President Donald Trump still has a lot to worry about as his time in office proceeds. This weekend, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) went on CBS’s Face The Nation to discuss the ongoing investigations into the president, including the growing cloud in which House Democrats are trying to determine whether Trump should be impeached. Schiff insisted that the Democrats’s investigative drives will not be ending anytime soon, and no matter any dissent within their caucus, their focus on uncovering the corruption embedded within the Trump administration will continue.
Schiff insisted that House Democrats are “doing an investigation that will ultimately determine whether or not the president should be impeached,” which at this stage hinges on a probe that the House Judiciary Committee is helping spearhead under the leadership of Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.).
Schiff explained:
‘There’s certainly an investigation under way. This is about more than just message — there are some of our members who are ready to vote to impeach and remove the president tomorrow, and there are some who believe that we should not impeach him because it will be a failed exercise in the Senate, but the vast majority of our caucus including our leadership is of the view that we should do the investigation before determining whether the president should be impeached… and that’s all that’s required in court to get access to the grand jury material that we need to do our jobs.’
Is there an impeachment inquiry underway? “There’s certainly an investigation underway,” @RepAdamSchiff says. pic.twitter.com/KuTeyxDIP3
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) September 15, 2019
Indeed — House Democrats have been after grand jury testimony from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation as part of that inquiry Nadler (and Schiff and others) are helping lead, but just recently, the Justice Department itself filed an assertion with federal court that Democrats should be blocked because supposedly, their investigation isn’t “formal” enough. (They added that even a formal impeachment inquiry before the full House supposedly wouldn’t be “formal” enough either, though, so their bias towards one particular outcome is pretty clear.)
This overall push includes a subpoena that Schiff issued just recently demanding that the currently serving acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Joseph Maguire hand over a whistleblower complaint that seems to involve misconduct by top-level officials. He wants that information by later this month, or he’ll be seeking to compel Maguire to testify.
So far, despite a legal demand for the material to already be handed over, Maguire has refused to comply — saying he’s acting on the directive of someone higher up. As Schiff noted this weekend, there are only a few people above the rank of the DNI including, notably, President Donald Trump himself.
Schiff told host Margaret Brennan:
‘This is deeply troubling… ignoring the subpoena, ignoring our request — no DNI, no Director of National Intelligence has ever refused to turn over a whistleblower complaint… The significance is the inspector general found this complaint to be urgent, they found it to be credible, that is, they did some preliminary investigation and found the whistleblower to be credible — that suggests corroboration, and that it involved serious or flagrant wrongdoing.’
The Director of National Intelligence’s refusal to turn over a whistleblower complaint to Congress is “deeply troubling,” @RepAdamSchiff says, adding that the complaint “involved serious or flagrant wrongdoing.” pic.twitter.com/GVSwgYm0GI
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) September 15, 2019
Featured Image via screenshot
