Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is not on board with the House Republicans who stormed House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff’s (D-CA) secret impeachment lair on Wednesday, calling the move “nuts.”
“They’re making a run in the SCIF! That’s not the way to do it. That’s nuts,” the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman said, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Lindsay Wise:
Graham’s remarks follow an effort from about two dozen House Republicans, led by House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who stormed the secret room in the Capitol Hill basement, where Schiff has been running the Democrats’ secret impeachment inquiry. Schiff’s decision to hold secretive closed-door meetings has essentially allowed his pro-impeachment counterparts to “selectively leak snippets of the interviews to reporters” in attempts to control the impeachment narrative.
Republicans have noted that Schiff’s “dungeon” meetings are unnecessarily shrouded in secrecy, as the discussions do not involve classified material:
According to reports, Schiff exited the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) and took the witness, Laura Cooper, with him.
“This is a sham. They have no process. They have no rules. They’re doing everything behind closed doors,” Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-AL) said Wednesday.
Despite Graham’s disagreement with the House GOP members who stormed the SCIF, he does not approve of the Democrats’ secrecy and plans to introduce a resolution calling on Democrats to open the House impeachment inquiry, which Nancy Pelosi has failed to bring to a full House vote:
Graham has also defended Trump’s description of the Democrat impeachment effort as a political “lynching.”
“This is a mob taking over the rule of law. This is fundamentally un-American, and until it changes I will fight back as hard as I can,” Graham told reporters on Tuesday. “And what would make it change.”
“A vote of inquiry is necessary to empower the Republican minority in the House to confront accusations against the president,” he continued.
“A vote of inquiry allows the president to confront his accuser and to call witnesses on his behalf. Until that is done, this is a joke, this is a sham, and this is a political lynching,” he added: