Schiff Hit with Official Ethics Complaint, Allegations of 'Rules Broken' and 'False Statements'
Florida Republican Matt Gaetz has been one of the most active members of the GOP fighting the Democratic impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump since it began.
On Wednesday, he took it to a new level.
Gaetz filed an official complaint with the House Ethics Committee against Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who chairs the House Intelligence Committee and has been running depositions of witnesses in the impeachment effort behind closed doors.
#BREAKING: Today I filed an ethics complaint against @RepAdamSchiff for:
-Distorting @POTUS’s call with President Zelensky
-Lying to the public about “Russian collusion”
-Blocking Members of Congress from attending impeachment depositions
Schiff must be held accountable. pic.twitter.com/oUIGWx2Lns
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) October 30, 2019
“I respectfully write to request the House Committee on Ethics open an investigation into rules broken, and false statements by Rep. Adam Schiff (CA-28), Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence,” Gaetz wrote.
Gaetz’s complaint focuses specifically on the way Schiff inserted his own words when the transcript of the now-infamous July 25 telephone call between President Donald Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky was introduced to the public at a hearing on the whistleblower complaint generated by the phone call.
At that Sept. 26 hearing, Gaetz wrote, Schiff “gave a wildly-inaccurate and distorted ‘retelling’” of the call, “grossly misrepresenting” its contents to the American people.
“This behavior does not ‘reflect creditably on the House,’ nor does it follow ‘the spirit and letter of the Rules of the House,’” Gaetz wrote.
“It is incumbent on members of Congress to be accurate and honest to the American people, and Chairman Schiff has been neither.”
The ethics complaint isn’t the first time Gaetz has made headlines with his opposition to the impeachment proceedings.
As he notes in his letter, on Oct. 14, he physically entered the secure room where depositions were being taken, only to be “removed from the deposition by Chairman Schiff.”
And last week, according to Fox New, Gaetz was among about 30 House Republicans who disrupted impeachment testimony by storming the closed-door session where it was being held.
It’s also not the first Ethics Committee complaint to be filed against Schiff.
He was already the subject of two ethics complaints filed in relation to his behavior during a 2017 phone call with a man posing as a Ukrainian lawmaker with incriminating information about Trump.
That man was actually a Russian radio host.
His incriminating information about Trump turned out to be nonexistent.
Schiff is also the subject of a motion to censure in the House, which was co-sponsored by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
As of Wednesday afternoon, 151 of Schiff’s House colleagues — all of them Republicans — had signed onto the resolution.
As to the latest complaint, a Schiff spokesman told Fox News the California congressman wasn’t worried.
“We don’t think anyone takes Mr. Gaetz seriously, especially on the subject of ethics,” Schiff spokesman Patrick Boland said in a statement.
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