Pasadena Lawmaker Lauds Biden/Harris Ticket

Last week was an exciting time for Democrats.

Presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden, continuing to rise in national opinion polls, chose California U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate. The party also announced Biden’s former boss President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle would be speaking during the Democratic National Convention.

Michelle Obama spoke on Monday night. 

From the party’s left-wing, progressive firebrand Bernie Sanders, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), another progressive standard-bearer, are also scheduled to speak. They’ll be joined during the four-day event by former candidate Elizabeth Warren, former President Bill Clinton, as well as 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, among a host of party luminaries.

Last night former Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich, one of the president’s main detractors in his own party, took the stage in support of Biden.

There seems in this all-virtual convention there’s something to please most Democrats of every stripe. That includes Congressman Adam Schiff, (D-Pasadena) a former federal prosecutor and “blue dog” or conservative Democrat who is generally pleased with the mostly liberal speaker lineup. Schiff called Harris “an excellent choice” for vice president.

“I think it’s a really strong ticket,” Schiff said

And, as for even a moderate Republican like Kasich speaking, “I think it shows we have a big tent as a party, which is going to be absolutely essential at this point,” Schiff said in a recent interview with Pasadena Now.

Last year at this time, impeachment was heavy on the minds of Democrats who were taking back power in the House of Representatives. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, according to an NPR timeline of those historic events, wasn’t initially behind the idea in early 2019, when Schiff was beginning his ninth two-year term in office, calling it “divisive.” Pelosi suggested “lawmakers should wait and see how the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election led by special counsel Robert Mueller played out.”

In April, Mueller’s redacted report was released to the public, finding no evidence that the Trump campaign actively conspired with Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, according to the NPR report. But “it did not exonerate the president from allegations that he obstructed the probe.”

During the spring and summer of 2019, after Congress approved some $391 million in military aid to Ukraine, Trump started asking about the aid, which had been put on hold. On July 25, Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, saying “I would like you to do us a favor though,” asking Zelensky to “look into” activities by Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine, as well as a discredited theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, not Russia, according to NPR.

Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, only learned in September that a complaint had been filed about the call by then-anonymous whistleblower Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council Ukraine expert, the previous month with the Senate and House intelligence committees. Vindman’s complaint, which alleged Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 election,” was withheld from Congress by order of Trump’s acting director of national intelligence. At that point, Schiff threatened to sue the administration in order to force it to turn over the complaint, the NPR report states.

In November and December, Schiff’s committee was taking depositions and calling witnesses in what by then had become formal impeachment proceedings. After similar hearings before the House Judiciary Committee, Trump was ultimately impeached, but he was not convicted in the Senate.

Trump escaped being thrown out of office, but within weeks following the impeachment trial, COVID-19 had descended upon the world, reportedly first in China and a few weeks later in the United States, in no time releasing a deadly contagion that has devastated millions of Americans physically, emotionally and economically.

It was against this backdrop of unsuccessfully prosecuting someone who’s been called the most ethically corrupt and morally bereft president in American history, then being forced to do something about the death and despair created by COVID-19 that Schiff shifted gears. He transformed from prosecutor in chief into chief provider, co-authoring and co-sponsoring relief packages aimed at keeping American families safe, fit, and fed, all while Trump openly fought with his own medical advisers on ways to battle the deadly virus, which as of Monday had claimed more than 170,500 lives.

Among these bills have been the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Employment Security (CARES) Act in March, parts of which expired on July 31, the $3 trillion Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, and most recently the Mixed Earner Pandemic Employee Assistance Act, which Schiff co-authored with Democratic Congresswoman Judy Chu, who also represents Pasadena. Of the three bills, only the CARES Act has been approved.

Schiff believes once the pandemic is over, there should be a reckoning of what has occurred, and the government’s response to the crisis.

“What I’ve proposed on the pandemic is that we establish an independent commission, like the 9-11 Commission, that the review of the nation’s handling of the pandemic is done objectively…. Take it out of the political realm,” Schiff said.

Regarding the upcoming election, Schiff maintains the Russians interfered in 2016 and are interfering now. But neither the Russians nor the Chinese are as dangerous to democracy as Trump, who is currently attempting to disrupt the US Postal Service in an effort that would make the agency unable to deliver the huge volumes of votes being cast by mail in November. Schiff called this tactic “utterly disgraceful.”

“The biggest threat to the election is not from a foreign country, but from the president himself,” Schiff said.

The one-time state senator’s to-do list now also includes campaigning virtually for a 10th term in Congress, running against Republican challenger Eric Early, also a lawyer, in the Nov. 3 election.

Is that easier or more difficult than conventional campaigning?

“I think it’s six of one and half-dozen of the other,” Schiff said. “I think it might be a little more difficult for a candidate who doesn’t know the district as well. But I think it’s changed the nature of campaigning for any candidate.”