The House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, has blasted Republicans for putting their party above the interest of the nation in the ongoing impeachment proceedings against US president Donald Trump.
Trump is under investigation by the Democracy controlled US House of Reps for allegedly persuading the Ukraine government to investigate his Political rival Joe Biden by withholding military aid to Ukraine.
But Republicans including Trump have blasted the impeachment proceedings as partisan and a political plan by the Democratic party to remove the president elected by the American people.
Schiff, who is one of the top Democrats pushing for Trump’s impeachment has now vowed to remove Trump and says he would have been a leading voice among his party for impeachment even if Trump were a Democrat.
‘I would hope that there would be Republicans who would be willing to step forward and say, ‘Whatever the political consequences–’ Schiff told CNN’s Jake Tapper on State of the Union Sunday morning. ‘If this was Barack Obama had done this, they would have voted to impeach him in a heartbeat, with a fraction of the evidence.’
‘It shouldn’t matter that this is a Republican president,’ he continued. ‘I hope to hell that had this been a Democratic president, I would be among those leading the way saying we need to seriously consider impeaching this president.’
In a separate interview Sunday morning with NBC’s Chuck Todd, Schiff also talked about former National Security Advisor John Bolton refusing to testify as part of the impeachment inquiry.
Schiff also claimed Bolton, and other top members of the White House who refuse to testify, will explain ome day why they refused to resting saying he has no time to fight in courts to bring Bolton to testify.
Schiff also questioned why Bolton will share information about Trump’s dealings for a future book rather than let it come out during congressional testimony.
“People like John Bolton, whose deputies had the courage to come in and testify, are going to have to answer one day why they saved what they knew for a book rather than tell the country when the country needed to know,” Schiff told Meet the Press Sunday.
“But I do think that when it comes to documents and witnesses, that if it comes to a trial, and again we’re getting far down the road here, that the chief justice will have to make a decision on requests for witnesses and documents,” he continued.
