An attempt to censure Rep. Adam Schiff failed Wednesday in the House after the California Democrat was targeted over his record of criticism of former President Donald Trump while heading a committee dealing with intelligence.
The resolution, introduced by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), was tabled on a 225 to 196 vote, with 20 Republicans joining 205 Democrats in voting to scuttle the effort. Seven representatives, including Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), voted “present.”
Afterward, Schiff said that he would wear the vote as “a badge of honor.”
“MAGA Republicans are going after me because I dared to hold Donald Trump accountable,” he tweeted, using the term for Trump-style conservatives. “These efforts to intimidate me will not succeed. I will always defend our democracy.”
Luna, a first-term lawmaker representing the Tampa area, said she will try again to get Schiff censured.
Schiff has been a prominent and longtime Trump critic. He was chairman of the House’s Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, or HPSCI, until he was denied a seat on the panel this year after Republicans regained control of the chamber.
He also served as one of the impeachment managers in the 2020 Senate trial of Trump, who attempted to withhold military aid for Ukraine unless its government announced an investigation of his Democratic rival Joe Biden. Trump was acquitted when a two-thirds majority of the Senate failed to vote to convict.
Wednesday’s House vote made good on a threat by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) a few weeks ago when, in reacting to an indictment against Santos, he publicly mulled whether Schiff should face repercussions for things the Democrat had said about Trump.
“Adam Schiff went on television ... and lied to the American public,” McCarthy said. “And he took this country down for four years, spending millions of dollars but at the same time disrupting democracy.”
Luna’s resolution trod much of the same ground. It accused Schiff of having “purposely deceived his Committee, Congress, and the American people,” abusing “his positions on HPSCI to encourage and excuse abusive intelligence investigations of Americans for political purpose,” and using “his position and access to sensitive information to instigate a fraudulently based investigation, which he then used to amass political gain and fundraising dollars.”
If the resolution had not been tabled and instead had been adopted, it would have required Schiff to stand in the House as its text was read aloud and to be investigated by the Ethics Committee. If the probe then found that he had lied, the resolution suggested he be fined $16 million — about half the amount of money that had been spent on investigating Trump, the resolution said, without citing a source for the figure.
Vowing on Twitter to try again, Luna said she thought some of her GOP colleagues had not read the approximately 574-word resolution “in entirety.”
“Next week, we will be filing a motion to censure and investigate Schiff,” she tweeted. “We are removing [the] fine as that seems to be what made these Republicans uneasy.”
Schiff is currently running to replace retiring Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) in the Senate.