'Danger to our democracy': Schiff warns GOP could use control of Congress to protest Trump indictment

Republicans could threaten democracy by using their power in Congress to protest the indictment of former President Donald Trump, a prominent Democratic lawmaker warned Friday.

And Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Ca.) wasn’t speaking in theoretical terms when he described the threat Republicans pose to the rule of law by gumming up the works.

“Jim Jordan acted like he was Donald Trump’s defense lawyer. Now they're in the majority,” Schiff said Friday in an interview with The Daily Beast. “They didn’t have the power of the speakership before. Now they do. That adds a new danger to our democracy and the rule of law.”

Schiff, who chaired the House Intelligence Committee for four years while the House was under Democratic party control, was removed from the leadership post on the committee by Speaker Kevin McCarthy earlier this year in apparent retaliation for his role as a vocal Trump critic.

He expressed dismay by how much damage the Trump era has done to democratic institutions.

“In the early Trump years, there was initially some expression of support for the rule of law, some outrage at his immorality and indecency, his violence and vitriol, his lawlessness,” Schiff said.

“Year after year that would give way, to the point where they’re rushing to defend someone accused of making hush money payments to a porn star.”

Schiff pointed to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ comments Thursday in which he said his state wouldn’t cooperate with authorities in extraditing Trump as an example of the change he’s seen.

“The [George] Soros-backed Manhattan District Attorney has consistently bent the law to downgrade felonies and to excuse criminal misconduct,” DeSantis tweeted. “Yet, now he is stretching the law to target a political opponent.”

Said Schiff: “It’s not enough to try to interfere with justice,” he said. “The antipathy toward the rule of law, that’s not even enough. They have to drag the repeated reference of George Soros into it and add that nice anti-semitic cast onto it.”

“Trump is not wrong,” Schiff said, “when he said he made Ron DeSantis.”