Adam Schiff doesn’t pull any punches in his scathing assessment of the president and the spineless Republicans in the Congress.
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STEPHANOPOULOS: Stone was convicted in part for false statements he made to your committee. What's your response to the president?
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): I think anyone who cares about the rule of law in this country is nauseated by the fact that the president has commuted the sentence of someone who willfully lied to Congress, covered up for the president, intimidated witnesses, obstructed the investigation.
It shouldn't matter whether you're a Democrat or Republican. This should be offensive to you if you care about the rule of law and you care about justice.
SCHIFF: But you point out a very important problem, George, which is responsible in part for the commutation of this sentence and that is Republicans won't stand up for the rule of law, won't stand up for the independence of the Justice Department. It shouldn’t matter, but this was a Republican-led investigation that Roger Stone lied to, the committee was then chaired by a Republican.
And here you have no more than a couple of Republicans willing to say a single word about someone who came before Congress and lied to them, intimidated witnesses and obstructed them. And why? Because he did it to cover for a president of their party.
This is distinction between now and Watergate. The Republicans at that time would not have stood for this, and Nixon understood that. But Donald Trump understands that he has these Republicans cowed, they won't stand up to him, they won't defend the rule of law.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Now, you said (ph) the same issue, the Republicans now being opposed to impeachment.
But is this an impeachable offense?
SCHIFF: It's an impeachable offense if you abuse the pardon power to protect yourself from criminal liability. But again, George, if the Republicans won't say a word, of course, they're not going to vote to impeach and convict.
We already presented a case with overwhelming evidence and they refused to convict them. And, indeed, of course, during that impeachment, we warned that if they left him in office, knowing that he committed impeachable offenses, that the damage he could do between now and Election Day could be severe.
And here we are now, 130,000 Americans dead, we had no idea just how bad the damage would be. But nonetheless we knew the damage would be grave.
Schiff isn’t reticent to point the finger squarely at the 52 spineless Republicans in the Senate, for the disasterous predicament the nation finds itself in today.
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