Adam Schiff faces calls to be removed from Congress over Trump collusion claims

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) on Wednesday unveiled a bill that seeks to remove Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) from Congress over his claims of collusion between former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. 

“Knowingly using your position on House Intel to push a lie that ripped apart our country, cost taxpayers millions of dollars, and authorized spying on a US President and then proceeding to double down on the lie within days of the Durham report coming out makes you unfit for office,” Luna wrote in a tweet on Wednesday. “Ethics should investigate.”

The freshman congresswoman included a photo of the resolution in her tweet. 

“Schiff lied to the American people. He used his position on House Intel to push a lie that cost American taxpayers millions of dollars. He is a dishonor to the House of Representatives,” Luna said in a separate tweet from her official congressional account. 

Schiff, who led the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Trump’s alleged ties with Russia, has long asserted that there is evidence to support the collusion claim.

“I can certainly say with confidence that there is significant evidence of collusion between the campaign and Russia,” Schiff said on March 13, 2018. 

“I think there is direct evidence in the e-mails from the Russians through their intermediary offering dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of what is described in writing as the Russian government effort to help elect Donald Trump,” Schiff maintained a year later on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

After the publication of Special Counsel John Durham’s report this week, which revealed that the FBI began its investigation of the Trump campaign without any evidence to support the collusion allegations, Schiff blasted the report as “flawed.”

“This was an investigation that started in a flawed manner, it was conducted in a flawed manner, and its conclusion is a flawed conclusion,” Schiff told MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell on Tuesday.

Durham’s report noted that a university researcher felt he was threatened by a member of Schiff’s staff in November of 2018 after he refused to help with the House Intelligence Committee’s Trump-Russia probe. 

In January, a fellow member of Luna’s Sunshine State congressional delegation, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) introduced a measure that would restrict Schiff’s access to classified information over his “baseless claims” of collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Kremlin. 

The PENCIL Resolution, an apparent nod to Trump’s derisive “Pencil-Neck” nickname for Schiff, calls for the California Democrat to not to have access to classified information, for him to be investigated by the House Ethics Committee, and to have comments he made in Congress on Russian collusion and the Trump campaign stricken from the record.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) refused to reappoint Schiff to the intelligence panel earlier this year, citing a lack of “integrity” and his “misuse of this panel” during the Trump administration.

Earlier this year, Schiff announced his intentions to run for Senate in California, to replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who will not seek re-election in 2024.