U.S. Senator Adam Schiff, the top prosecutor in President Donald Trump‘s impeachment trial in 2019 and who has long been a prime target of the president, recently started a legal defense fund amid talks of an investigation by the Department of Justice into his finances.
“It’s clear that Donald Trump and his MAGA allies will continue weaponizing the justice process to attack Senator Schiff for holding this corrupt administration accountable,” Marisol Samayoa, a spokesperson for the California Democrat, said in a statement.
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“This fund will ensure he can fight back against these baseless smears while continuing to do his job,” Samayoa said.
Trump, last month, accused Schiff of possible mortgage fraud — which he called “very serious” — and suggested that the senator “needs to be brought to justice.”
Schiff at the time said the president’s allegations were false and amounted to political retribution.
Besides leading the impeachment trial against Trump during the president’s first term, Schiff had served on the committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol when he was still in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“The president today is accusing me of fraud. And the basis of his accusation is that I own a home in Maryland, and I own my home in California,” Schiff said in July.
“Big surprise,” Schiff said. “Members of Congress, almost all of them, own more than one home or rent more than one home because we’re required to be on both coasts. So he is using my ownership of two homes to make a false claim of mortgage fraud.”
Schiff’s office on Wednesday, Aug. 20, maintained that the senator accurately told lenders that a house he and his wife purchased in Maryland in 2003 would be used as a “principal residence.”
His office also maintained that Schiff disclosed to lenders that he owned another home in California, which he also considered a principal residence because he lives there when he’s not in Washington. The senator claimed a homestead tax exemption only for his property in California, Schiff’s office said.
Preet Bharara, a former U.S. attorney who is representing Schiff, previously called the allegations “transparently false, stale, and long debunked.”
Bharara also took issue with the fact that the Justice Department tapped Ed Martin to lead the probe into Schiff. Trump had previously nominated Martin to become a U.S. attorney, but Schiff held up Martin’s nomination. In the end, Martin failed to secure enough support in the U.S. Senate to be confirmed and landed in another position within the Justice Department.
“The bias here is glaring,” Bharara said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department could not be immediately reached for comment.
