House advances Schiff censure resolution, teeing up final vote

The House advanced a resolution Wednesday to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), overcoming a procedural hurdle that blocked a similar measure targeting the Democrat last week and teeing up a final vote later in the day.

A motion to table the measure was rejected 218-208 on party lines, with Republicans rejecting the Democratic-led effort to block the resolution from coming to the floor for a vote.

The chamber is expected to vote on the censure resolution, which will require a simple majority, late Wednesday afternoon. Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters Tuesday that he expects the resolution to pass the House.

Wednesday’s vote marked the second time the House voted on a motion to table a resolution to censure Schiff for his handling of investigations into former President Trump.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) forced a vote on a resolution to censure Schiff last week, but the effort was blocked after 20 Republicans joined Democrats in supporting a motion to table the measure, effectively killing it.

Some of the GOP defectors raised concerns with a nonbinding “whereas” clause in the resolution that said if the Ethics Committee found that Schiff “lied, made misrepresentations, and abused sensitive information,” he should be fined $16 million.

That number was half the amount of money that American taxpayers paid to fund the investigation into potential collusion between Trump and Russia, according to the resolution.

Luna, however, introduced a revised censure resolution last week — which nixed the fine language, among other changes — and brought it to the floor as a privileged measure Tuesday.

A number of last week’s GOP defectors changed their vote and helped advance the bill Wednesday.

Luna’s resolution seeks to censure Schiff “for misleading the American public and for conduct unbecoming of an elected Member of the House of Representatives.” It would also direct the Ethics Committee to conduct an investigation of him.

In addition to removing language about a $16 million fine, the revised Schiff censure resolution just calls for censuring Schiff; last week’s involved censuring and condemning the congressman.

The new version also omitted nonbinding “whereas” clauses that say Schiff “purposely deceived his Committee, Congress, and the American people” and that he “exploited” his positions on the House Intelligence Committee “to encourage and excuse abusive intelligence investigations of Americans for political purposes.”

The revamped resolution does, however, add several clauses: It cites a March 2019 letter signed by Republicans on the Intelligence panel calling on Schiff — the committee’s chairman at the time — to resign from the top post, argues that Schiff “hindered the ability of the Intelligence Committee to fulfill its oversight responsibilities over the Intelligence Community” and says he “misled the American people and brought disrepute upon the House of Representatives.”