In his 2021 book “Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could,” Rep. Adam Schiff recounts Donald Trump’s attempts to sell out American interests for his own personal benefit while president, supported at every turn by a Republican Party too corrupt and too terrified to stand up to an obvious crook.
“There is now a dangerous vein of autocratic thought running through one of America’s great parties, and it poses an existential danger to our country,” Schiff writes. “The experience of the last four years will require constant vigilance on our part so that it does not gain another foothold in the highest office in our land.”
As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff oversaw the inquiry into Trump’s gambit to extort a contrived announcement of a phony investigation into political rival Joe Biden in exchange for the release of desperately needed assistance that Congress had authorized for Ukraine’s self-defense against Russia. Trump’s scheme was perfectly consistent with his subsequent felonious attempts to steal the 2020 election from the American people and then to steal classified documents from them, all detailed by the Jan. 6 select committee and by a federal grand jury in Miami.
At the time Trump called his extortionate telephone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “perfect call.” And it indeed was “perfect,” exactly in the way that Trump’s pilfering nuclear secrets in violation of the Espionage Act was perfect, and his request that the Georgia Secretary of State fabricate fraudulent election results was perfect, and his sexual assault on E. Jean Carroll in a Manhattan department store dressing room was perfect.
What actually was perfect was the leadership Schiff showed in exposing Trump’s tawdry plot to tarnish Biden by withholding military aid to an ally, but, as these things frequently go, Schiff has paid a price. He and his family are exposed to continual threats from the same sort of patriots who beat the daylights out of Capitol Police on Jan. 6. They require constant security. Last week, on orders from a former president not only headed for the slammer but considerably beyond untethered, House Republicans, who control the lower chamber by a narrow margin, voted to censure Schiff.
In its fashion, the censure vote was perfect: a vote by small people who have marched like lemmings over a moral cliff to censure a hero who called them out for their immorality and gutlessness. One of the various dishonest pretexts for the censure was Schiff’s statements of the obvious: that of course there was evidence that the 2016 Trump campaign sought and received assistance from Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin to defeat Hillary Clinton and elect Trump.
Such statements were every bit as controversial as saying that the earth is round. The June 2016 Trump Tower meeting requested by Russian agents to discuss delivering dirt on Clinton, attended by Trump’s son, son-in-law and campaign chairman, is a fact. Campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s delivery of Trump campaign strategy materials to a Kremlin operative is a fact. Kremlin-directed hackings of Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign computers to extract and disseminate emails for the purpose of helping Trump is a fact. Adam Schiff has been right from the start, and wrong about nothing. In MAGA World, the world that grips the Republican Party in a vise, that is precisely the problem.
In response to the censure vote, Schiff extended an elegant middle finger. “To my Republican colleagues who introduced this resolution,” he said, “I thank you. You honor me with your enmity. You flatter me with your falsehood.”
The GOP’s bankruptcy is perfectly illustrated by the fact that it voted to censure Schiff while refusing to act against fellow Republican Rep. George Santos, the fraud spree on two legs who sits among them and helps them preserve their narrow control in the House.
Never mind the 13-count federal indictment against Santos. He’s their guy. And in case you were wondering, yes, Santos voted to censure Schiff.
Which is just perfect.
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