He's back: Schiff wants to investigate coronavirus 'mistakes'

FPI / April 3, 2020

Rep. Adam Schiff, who was furiously pushing to impeach President Donald Trump as the coronavirus was spreading in the U.S., said he will introduce a bill to create a “nonpartisan commission” to study “our mistakes” in response to the virus.

The California Democrat tweeted on April 1: "After Pearl Harbor and 9/11, we looked at what went wrong to learn from our mistakes. Once we've recovered, we need a nonpartisan commission to review our response and how we can better prepare for the next pandemic. I’m working on a bill to do that."

As chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff receives briefings on threats facing the United States.

His proposed new bill would create a “9/11 Commission”-style inquiry into how the U.S. has dealt with the pandemic. Schiff said he would introduce the bill on Monday.

"Democrats handed over the articles of impeachment" against Trump "on the very day the first coronavirus victim landed in the U.S. from China," Breitbart News noted in an April 1 report.

"Congress spent the next 20 days on the impeachment trial, led by Schiff as head impeachment manager and chair of the House Intelligence Committee. It was not until Trump was acquitted Feb. 5 that a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee held a hearing on coronavirus."

The Breitbart report added: "Throughout the 20 days of the impeachment trial, while Schiff and his team were preoccupied with trying to remove the president from office, Trump took several actions aimed at fighting the coronavirus."

Trump imposed his travel ban on China Jan. 31 — the day the Senate voted on witnesses in the impeachement trial.

Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican, one of the few in Congress to raise the alarm on coronavirus, told the Arkansas Gazette in January that he was breaking the rules and skipping the impeachment trial to work with the Trump administration on the coronavirus issue.

The Breitbart report noted that Schiff broke the news of his bill with David Ignatius of The Washington Post — the same columnist who broke the news in January 2017 that incoming national security advisor Michael Flynn had spoken with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Flynn had been “unmasked” in transcripts of wiretapped telephone conversations.

Much of Ignatius’s article on Schiff’s bill focuses on Ambassador Richard Grenell, whom Ignatius accuses — citing “[c]areer officials” — of “trying to shape intelligence that might challenge or embarrass Trump” on coronavirus. Grenell, who served as U.S. ambassador to Germany, was recently named acting Director of National Intelligence.

Free Press International