On January 15, a new issue of the famous game “Jeopardy! Is broadcast on American television. Question at 1,200 dollars. A photograph of a 50-something man in a tie suit appears on the screen. The candidates must identify this man, presented like "one of the 53 elected of California in the House of Representatives" and "the president at the head of the Intelligence Commission".
Silence. The correct answer was Democrat Adam Schiff, the chief prosecutor in the Donald Trump Senate recall trial that began this week. The show was certainly recorded weeks ago, before the impeachment procedure made the news. It nevertheless illustrates the notoriety deficit suffered by Schiff, who has been elected to Congress without interruption for twenty years.
Could it be because of his seriousness of first class? Adam Schiff, 59, has it all. A Massachusetts native, he studied at two of the country's largest universities: political science at Stanford, law at Harvard. In the 1990s, he attracted the spotlight for the first time during the trial of Richard Miller, a former FBI agent eventually convicted of being on the payroll of Moscow.
Long opposed to "impeachment"
Close to Nancy Pelosi, current speaker (president) of the House of Representatives and elected to California like him, Schiff joined in 2014 the special commission charged with investigating the attack on the American embassy in Benghazi, Libya, two years earlier. "He was a bit the chief defender of Hillary Clinton", who was head of the State Department during these events, summarizes Jean-Eric Branaa, specialist in the United States and lecturer at Paris University -II-Panthéon-Assas.
In 2018, he became head of the intelligence committee in favor of the Democrats' victory in the House of Representatives in the mid-term elections. A few months later, the Ukrainian affair broke out. Trump is suspected of pressuring Kiev to investigate Joe Biden and Schiff, who will likely support the former vice president in the primaries, setting aside his reservations about impeachment. “He was part of the elite of the Democratic Party who was against this procedure. He believed that this would not bring anything politically, ”underlines Jean-Eric Branaa.
Hollywood dreams
By playing one of the leading roles during the investigation in the House of Representatives, Adam Schiff logically attracts the wrath of Donald Trump. Already described as “deceitful” by the president in 2017, the elected official of California unleashes the presidential fury last September when he indulges in a very personal interpretation of the call between the tenant of the White House and his Ukrainian counterpart Zelensky .
In his mouth, the president turns into a mafia chief straight out of a parody of a Scorsese film: "I'll tell you only seven times, so you better listen. I want you to find something to drop my opponent, do you understand? ". Trump's reply on his Twitter account: "Should he be arrested for treason? "
Rep. Adam Schiff illegally made up a FAKE & terrible statement, pretended it to be mine as the most important part of my call to the Ukrainian President, and read it aloud to Congress and the American people. It bore NO relationship to what I said on the call. Arrest for Treason?
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2019The mockery will stir up turmoil even in the Democratic camp. Adam Schiff probably couldn't have had a career in Hollywood, at least in front of the camera. When he was young, he dreamed of writing for the cinema for a while, even writing several scenarios on paper. But not sure that he had in mind the story of which he became one of the protagonists. "Nowadays, I don't know how anyone could write something more absurd than reality," he told the Washington Post in November.