Sen. Adam Schiff Takes the High Road but Keeps Pressure on Trump

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) walked onto the floor of the US Senate after being sworn into office on Dec. 9 and pledged to work with Republicans to get things done. 

Facing threats from President-elect Donald Trump, who said last weekend that Schiff and other members of the congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol belong in jail, Schiff said he nevertheless would seek to govern in a bipartisan manner.

"I'm going from 750,000 in my district to 40 million, which is very exciting,” Schiff told his hometown local TV station, Los Angeles’ NBC 7. “In order to get things done, you really have to work with people across the aisle, so there's a lot of incentive to find good partners."

He echoed that message in an interview with the Associated Press, saying he hoped to make new friends in Washington, DC. “I think being there and letting folks get to know me, kick the tires a bit, helps overcome some of the sort of Fox News stereotypes,” Schiff said. 

Schiff spoke in several interviews last week about the legacy of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose seat he is filling until he begins his own term in January, and who had close relationships with senators in both parties. 

Schiff told AP that Feinstein “was able to do a couple things simultaneously, which I’m going to need to try to do as well, and that is work with others to deliver for the state, work across party lines to get things done, and at the same time, stand up and defend people’s rights and their freedom and their values when those things are threatened.”

Trump’s Chief Prosecutor

Almost five years earlier, on Feb. 4, 2020, Schiff delivered a major speech on the floor of the US Senate, when he was a member of the House of Representatives and manager of Pres. Donald Trump’s first impeachment.

In his closing argument, pleading with the senators to convict the president for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, Schiff invoked the lateness of the hour, which came after several long days. “It is midnight in Washington,” he said—a fact intended to indicate a sense that the nation’s capital was in danger. “You can’t trust this president to do the right thing,” he said, his voice quavering—”not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of our country—you just can’t. He has compromised our national security. He has compromised our elections, and he will do so again.”

Schiff's impassioned prosecution of the case against the president earned him the ire of Trump and his allies. Stripped of his post in the House Intelligence Committee, where he had served as chairman for years, Schiff later was censured, in 2023, for claiming the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. (For the record, in August, 2020, a Republican-controlled Senate panel, after a three-year investigation, found “an extensive web of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and Kremlin officials.”)

As we know, on Jan. 6 2021, Schiff’s prediction that Trump would again compromise an election, proved something of an understatement. Schiff served on the House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol. That committee referred criminal charges against the then-former president to the Justice Department, including insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy to defraud the federal government.

In a flurry of events over the past several weeks, the president elect threatened to prosecute Schiff and his colleagues on that committee; Pres. Joe Biden floated a plan to offer them blanket immunity; and Schiff essentially rejected that offer. 

"The precedent of giving blanket pardons, preemptive blanket pardons on the way out of an administration, I think, is a precedent we don't want to set," Schiff said.

And while he promised to work across party lines, Schiff attacked Trump's promise to pardon some Jan. 6 offenders.