Representative Adam Schiff, whose probes of Donald Trump led to the former president’s first impeachment, repulsed an effort by hard-line Republicans to fine him $16 million for alleged investigative abuses and slap him with a formal rebuke.
(Bloomberg) — Representative Adam Schiff, whose probes of Donald Trump led to the former president’s first impeachment, repulsed an effort by hard-line Republicans to fine him $16 million for alleged investigative abuses and slap him with a formal rebuke.
The 225-196 House vote Wednesday to block the censure resolution highlights fractures within a Republican party grappling with how to respond to Trump’s indictment on charges of mishandling classified information and ideological disputes over how much to cut federal spending.
Twenty Republicans joined with Democrats to sideline the measure, displaying emerging limits on loyalty to the former president as well as institutional concerns about setting a precedent for financial retribution on lawmakers when partisan control of Congress shifts.
Schiff, one of Trump’s most prominent antagonists during his presidency and now a candidate for Senate in California, argued the censure resolution was an “attempt to gratify the former President’s MAGA allies, and distract from Donald Trump’s legal troubles.”
Trump allies led by Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, a freshman member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, introduced the measure on Tuesday, the same day Trump was arraigned on 37 federal criminal counts for mishandling classified documents and obstructing the resulting investigation. House rules required a vote by Thursday once the resolution was introduced.
Luna’s resolution accuses Schiff of “misrepresentations, and abuses of sensitive information,” in probes he led of the Trump campaign’s alleged Russian collusion leading up to the 2016 presidential election.
Schiff also led the first impeachment investigation of Trump, on charges of abuse of power and obstruction connected with the then-president’s efforts to hold up aid to Ukraine to pressure the government to investigate election rival Joe Biden. Schiff was the chief prosecutor in the Senate trial of Trump that followed.
A censure vote amounts to an official rebuke by the House but doesn’t disqualify or remove a lawmaker from office.
The resolution also called for an investigation by the House Ethics Committee, and instructed the panel to fine Schiff $16 million if it decided that he “lied, made misrepresentations, and abused sensitive information.” Luna says that is half the cost of the intelligence panel’s probe into the Trump campaign’s ties with Russia.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who removed Schiff from the intelligence panel earlier this year at the behest of Trump allies, didn’t take an official position on the Democratic-backed effort to “table” the censure resolution, which effectively blocks it.
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