to paint a misleading public narrative. Chairman Schiff failed to respond to Republican requests for witnesses,[1] and directed witnesses not to answer questions from Republicans.[2] Chairman Schiff even declined to share closed-door deposition transcripts with Republican Members.[3]
During the public hearings, despite the modicum of minority rights outlined in the Democrats' impeachment resolution, Chairman Schiff has continued to trample long-held minority rights. Chairman Schiff interrupted Republican Members during questioning and directed witnesses not to answer Republican questions.[4] Chairman Schiff declined to invite all the witnesses identified by Republicans as relevant to the inquiry.[5] Chairman Schiff declined to honor Republican subpoenas for documents and witnesses, and then violated House rules and the Democrats' impeachment resolution to vote down the subpoenas without sufficient notice or even any debate.[6]
This is the very sort of process that Democrats had previously decried as "what happens when a legislative chamber is obsessively preoccupied with investigating the opposition rather than legislating for the people who elected them to office."[7] Rep. Jerrold Nadler, now chairman of the Judiciary Committee, once argued that:
The effect of impeachment is to overturn the popular will of voters as expressed in a national election. . . . There must never be a narrowly voted impeachment or an impeachment substantially supported by one of our major political parties and largely opposed by the other. Such an impeachment would lack legitimacy and produce the divisiveness and bitterness in our politics for years to come and will call into question the very legitimacy of our political institutions.[8]
During the impeachment proceedings for President Clinton, Democrats warned against "dump[ing] mountains of salacious, uncross-examined and otherwise untested materials onto the Internet, and then . . . sorting through boxes of documents to selectively find support for a foregone conclusion."[9] But now, in Speaker Pelosi's impeachment inquiry, as conducted by Chairman Schiff, the Democrats' old warnings have become the very process by which their current impeachment inquiry has proceeded.
- ↑ Letter from Jim Jordan, Ranking Member, H. Comm. on Oversight & Reform, et al., to Adam Schiff, Chairman, H. Perm. Sel. Comm. on Intelligence (Oct. 23, 2019).
- ↑ See, e.g., Vindman deposition, supra note 12, at 78-80, 103-05.
- ↑ See, e.g., Deirdre Shesgreen & Bart Jansen, House Republicans complain about limited access to closed-door House impeachment investigation sessions, USA Today, Oct. 16, 2019.
- ↑ See, e.g., Impeachment Inquiry: Ambassador William B. Taylor and Mr. George Kent, supra note 2; Impeachment Inquiry: Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, supra note 4.
- ↑ See, e.g., Beggin, supra note 550.
- ↑ Impeachment Inquiry: Ms. Laura Cooper and Mr. David Hale, supra note 246.
- ↑ Impeachment Inquiry: William Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States, supra note 640, at 94 (statement of Rep. Zoe Lofgren).
- ↑ Id. at 77 (statement of Rep. Jerrold Nadler) (emphasis added).
- ↑ Id. at 82 (statement of Rep. Bobby Scott).
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