Watch Adam Schiff Destroy the Republican Argument Against Impeachment

Shawn Thew/Zuma

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

In a fiery statement bringing Thursday’s impeachment hearings to a close, House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff explained the gravity of the accusations against President Donald Trump and dismantled the Republican argument against impeachment. Where his Republican counterpart Devin Nunes resorted to bluster and a bit of Founding Father necrophilia, Schiff was clinical and incisive. In a matter of 20 minutes, he laid out both a straightforward case for impeaching the president and a comprehensive picture of GOP denial.

Schiff began by repudiating Republicans’ cries of a “Russia hoax,” reminding views that Russia did indeed interfere with the 2016 presidential election. “We all remember that debacle in Helsinki, when the president stood next to Vladimir Putin and questioned his own intelligence agencies,” he said, bristling. “But of course, they were silent when the president said that.”

Schiff took pains to clarify the geopolitical stakes underlying Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s communications with Trump. Zelensky needed Trump as an ally in his nation’s war against Russia. He was entering a negotiation with its president, Vladimir Putin, over how to end the conflict, and the prospect of Trump’s support was a large part of the leverage he needed.

“Whether [Zelensky] has good leverage or lousy leverage depends on whether the Russians think he has a relationship with the president, and the president wouldn’t give him that, not without getting something in return,” Schiff said. “And that return was investigations of his rival that would help his reelection.”

Then, questioning his colleagues’ grasp of legal procedure, Schiff called accusations that all evidence was hearsay “absurd.”

“After all, you’re relating what you heard and you’re saying it, so it must be hearsay,” Schiff said, mimicking the Republican members of the committee. “Therefore, we don’t really have to think about it, do we? Well, if that were true, you could never present any evidence in court unless the jury was also in the Ward Room.”

And in any case, Trump is implicated by his own words, as written in the memo of the July 25 phone call. Per the Republican argument, Schiff said, “We should imagine that he said something about actually fighting corruption, instead of what he actually said, which was, ‘I want you to do us a favor, though.'”

Said Schiff: “When the founders provided a mechanism in the Constitution for impeachment, they were worried about what might happen if someone unethical took the highest office in the land and used it for their personal gain and not because of deep care about the big things that should matter.” Though Schiff resisted impeachment for a long time, Trump’s request for China to investigate the Bidens pushed him over the edge, he said. “The president believes he is above the law, beyond accountability,” he concluded. “And in my view, there is nothing more dangerous than an unethical president who believes they are above the law.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate