House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), who is serving as a Democratic impeachment manager during President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, admitted on Wednesday that Democrats’ partisan impeachment was about stopping the president from being re-elected.
“The House did not take this extraordinarily step lightly,” Schiff began. “As we will discuss, impeachment exists for cases in which the conduct of the president rises beyond mere policies, disputes to be decided otherwise, and without urgency at the ballot box.”
“Instead, we are here today to consider a much more grave matter and that is an attempt to use the powers of the presidency to cheat in an election,” Schiff continued. “For precisely this reason, the president’s misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won.”
WATCH:
"The president's misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won."
— Rep. Adam Schiff, the lead House impeachment manager, during his opening statement to the U.S. Senate #ImpeachmentPBS pic.twitter.com/LaJux1Bh9I
— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) January 22, 2020
Numerous top Democrats have essentially admitted that their pursuit of having Trump removed from office was about stopping him from being re-elected.
In May, Rep. Al Green (D-TX) said, “I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach this president, he will get re-elected.”
Also in May, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “We have to make sure — this will sound political but we have to make sure that the Constitution wins the next presidential election. We can’t be worrying about well, how long is this going to take? Well, that will take as long as it does. And we will press the case so that in the court of public opinion. People will know what is — is right. But we cannot accept a second term for Donald Trump if we are going to be faithful to our democracy and to the Constitution of the United States.”
In November, socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “At the end of the day, we have to be able to come together as a caucus and if it is this Ukrainian allegation that is what brings the caucus together, um, then I think we have to run with however we unify the House. We also need to move quite quickly because we’re talking about the potential compromise of the 2020 elections. And so this is not just about something that has occurred; this is about preventing a potentially disastrous outcome from occurring next year.”
Last month, Green told C-SPAN that there was “no limit” to the number of times that Democrats could pursue impeaching Trump.
“A president can be impeached more than once,” Green said. “So, we can do this, we can move forward with what we have on the table currently, we can take this before the Senate and we can still investigate other issues and when the president has committed additional offenses, and my suspicion is that he will, we can take those before the Senate.”
“There is no limit on the number of times the Senate can vote to convict or not a president, no limit to the number of times the House can vote to impeach or not a president,” Green continued. “So, my belief is that the speaker will probably say we’re going to move forward with what we have now, but we’re not going to end investigations and that there may be possible opportunities to do other things at a later time.”