Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (Fla.) has filed a motion to expel Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) from Congress following the release of the Durham report, which she says proves Schiff is spreading lies about former President Donald Trump’s connections to Russia.
Schiff, the top lawmaker on the House Intelligence Committee when Democrats held the House majority, has previously alleged Trump and his campaign colluded with the Russian government to sway the 2016 election results.
But a report released this week by Trump-era special counsel John Durham found that the FBI did not have enough information to open an investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia.
On the heels of Durham’s report, Luna released a statement on Wednesday (May 17), accusing Schiff of using his role in the House Intelligence Committee “to push a lie” that cost U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars and abused the trust placed in Schiff in his role as chairman.
Luna pointed to Durham’s report as evidence that Russian collusion was wrong from the start and that Schiff “knowingly used his position” to try “to divide our country.”
The report did not recommend new charges, but it provided a scathing assessment of how the FBI began and conducted the investigation, concluding Durham’s four-year investigation.
Schiff, who is running for the California Senate, challenged Luna’s attempt to have him expelled from the House, saying Republicans attacked him for having the courage to stand up to Trump.
In an interview on MSNBC on Wednesday, Schiff shared his conviction about what would be included “when this dark chapter of our history is written.”
He suggested it would reflect that those Republicans who did not have the courage to stand up to the most unethical president in American history, Donald Trump, found solace in attacking those who did.
Schiff also took aim at the findings of the Durham report, arguing against the idea that it proved his allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to be false, saying Durham spent “four years trying to prove this deep state conspiracy theory” that Trump said to his base would be proven; “the whole thing… was a big bust.”
