House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff responded Thursday to calls for him to resign during a committee hearing.
The nine Republicans on the committee sent a letter to Schiff earlier Thursday that reads, in part, “Your willingness to continue to promote a demonstrably false narrative is alarming.”
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Schiff responded:
As you have chosen, instead of addressing the hearing to simply attack me, consistent with the president’s attacks, I do want to respond in this way. My colleagues may think it’s okay that the Russians offered dirt on a Democratic candidate for president as part of what was described as the Russian government’s effort to help the Trump campaign.
But I don’t think it’s okay. I think it’s immoral, I think it’s unethical, I think it’s unpatriotic and, yes, I think it’s corrupt and evidence of collusion. I do not think that conduct, criminal or not, is okay, and the day we do think that’s okay is the day we will look back and say that is the day America lost its way.
Despite Schiff having previously claimed to have seen “more than circumstantial evidence of collusion” back in March of 2017, the Mueller report did not find any evidence of collusion.
Schiff has faced heavy scrutiny since Robert Mueller concluded his investigation. Since then, other Republicans — including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy — have called on him to resign. (RELATED: Bruce Ohr Testimony Undercuts Adam Schiff’s Defense Of FBI)
“It’s now up to Nancy Pelosi to remove Chairman Schiff. We need to restore the trust in the intelligence committee,” McCarthy said in a statement. “The idea that you would have a chairman of a committee of this nature — with the work that is involved in this committee — who would lie to the American public and not apologize but use tactics of Senator Joe McCarthy to attack his own members. There’s nothing that can come from this committee, that can be trusted.”
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump tweeted, “Congressman Adam Schiff, who spent two years knowingly and unlawfully lying and leaking, should be forced to resign from Congress!”