their Top Priority, Their Voters Won’t Vote
"EXPLAINER: As Arizona election ‘audit’ ends, new ones begin"
By Ed Kilgore Oct. 13, 2021
Trump’s latest demands are either impossible or plain sinister. Photo: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images
It’s generally part of the conventional wisdom these days that the real downside (politically, not morally; its immorality is fundamental) of Trump’s Big Lie about the “rigged” 2020 election was manifested in the crucial January 5, 2021, Senate runoffs in Georgia. NPR had the story not long after Republicans lost both contests and, with them, control of the U.S. Senate: - “Telling everyone that the race was stolen when it wasn’t cost the Republicans two Senate seats,” said Erick Erickson, a syndicated conservative radio show host and blogger in Georgia. “The going all-in on the cult of personality around President Trump hurt them as a result. They had to play up this, ‘There’s no way Donald Trump could have lost. It had to be stolen from him.’ “ - Aside from his hijacking of the campaigns of Senate incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, Trump’s “rigged” message appears to have convinced a crucial number of Republican voters there was not point in casting ballots, the classic example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. And now Trump has put out a statement demanding that Republicans not only subscribe to the Big Lie but “solve” it as their top priority:
Jonathan Karl @jonkarl Trump is now calling on Republicans not to vote — declaring “Republicans will not be voting in ‘22 or ‘24” if his election fraud hoax is not “solved” first. He helped Republicans lose two Georgia Senate seats in January. Now he seems ready to try it again in the midterms. https:// pic.twitter.com/ARBnsfwmzJ 8:01 AM · Oct 14, 2021 3.7K 1.5K ...link to Tweet
Whether or not you agree with Karl that Trump is “calling on Republicans not to vote,” this statement, if it reflects the former president’s planned message for the foreseeable future, sets out an impossible objective for his party. How do you “solve” the allegations of the Big Lie? They change constantly. Trump has challenged the authenticity of virtually all voting by mail, which is irreversibly a ballot option in every state and was a big deal long before 2020. On occasion, he and his allies have suggested (without evidence, of course) that there is systemic corruption in voter-registration rolls, in the conduct of in-person voting, in the maintenance of voting machines, in the tabulation of votes by election officials, in the certification of results, and in recounts and so-called audits. Add in the fact that Trump’s party has taken a virtually unanimous position against federal voting-rights legislation in order to justify their obstruction of Democratic legislation via the filibuster. He is making a demand the GOP cannot possibly fulfill.
I guess the big question is once this problem becomes apparent to all, where does Trump go next with it? Will it be enough when every Republican from sea to shining sea is grinding out a Big Lie message like so many cicadas? Will he then stop saying things that might discourage the people listening to this inane noise from voting in 2022 and 2024? Or are his intentions more sinister? Is Trump making it plain that democratic elections are so hopeless that extra-constitutional measures are the only resort?
Any way you slice it, though, Trump has succeeded in what is probably his short-term objective: keeping attention focused on his own self. That’s always Job One in MAGA-land.
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