On Tuesday morning, House leadership announced that the Judiciary Committee will be considering two articles of impeachment against Donald Trump: one count of abuse of office and one count of obstruction of Congress. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced the proceedings, and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler read the charges. But it was House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff who put the real punch behind the proceedings. In a very brief speech, Schiff summed up the gravity of Trump’s actions in a way that explained precisely why the House had to move forward with impeachment and absolutely demolished the “Why not wait?” argument.
Schiff: Why don’t you just wait until you get the documents the White House refuses to turn over? People should understand what that argument really means. It has taken us eight months to get a lower court ruling that Don McGahn has no absolute immunity to defy Congress. Eight months. For one court decision. If it takes us another eight months to get a second court or maybe a Supreme Court decision, people need to understand that is not the end of the process. It comes back to us and then we ask questions because he no longer has absolute immunity … and then he claims something else, that his answers are privileged, and then we have to go back to court for another eight months or 16 months.
The argument “Why don’t you just wait?” amounts to this: Why don’t you just let him cheat in one more election? Why not let him cheat just one more time? Why not let him have foreign help just one more time?
That is what that argument amounts to.
Throughout his statement, Schiff made clear that Trump’s actions were an assault on both national security and the integrity of our elections. Failure to move forward on impeachment, and failure to do so immediately, would be an invitation for Trump to repeat and expand on his actions in 2016. The case against Trump and the need for immediate action were never more clear than they were in this speech lasting less than five minutes.
The reason that Republicans are so determined to attack Adam Schiff, to undermine his credibility, and to paint him as a purely partisan figure whose words can be discounted was also never more clear than it was on Tuesday morning. They need to make him smaller because he towers over everyone on the Republican side of the aisle.