Rep. Adam Schiff on Wednesday delivered a withering attack on President Trump during the House impeachment proceedings — saying that Alexander Hamilton showed “staggering prescience” when he warned of an “unprincipled” and “despotic” man winning the presidency.
Hamilton, the Intelligence Committee chair said, feared “a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune … despotic in his ordinary demeanor,” and “known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty” winning the White House.
“Could we find a more perfect description of the present danger emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? The framers crafted a Constitution that contemplated free and fair elections for the highest office in the land, but also afforded the Congress with the power to remove a president who abused the powers of his office for personal gain,” said the California Democrat, who took over from Manhattan Rep. Jerry Nadler just before 4 p.m.
Schiff — often mocked by the president as “Shifty Schiff” — then laid out in detail Democrats version of the sequence of events that resulted in the House impeachment proceedings.
Trump, he argued, pressured Ukraine President Voldoymyr Zelensky in a July 25 call — which sparked the impeachment proceedings — to launch investigations into Joe Biden, his son Hunter and the 2016 election.
The administration at the time was withholding a White House visit for the president, as well as $391 in military aid the country wanted to fight Russian-backed separatists in the country’s east.
The aid was eventually released on Sept. 11 after members of Congress had inquired about the delay and after a whistleblower reported on the conversation.
“Over the last three months we’ve found evidence that President Trump abused his power by pushing the newly elected president of Ukraine to announce an investigation into President Trump’s political rival Joe Biden with the hopes of defeating Mr. Biden in the 2020 presidential election, and enhancing his own prospects for reelection,” Schiff asserted.
The House was expected to vote on two articles of impeachment later Wednesday.
Trump has denied wrongdoing and attacked the proceedings as a ‘hoax” and a “witch hunt.”
“SUCH ATROCIOUS LIES BY THE RADICAL LEFT, DO NOTHING DEMOCRATS. THIS IS AN ASSAULT ON AMERICA, AND AN ASSAULT ON THE REPUBLICAN PARTY!!!!” he wrote in one of a series of tweets and retweets.