Following an escort from Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Alex Padilla to the Senate floor, Sen. Adam Schiff was sworn in to the Senate Monday to represent the Golden State as its junior senator. 

Schiff, who won a special election in November to serve out the rest of the late-Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s term, was elected to serve a six-year term beginning in January 2025. Sen. Laphonza Butler, D-Calif, was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to temporarily fill the seat following Feinstein’s passing in September 2023, but decided not to run for the seat herself.

What You Need To Know

  • Senators Adam Schiff and Andy Kim were sworn in Monday to the U.S. Senate

  • Schiff won a special election in November to serve out the remainder of the late-Senator Dianne Feinstein's term, in addition to his own 6-year term that begins in January

  • Schiff has been a veteran of Capitol Hill for over two decades, but became a household name during the first Trump administration for his roles in Trump's first impeachment trial and on the House intelligence committee

  • Kim won a special election to serve out the remainder of former Senator Bob Menendez, who resigned earlier this year following a conviction on federal corruption charges

Schiff was sworn in alongside Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey, a Democrat who also won a special election in November following the former Sen. Bob Menendez’s conviction on federal corruption charges and subsequent resignation. Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., who was appointed in 2023 to succeed former Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., also won a special election last month for the remainder of Sasse’s term and joined Kim and Schiff for the oath of office.

Schiff bested fellow California Democratic Reps. Barbara Lee and Katie Porter in a crowded primary field to win the party's nomination before fending off Republican challenger and former Los Angeles Dodgers standout Steve Garvey to win the general election. 

Schiff entered Congress in 2001, but he became a household name to many Americans during Donald Trump’s first term. As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff was tapped to lead Trump’s first impeachment trial, and he later served on the Jan. 6 committee that investigated the events leading up to the attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

“One thing you can tell about Donald Trump, and that is he ignores people that he’s not worried about, ignores people who are not effective. But those who are effective, those that stand up to him — he goes after them,” Schiff said, sitting in his office on Capitol Hill earlier this year. “He runs that party, tragically, but I am proud of standing up to him. I will continue to stand up to him no matter what they throw my way.”

That was before Trump won re-election, a possibility Schiff was very cognizant of when he was running for Senate. It concerned him so much, he even called on President Joe Biden to drop out of the race in the days following the first presidential debate in late June.

But Schiff told Spectrum News that he promises “get things done, no matter who the president is.”

“But I do fear that if he were ever to become president, all of us are going to have to be spending a lot of time just defending our democracy, our institutions, protecting the Justice Department from being weaponized against his opponents, protecting civil servants from being essentially drummed out of their jobs and in favor of political hacks. We're going to have to be doing some very basic defense of our democracy,” Schiff said in May.

Over the weekend during an interview with Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker, Trump suggested that members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol “should go to jail,” and that members had “lied” and “destroyed a whole year and a half worth of testimony.” 

Schiff, when asked about those comments on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday, seemed unphased.

“All of us that worked on the Jan. 6 committee are proud of the work that we did. We exposed one of the darkest chapters of our history when a president incited a violent attack on the Capitol to try to stop the peaceful transfer of power,” said Schiff. “The vast majority of our witnesses were Republicans, some of them were high-ranking Republicans in the Trump administration, who testified under oath and in public hearings so that the country could hear and see and learn about what took place on that awful day.”

When asked about the claims that members had “destroyed a whole year and a half worth of testimony,” Schiff put it bluntly.

“I've seen him make that allegation before. And candidly, I don't know what the heck he's talking about. Whether this is some crazy conspiracy theory that grew up online or whether it's just something he's making up, but it's completely without merit,” Schiff said.

Schiff has already cast his first vote in the Senate to confirm some of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees. He’s expected to attend his first Senate committee meeting on Tuesday with his new chamber’s Judiciary Committee.