Tipsheet

Tide Has Changed: Schiff Was Elected to Congress Based on His Anti-Impeachment Motto

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) has had it out for President Donald Trump since Trump was president-elect. For two years, Schiff continually told us Trump colluded with Russia to meddle in the 2016 election. When Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no collusion took place, Schiff then shifted his focus to Trump's call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. During that call, Trump asked Zelensky to investigate former-Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, for corruption. While the veep was handling international relations with Ukraine on behalf of the Obama administration, Hunter was being paid $50,000 by the corrupt Ukrainian gas company Burisma, despite having no natural energy experience.

Schiff has been the person spearheading impeachment calls since Trump was elected – not even inaugurated – and the most ironic part is that he initially ran for Congress on an anti-impeachment platform, The Daily Caller reported. During his 2000 campaign challenging 10-term Rep. James Rogan (R), "the conservative Republican who served as one of the leading House prosecutors in the Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton," Schiff ran a very anti-impeachment campaign, The Washington Post reported at the time.

From The Daily Caller:

“Impeachment as a political issue has all but disappeared from America’s political radar in this election, with even Al Gore refusing to make the partisan death match of 1998 and 1999 a campaign issue in the year 2000. But here, in California’s 27th District, Rogan’s battle with Democratic state Sen. Adam Schiff seems the last bloody battle of the impeachment war,” Anthony York recounted in an October 2000 Salon article.

Schiff “used impeachment as a fundraising tool,” York noted in the article, which the Daily Caller News Foundation reviewed using research service LexisNexis.

“Schiff’s campaign literature hammers away on Rogan’s role in the impeachment proceedings,” The Washington Post noted in a May 2000 article. Schiff argued in one fundraising missive that “in the partisan impeachment hearings that polarized our nation for so long, the right-wing Rogan stood out,” The San Diego Tribune reported that same month in an article reviewed by the DCNF using Lexis.

“The district simply has not been a priority for him. He has been more engaged in national partisan ideological crusades than in issues important to the district,” Schiff told the Los Angeles Times in January 2000, apparently referring to impeachment.

“I think voters want to get away from the strong partisanship we’ve seen in Congress and elect someone with a good record of working in a bipartisan way to find solutions,” he added.

Gee. Look at that. Schiff has become everything he campaigned against when President Bill Clinton was facing impeachment. Schiff hammered away at the fact that Congressman Rogan was more focused on "national politics and partisan impeachment hearings," yet Schiff is doing the exact same thing with President Trump. He's more focused on trying to oust Trump than he is on actually getting things done for his district. It's also why he's been nicknamed "Shifty Schiff."