The House descended into chaos on Wednesday afternoon as the chamber voted along party lines to punish a Democrat over the long-shuttered Trump-Russia investigation.
Democrats booed and heckled Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday as the GOP voted to censure California representative Adam Schiff for his efforts to investigate the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
On cameras of the House floor, Democrats could be seen rallying near the lectern and chanting, “Shame!” as the Speaker announced the result of the vote, which he said was punishment for “misleading the American public.”
On Wednesday, the House voted 213-to-209 largely on party lines to censure Mr Schiff. Republicans have claimed that Mr Schiff had misled the American public about the Trump-Russia investigation, which ended without proof that the Trump campaign had coordinated with Russia but found that Russia’s actions had been taken to benefit the former president’s campaign and harm Hillary Clinton’s bid for the White House. Republicans argue that Mr Schiff lied when he argued that there was evidence to support the idea of collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
He was previously removed from the House Intelligence Committee by Mr McCarthy for the same reason. A previous version of the censure, which had included a $16m fine, was voted down with some Republican opposition.
In a speech from the floor, the California Democrat remained defiant, saying he was being punished for pursuing the truth by a party that’s attached itself to conspiratorial thinking about the election.
“You who are the authors of the big lie about the last election must condemn the truth tellers and I stand proudly before you,” Mr Schiff said.
“No matter how many false justifications or slanders you level against me, you but indict yourselves,” he added. “As Liz Cheney said, there will come a day when Donald Trump is gone. But your dishonor will remain.”
New York Democrat Dan Goldman agreed, calling the censure vote a “phony ploy to punish Adam Schiff for speaking truth to power” in a floor speech of his own.
“One of my colleagues says, ‘We will hold members accountable.’ You are the party of George Santos. Who are you holding accountable?” he added.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi laid into them as well: "Today we are on the floor of the House where the other side has turned this chamber — where slavery was abolished, where Medicare and Social Security and everything were instituted — they’ve turned it into a puppet show."
“They’ve turned it into a puppet show and you know what? The puppeteer, Donald Trump, is shining a light on the strings. You look miserable,” she added. “You look miserable.”
Mr Schiff’s enemies, meanwhile, accused him of supporting a narrative that supposedly caused a great divide between members of families all across the country. Anna Paulina Luna, the GOP lawmaker leading the resolution, personally accused him of “permanently destroying family relationships”.
“By repeatedly telling these falsehoods, Representative Schiff purposely deceived his Committee, Congress, and the American people,” the resolution read.
Previously, Mr Schiff had said the censure resolution “would accuse me of omnipotence, the leader of some a vast Deep State conspiracy, and of course, it is nonsense.”
Beyond the Trump-Russia investigation, Mr Schiff also became a target of the Republican caucus due to his prosecution of Mr Trump during his first impeachment trial, when he was accused of improperly pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into launching a criminal investigation into Joe Biden — at the time, apparently, with the hopes of politically damaging the Democratic candidate ahead of the 2020 election.
That investigation was never launched but Rudy Giuliani, who was a central figure in trying to make it happen, would later go on to become Mr Trump’s legal counsel in his bid to overturn the election following his defeat.
The toothless censure of Mr Schiff is likely to be little more than a consolation prize for Republicans who had originally wanted an investigation into the origins of the Russia probe to uncover a vast “Deep State” conspiracy against Mr Trump, which never materialised.
The leader of that investigation, John Durham, appeared on Capitol Hill for a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee separately on Wednesday where Mr Schiff grilled him over whether he had been concerned about efforts by a group of Russians to reach out to the Trump campaign and offer damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Republicans, meanwhile, voiced their displeasure over how Mr Durham’s investigation had fizzled without any major victories in the effort to prove a long-reaching shadowy conspiracy against Mr Trump.
