Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House intelligence committee, said Friday the best route to removing President Trump from the White House is to “vote his a— out of office.”
Mr. Schiff, California Democrat, made the remark on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” while discussing whether Congress should initiate impeachment proceedings against the president in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller’s recently concluded investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections and related matters.
“I’m not there yet on impeachment,” Mr. Schiff told the show’s host. “But here’s the awful dilemma that we face: If we don’t impeach him, that sends a message that this kind of conduct — this obstruction of justice, this kind of willing use of the help of a foreign adversary, all the lies and cover-up — that this is non-impeachable. At the same time, if we do impeach him, and he is acquitted, as he would likely be acquitted, then the message is: Those are non-impeachable offenses.
“At the end of the day, Bill, there is only one way to deal with the problem whether we impeach him or not, and that is to vote his a— out of office,” Mr. Schiff told Mr. Maher.
Neither the White House nor Mr. Trump’s reelection campaign immediately returned messages seeking comment.
Released the previous week, a 488-page redacted report summarizing the special counsel’s probe detailed Russian meddling in the 2016 elections and subsequent measures taken by Mr. Trump while in office, including his firing in 2017 of former FBI Director James B. Comey and nine other incidents investigated as potential obstruction of justice.
Mr. Mueller’s team “found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations,” according to the special counsel’s report.
“Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President’s conduct,” the special counsel’s office added.
Democrats including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a 2020 presidential hopeful from Massachusetts, have since called for impeaching Mr. Trump, and around 37 percent of Americans surveyed support initiating those proceedings, according to the results of a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Friday.
Mr. Trump claimed “total exoneration” following the release of Mr. Mueller’s report on April 18. He has since referred to some of its findings as “total bulls—-.”
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.