Rep. Adam Schiff Says Trump's Ukraine Dealings Threaten Democracy

EVANSTON, IL — U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who is leading an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, said a president soliciting a foreign power to investigate a domestic political rival would have been considered among the most serious of offenses by the framers of the Constitution.

At a previously scheduled lecture at Northwestern University's Evanston campus Thursday titled, "The Threat to Liberal Democracy at Home and Abroad," Schiff said democratic institutions and democracy itself is under assault around the world, including from the president of the United States.

"We are in the midst of a profound ideological struggle," he said. "Not between communism and capitalism, but between democracy and authoritarianism."

The former federal prosecutor and 10-term member of Congress said the rise of authoritarianism has been driven not only by countries like Russia and China but by economic and technological revolutions that have deeply disrupted the nature of work and the spread of information.

"But I think one of the most pernicious threats to our democracy is the one that has been revealed just within the last couple weeks," Schiff said. "That is that the president of the United States would use the full power of his office to attempt to coerce a foreign leader — the leader of another country utterly beholden on the United States for its defense, for its economy, for diplomatic support — would use the power of his office to coerce that country into intervening in our election on his behalf by investigating his political rival."

Schiff said the scandal was the first since Watergate where a president has actively interfered in the Department of Justice to push for political prosecutions of his enemies.

"We must not become numb to that fact," he said. "And this, of course, has been the danger of this presidency, in which every day there's a new added outrage, that we become numb to just how far we have departed from what we thought were inviolate norms of office."

The Southern California Democrat said he had been reluctant to embark down the path to impeachment, something that should never be considered lightly, he said.

"The founders recognized that there may be circumstances where the risk to the country may be so great, where the president's conduct was so incompatible with the office, that there needed to be a means of removing the president," said Schiff. "It is hard to imagine a circumstance more foursquare within what the founders were concerned about than a president using the power of his office to coerce a foreign nation, not in America's interest but in his personal political interests, indeed in a way that damages America's national security."

Schiff said Congress would need to act expeditiously to prevent the House inquiry from dragging on forever. But if the White House sought to obstruct the investigation, to"make it drag on forever," then it may be necessary to vote on articles of impeachment before all the facts of Trump's Ukraine activities are fully known.

The impeachment inquiry was announced last week by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the wake of a whistleblower complaint accusing Trump of abusing power by cutting off military aid to Ukraine in an effort to compel the country's leadership to investigate the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, now a Democratic presidential candidate. Biden's son, Hunter, sat on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma during the Obama administration. Pelosi has yet to call for a vote of the full House of Representatives on the inquiry, despite demands from Republicans.

The White House released a summary of a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who had assumed office two months earlier, indicating Trump asked for Zelensky for the "favor" of investigating Biden and a unsubstantiated theory that Ukraine, rather than Russia, hacked Democratic Party servers during the 2016 presidential campaign. Following the phone call, the Trump administration withheld nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine. The money was released after the whistleblower complaint was lodged.

Text messages between diplomats released by the House Foreign Affairs Committee after Schiff's speech Thursday indicate administration officials conditioned the aid and a potential White House visit for Zelensky on the investigation.

"As I said on the phone, I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign," wrote William Taylor, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

Schiff spoke to a sold-out crowd of about 900 people gathered at Cahn Auditorium in the 30th annual Richard W. Leopold lecture, the Daily Northwestern reported. Leopold, who died in 2006, spent more than three decades as a history teacher at Northwestern until retiring in 1980. The lectureship in his honor was established in 1990 by friends, former colleagues and students, and has hosted speakers in academia, foreign policy and politics.

Prior to Schiff's address, Trump also publicly requested the assistance of the Chinese government to investigate Biden.

The president has described his call with Zelensky as "perfect" and accused the congressman of fabricating the whistleblower complaint against him. Earlier this week, Trump called for Schiff to be forced to resign from office and charged with treason. The president described Schiff as a "lowlife" who "couldn't carry" the jockstrap of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Schiff noted he co-chaired the "Freedom of the Press Caucus" with Vice President Mike Pence, a former congressman from Indiana.

"Where there is no freedom of the press, there is no freedom,” Pence said in a press release at the time. "If America is to be a beacon of hope to the world, we must hold high the ideal of a free and independent press, advance it abroad and defend it at home."

Schiff said he never expected threats to the freedom of the press would come from the president himself.

"You now hear despots around the world quoting the president of the United States in calling their own press, to the degree they still have any free press, the 'enemy' of their people — claiming that any critical journalism is 'fake' if it is critical of their rule or regime or tyranny," Schiff said.

Watch a full video of the event from Northwestern University