Schiff: ‘Dramatic Progress’ in Impeachment Inquiry, As Intel Committee Does the Job of Special Counsel – CNSNews.com

Chairman of the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Adam Schiff speaks to reporters on October 15, 2019. (Photo by Eric BARADAT/AFP via Getty Images)

(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House intelligence committee, told a news conference on Tuesday that his committee is making "dramatic progress" in its investigation of President Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukraine President Zelensky, thanks to "courageous" State Department witnesses who have testified over the objections of the Trump White House.

Schiff also defended his committee's closed-door secrecy, saying Democrats are doing what "independent counsels or special prosecutors" have done in other cases leading to impeachment.

Republicans say Democrats are neither independent nor fair by insisting on secrecy and by selectively leaking information intended to damage President Trump. And it is a fact that Special Counsel Mueller was famous for not leaking.

"I think people need to understand the fundamental difference between where we are today with the Ukraine investigation and how the Russia investigation was conducted, how the Watergate investigation and how the Clinton investigation were conducted," Schiff said.

In each of those cases, there were either were independent counsels or special prosecutors doing the investigation, doing the initial investigative work, and that was all done behind closed doors. And it was done behind closed doors for a reason by those special counsels, and that is, there is a profound investigative-- not only interest but need -- to make sure that one witness does not have an opportunity to read another witness's testimony and either hide the truth or color the truth or know just how much they can give or how much they can conceal.

I'm sure the president would like nothing better than to have witnesses have the advatage of what others are saying. But there are reasons why special counsels Mueller did his investigation before a grand jury and not in public sight. There are reasons why the Watergate and Clinton special counsels did their investigations in like manner.

There is no special counsel investigation going on of the president's misconduct vis--vis Ukraine. None. Congress has to do it. And the reason there is none is because Bill Barr's Justice Department, when a referral was made to the Justice Department, said there's nothing to see here. And we don't even want to look, because the fundamental attitude of the attorney general is the president is above the law.

Well, the president's not above the law. But it has forced the Congress to do the initial investigative work that normally a special counsel would do. So there are good and sound reasons.

Schiff also pushed back on Republican criticism of the secret proceedings that allow only the Democrats to subpoena witnesses. Schiff said Republicans have as much opportunity to question witnesses as Democrats do -- but these are witnesses called by Democrats and seen as unfavorable to Trump.

Schiff said he anticipates releasing transcripts of the hearings eventually and calling back some witnesses to testify in open session.

'Dramatic progress'

Schiff said his committee has "learned much" in recent weeks, thanks to "the courageous testimony of State Department officials" who are "doing their duty" to testify over the objections of the Trump administration.

In the last couple weeks, I think we've made dramatic progress in answering some of the questions surrounding that July telephone call between President Trump and President Zelensky in which the President of the United States sought to coerce a vulnerable ally into conducting, I think, what can best be described as sham investigations involving his opponent and involving a debunked conspiracy theory about the 2016 election.

We have learned that call was not in isolation. There was a great deal of preparatory work that was done before the call. There was a lot of followup work that was done after the call.

...

We are also learning a great deal on the issue of conditionality, that is, the effort to condition a White House meeting that was desperately sought by the Ukraine president in order to get a commitment from that president to do these political investigations on behalf of the president of the United States.

So we are learning about the conditionality of that meeting. And I want to underscore just how important that meeting was for Ukraine. It is, I think, at the very top "ask" of most countries to have a meeting with the President of the United States, but this is most particularly true for a country that has been invaded by its neighbor Russia -- that is in the midst of still a very hot conflict; that is dependent on the United States economically, politically, diplomatically and militarily to show that the new president had a good relationship with the President of United States.

And so that gave enormous leverage to President Trump to coerce what he wanted from the president of Ukraine.

Schiff also mentioned "a complete effort by the administration to stonewall," when it comes to requested documents from the State Department and the Pentagon.

"And were it not for the fact that at least some witnesses have given us documents, we would not know that there was a paper record of efforts to condition this meeting and perhaps condition military support itself on these political investigations Donald Trump wanted," Schiff said.