On Wednesday morning, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff held a press conference to recap the current standing of events in the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump and discuss where things are going in the near future. Pelosi began by pointing out that the House has advanced bills on issues such as prescription drugs that are still being stalled by Trump and Mitch McConnell. Schiff followed up by listing the actions that the House has taken to date—including hearings that have already taken place, those scheduled in the near future, and the scope of items under consideration. But it was in the question-and-answer session that both Schiff and Pelosi became more forceful about the situation, and in particular about actions taken by both Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to obstruct an impeachment inquiry.
In questioning, Schiff hammered both the actions that Pompeo has taken in an attempt to block the testimony of State Department officials, and the moves made by Trump to threaten the identity—and life—of the whistleblower. Schiff was explicit in saying that Trump’s repeated messaging that he wants to know the identity of the whistleblower, his comparison of the whistleblower to a spy, and his talk about how to handle spies are an explicit incitement to violence. Trump’s words aren’t just threatening the Constitution and the oversight role of Congress. They’re threatening lives.
“The president wants to make this all about the whistleblower and suggest people that come forward with evidence of his wrongdoing are treasonous and should be treated as traitors and spies," said Schiff. "This is a blatant effort to intimidate witnesses.”
Schiff noted that when the Constitution was written, the concerns over problems that could arise with executive power were exactly in the area where this inquiry falls. “If this conduct doesn’t rise to the level of a concern the founders had,” said Schiff, “what conduct does?”
Pelosi said that the area of this inquiry was right “in her wheelhouse,” since before she became speaker of the House, she had been the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. She agreed with Schiff about both the nature and the seriousness of the crimes under investigation. And she supported the need for congressional action to require that testimony be heard and documents turned over with alacrity. The founders, said Pelosi, “put guardrails in the Constitution” because they knew there was the potential for the misuse of executive power. “They never thought there would be someone who would kick those guardrails over.”
Schiff made it clear that any additional stonewalling and any attempts to prevent witnesses from testifying would be viewed directly as nothing short of obstruction, and that even though it’s clear that what Trump did was simply wrong, “There is a great deal more we need to know to appreciate the depth of the president’s misconduct.”
Asked about how she could continue to work with Trump, Speaker Pelosi provided some details of her call with Trump that came just before the release of the nontranscript of the call with Ukraine. Trump started the call by telling the speaker that she would be “very pleased” about actions he was taking on gun legislation. But then he tried changing the subject to the Ukraine call in an attempt to get Pelosi to drop the topic. Instead, Pelosi made it clear to Trump that his call was “not perfect, it was wrong.”
Overall, the press conference showed that the Democratic House is moving rapidly to gather the information it needs to press this impeachment against Trump and everyone else who engages in obstruction and intimidation. Both Pelosi and Schiff made it clear that they would be moving deliberately but swiftly to collect the information necessary, and that the days of allowing witnesses to dodge subpoenas and evade questioning are over.