Adam Schiff will be sworn in to the Senate, where he wants to be more than Trump’s opponent

WASHINGTON (AP) – Democrat Adam Schiff stood on the Senate floor nearly five years ago as the House impeachment chairman and made a fiery case that Donald Trump should be impeached for abusing presidential power. “If it’s okay it doesn’t matter, we’re lost,” he told the lawyers, his voice heard at one point.

The Republican-led Senate was not convinced, and the Senate voted to acquit Trump of impeachment charges brought against him by the Democratic Alliance over his dealings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump will survive a second impeachment a year after his supporters stormed the Capitol and tried to overturn his defeat.

Now Trump returns to the White House, politically stronger than ever and firmly entrenched in what will be a Republican Congress. And Schiff, one of Trump’s biggest charges, will be sworn in to the Senate on Monday as part of the minority-leaning Democratic caucus and has so far held back from opposing the returning president, taking more time to wait and see. weeks before he was sworn into office.

As a new congressman from California, Schiff says he won’t even stray from his familiar territory – opposing Trump when he sees fit. But he’s also hoping to be bipartisan, after campaigning in Republican precincts in his state and working to learn more about rural issues that weren’t in his portfolio in his downtown Los Angeles House district.

“I think being there and letting people know, kicking the tires a little bit, helps overcome some of the Fox News stereotypes,” Schiff said of the news channel’s focus on him as he challenged Trump in his first term. He says he also sees that communication as a way to get information about how Democrats are moving forward after losing the November election.

Schiff will be sworn in a few weeks before the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3 because he closes the seat of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who died last year. He will enter the Senate earlier this week along with fellow House Democrat Andy Kim of New Jersey, who is filling in for former New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez after he was convicted of federal bribery and resigned.

Bipartisanship was important to Feinstein, who often worked across the board and built close relationships with other senators. But his work with Republicans has also drawn repeated criticism from California’s liberal voters.

Feinstein “was able to do several things at the same time, which I will need to try to do as well, and that is to work with others to bring the country, to work on party lines to get things done, and at the same time. time, to stand up and defend people’s rights and freedoms and their values ​​when those things are threatened,” Schiff told the Associated Press in an interview before his swearing-in.

He says those priorities will often conflict in the Trump era, “so I’m going to have to try to do both.”

Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, who spent time with Schiff as he prepared to enter the Senate, says he thinks Schiff has the “right way” to ask questions of other senators and avoid “commenting at every opportunity.”

“Everybody understands his abilities, but he also understands that he’s a new guy,” Schatz said, and it’s exciting when “someone of his caliber understands that he’s joining a team here.”

Still, Schiff, who was criticized by House Republicans last year for his involvement in the investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia, won’t be able to quickly shake off his longtime role as Trump’s chief opponent. The former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is more well-known than some of his new colleagues, and has been calling out Trump on social media in recent weeks and criticizing some of his Cabinet appointees as most of his fellow Democrats have opted for silence. .

Schiff posted on X last week that FBI director nominee Kash Patel, a former GOP staffer on the House intelligence panel, “is better suited as cyber director than FBI Director” and “the Senate should reject him.”

He may be part of the story as Trump has vowed to take revenge on people he considers his political enemies. President Joe Biden was considering the first pardon for aides and associates like Schiff who tried to hold Trump accountable for his efforts to subvert the 2020 election. Trump once suggested that Schiff should be jailed for treason and called him “the enemy within.”

Schiff, however, says he doesn’t think that’s necessary. He said Biden should not use his remaining days in office to defend him or anyone else in Trump’s position.

And the former prosecutor has a long experience of defending himself against Republican attacks. After the impeachment of the House, which happened when his colleague from California Kevin McCarthy was the speaker and Schiff was already running for Feinstein’s Senate seat, Schiff went to McCarthy’s district and met with local leaders. When a conservative news outlet asked him what he thought of McCarthy calling him a liar, “I answered something, coming from Kevin, I’m sure you mean that as a compliment,” Schiff said. .

It is unlikely that Schiff will follow his colleagues in the Senate, which he says is “a very different place culturally than the House.” He has already tried to get in with Republicans, including Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana, spoke with him about working on wildfire legislation that is important to both of their states.

And he is likely to earn the grudging respect of veteran Senate Republicans, some of whom praised him during the 2020 impeachment trial as he was deeply opposed to his base and voted not to impeach Trump.

After the first day of arguments, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham shook his hand and told him he was doing a good job. South Dakota Sen. John Thune, who will be Senate majority leader next year, said at the time that Schiff was “passionate and his case was well articulated.”

Schiff said he got the sense that some Republican senators were “surprised I wasn’t in the game,” and that the Senate is a more inclusive place than the House.

“I don’t think it was a damaging introduction,” he said.

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