Adam Schiff in Trump impeachment

On Government Reform: Supports CIA report: Russia interfered with 2016 election

Some Republicans on the House panel agreed that the evidence failed to support the intel agencies' conclusions. Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the panel, said that Democrats had hoped to at least find agreement with Republicans on the fundamentals of Russia's scheme to interfere in the 2016 election. But that hope evaporated, he said, with the GOP's decision to break from the intelligence community.

"It had been our hope for some time that even if there were areas of disagreement with the majority, that we could at least come together on a report that validated the findings of the intelligence community," he said. "This represents to me the completeness of the GOP's capitulation to the White House, and that leaves very little common ground."

On Government Reform: Trump's authoritarianism poses an existential danger

There is now a dangerous vein of autocratic thought running through one of America's two parties, and it poses an existential danger to the country. In this we are not alone. All around the world, there is a new competition between autocracy and democracy, and for more than a decade, the autocrats have been on the rise. This trend toward authoritarianism began before Donald Trump and will not have spent its force when he steps off the political stage for good. It will require constant vigilance on our part to ensure it does not gain another foothold in the highest office in our land.

On Principles & Values: Firing FBI's Comey for hidden reasons is obstructing justice

"The allegations in the Times piece, if accurate, provide further potential evidence that the White House was engaged in an effort to obstruct justice," Schiff told The Washington Post.

Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence Committee, said if true that Sessions gathered info on Comey, that Sessions may have been "trying to set up some predicate for firing [Comey] without disclosing what the true reason was." "If this was part of an effort to conceal the real motive for firing Comey, that's very pertinent to obstruction of justice," Schiff told the Post.

On Principles & Values: Anyone excerpt the president would have been indicted

And your work speaks of a president who committed countless acts of obstruction of justice that in my opinion and that of many other prosecutors, had it been anyone else in the country, they would have been indicted.

You would not tell us whether you would have indicted the president but for the OLC only that you could not. So the Justice Department will have to make that decision when the president leaves office, both as to the crime of obstruction of justice and as to the campaign finance fraud that individual one directed and coordinated and for which Michael Cohen went to jail.

On Principles & Values: Congress must decide on impeachment, not Mueller

You would not tell us whether the counterintelligence investigation revealed whether people still serving within the administration pose a risk of compromise and should never have been given a security clearance, so we must find out.

We did not bother to ask whether financial inducements from any Gulf nations were influencing U.S. policy since it is outside the four corners of your report, and so we must find out.

You would not tell us whether the president should be impeached, nor did we ask you since it is our responsibility to determine the proper remedy for the conduct outlined in your report. Whether we decide to impeach the president in the house or we do not, we must take any action necessary to protect the country while he is in office.

On Principles & Values: Challenges to subpoenas not impeachable, stonewalling is

SCHIFF: Going to court is not an impeachable offense. Stonewalling completely, refusing to comply with the oversight of Congress, particularly during an impeachment inquiry is an impeachable offense. I think this may be the most serious of the articles, because it would fundamentally alter the balance of power and allow for much greater misconduct in the chief executive of the country.

On Principles & Values: Impeachment: Can't turn away from cheating in next election

They don't want the American people to see the facts. They realize what's been presented in the House is already overwhelming, but there's more damning evidence to be had, and they don't want the American people to see that, and I think that's disgraceful. I hope that the senators will insist on getting the documents, on hearing from the witnesses, on making up their own mind even if there are some senators who have decided this president can do nothing wrong.

On Principles & Values: Made case for impeachment guilt, but not for removal

I didn't have time to ask who "they" were. We had been getting feedback during the course of the trial, sometimes directly from senators. But the best sources of information came from Sen. Schumer's staff, passed on to my staff in whispers and handwritten notes. Were these questions coming from Democratic senators, like Joe Manchin from West Virginia, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, or Doug Jones of Alabama? If so, we were in trouble.

Or was this feedback coming from Republican senators, several of whom had kept their cards close to the vest? If the Republican senators were asking, that meant their minds were still open to conviction, and that was good, even though at this point in the trial they had yet to hear the defense case.

On Principles & Values: Senators believed Trump guilty, but no reason to convict

This was the central question: Why should he be removed? He was the president of their party. He was putting conservative judges on the court. He was lowering their taxes. Why remove him? The president's Senate defenders believed there had been no quid pro quo. But I could see now that that wasn't it at all.

For the past three years, Republicans had confided their serious misgivings about the president. And the question wasn't so much "Why should he be removed?" as "Why should I be the one to remove him? Why should I risk my seat, my career and future? Why should I?"