Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who led former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment proceedings, had a stark warning for special counsel Jack Smith, the federal prosecutor who unveiled 37 felony charges against Trump last week.
“He will be the subject of relentless attacks by the president. Those attacks will result in death threats. I know because I’ve been there,” Schiff said in an interview with Spectrum News on Monday. “He’s about to have his life turned upside down, but he has to stick to his guns. He has to do the job. Trump goes after anyone who he feels is effective and a threat.”
“Whether it’s prosecutors in the Justice Department, in New York, or potentially in Georgia, they’re going to need to stand their ground, but they should know what’s coming,” Schiff added.
In a speech in Georgia on Saturday, Trump called Smith “deranged” and accused him and his wife of being “Trump haters.” He also speculated that Smith — who has worked as a state, federal and even international prosecutor for decades — was operating under an alias, a suggestion he has made in the past and for which there is no evidence.
Smith charged Trump with willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheme to conceal, and false statements and representation. Trump, who denies all wrongdoing, is set to appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday.
Schiff, who is now running for a U.S. Senate seat in California, has been the subject of attacks by Trump and his allies for years. Multiple people have been arrested by federal investigators for making threats against the congressman.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is prosecuting Trump in a separate case in New York, also received death threats after rhetorical attacks by the former president, including multiple letters with suspicious powder. And after the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in August, a man armed with a nail gun and an AR-15-style rifle attacked an FBI office in Cincinnati, Ohio.
“It’s going to be ugly, nasty, brutish, on the part of the former president,” Schiff charged.
The California congressman, a former prosecutor himself, called the charges “stunning in their detail and the degree to which this was premeditated on Trump’s part.”
“What struck me the most, I guess, was in reading this indictment, although it's an historic decision to indict a former president, it wasn't a difficult decision,” Schiff said. “Speaking as a former prosecutor, the evidence is so compelling, as outlined in the indictment, that if you didn't bring charges here, you'd be really treating the former president as above the law, as somehow immune from the law. And that just can't be in this country.”
Republicans leaping to Trump’s defense, Schiff argued, are damaging the American public’s faith in the legal system and putting “our democracy on fragile ground.”
“I can tell you the people I serve with, they know what they’re saying isn’t true. But they’re willing to do it for Donald Trump,” Schiff said. “This is sadly the story of the last six years, which is so many of my colleagues are willing to sacrifice their oath to the Constitution in favor of this subservience to their party leader.”
And despite the details and allegations in the indictment, which accuse Trump of knowingly possessing classified documents and attempting to hide them from officials, Schiff does not see the fever breaking on the American right.
“No matter how low the former president goes, no matter what wrongful conduct he’s engaged in, they rally around him because they want power and they think he’s the best opportunity to get power,” Schiff said. “The only thing [the Republican Party] cares about is trying to get power. And that, you know, sadly is putting our system very much at risk.”
The judge overseeing the classified documents case in Florida is Judge Alieen Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump when he was president. Last year, Cannon sided with Trump and appointed a third party, known as a special master, to review documents the FBI seized from his home, temporarily delaying the Justice Department’s investigation.
While Schiff called her earlier rulings “very suspect” and said they “may betray a certain bias,” he doubted Cannon would recuse herself or there would otherwise be grounds for recusal.
“Prosecutors are going to play it very straight. They’re going to try to do what they would do if this case was involving any other defendant. And I think that’s what they should do,” Schiff said.
Schiff also served on the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which made referrals to the Justice Department of possible laws Trump may have violated in inciting the violence. On Monday, he expressed hope that Smith, who is also investigating the former president’s role on that day, will “reach a decision on that investigation very soon.”
“It's frustrating that they took so long to get that investigation going,” Schiff said. “For a year, it looks like they focused only on the lower level people who were attacking the Capitol that day, not those at the higher levels in the White House who incited it at all.”
More than 1,040 people have been charged in connection to the attack as of June 6, the Justice Department reported, with more than 670 pleading guilty or being found guilty of federal charges.