No matter the volume of unhinged tweets that President Donald Trump posts, House Democrats are proceeding with their impeachment inquiry. The Trump administration has reportedly “responded” to that inquiry with a criminal investigation into the current and former officials responsible for starting the Russia investigation — despite plenty of evidence, Trump has infamously denounced the Russia probe as a “hoax” from the very start. This weekend on ABC’s This Week, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) bluntly denounced that criminal investigation and insisted that the impeachment inquiry would be proceeding, with public hearings coming “soon” and efforts for testimony from figures like Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton.
Schiff told host Martha Raddatz:
‘If Bill Barr’s Justice Department is doing a criminal investigation into people who properly looked into Russian interference in our election in the FBI, in the intelligence agencies — it means that Bill Barr, on the president’s behalf, is weaponizing the Justice Department to go after the president’s enemies… [Barr] is demonstrating once again that he is merely a tool of the president, not a representative of the American people.’
Rep. Adam Schiff: If DOJ “is doing a criminal investigation of people who properly looked into Russian interference…it means that Bill Barr, on the president’s behalf, is weaponizing the Justice Department to go after the president’s enemies.” https://t.co/0YcfDlWTDd pic.twitter.com/0ooI7Ie9L8
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 27, 2019
Barr has faced these accusations of blatant bias before. When the final report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation initially came out, he delivered a public summary of that report that excluded key details about the obstruction of justice case against the president. Despite having received a private letter from Mueller himself outlining concerns with Barr’s summary, the Attorney General claimed to Congress that he had no idea what reports about Mueller team concerns with him were talking about.
Now, he’s continuing that trend by overseeing this reported criminal investigation. Barr has personally repeatedly traveled to places like Italy, where he’s sought information that does not exist to support a baseless conspiracy theory about foreign government involvement in pushing the supposed conspiracy theory of the (in reality very demonstrably true) Russia scandal.
Meanwhile, House Democrats are continuing their impeachment inquiry, which they launched after revelations about a similar mission centering on Trump personally trying to get dirt from Ukraine on the Bidens.
Schiff told Raddatz:
‘We will be doing public hearings, and I think we will be doing them soon. I don’t want to give precise timing, in part because we are struggling with the White House continuing to obstruct our investigation and obstruct witnesses from coming in. My guess is they’re going to fight us having John Bolton in… [He] is a very important witness.’
“John Bolton is a very important witness…and we do want him to come in and testify,” Rep. Adam Schiff tells @ThisWeekABC, adding that he predicts the White House may to try to block any possible testimony by Bolton. https://t.co/BURjYQzzys pic.twitter.com/5eV3nwlyfk
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 27, 2019
Despite White House obstruction efforts, House Dems have already accumulated a wealth of substantive testimony. For instance, just recently, top Ukraine Ambassador Bill Taylor told them that Trump officials had sought to tie “everything” that Ukraine wanted to them producing that dirt.
Some House Republicans have responded with stunts like their recent mass walk into a secure classified hearing room that they were not authorized to enter. Testimony in the impeachment inquiry had been set to transpire there, but House Republicans barged in with their unsecured electronic devices in hand and held things up for some time.
