Senate Impeachment Trial: Schiff Says Trump’s ‘Misconduct Cannot Be Decided at the Ballot Box’

House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff indicated during his opening remarks at the Senate impeachment trial Wednesday that lawmakers must remove President Donald Trump from office to avoid his reelection in November, claiming that “we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won.”

Echoing other Democrats, Schiff indicated that Democrats are trying to impeach and remove Trump from office to avoid his winning a second term.

Schiff declared:

As we will discuss, impeachment exists for cases in which the conduct of the president rises beyond mere policy disputes to be decided otherwise and without urgency at the ballot box. Instead, we are here today to consider a much more grave matter, and that is an attempt to use the powers of the presidency to cheat in an election. For precisely this reason, the president’s misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won:

Schiff served as the chief impeachment inquiry inquisitor in the House. Now, he is one of seven managers arguing the case for convicting and removing Trump in the ongoing Senate trial.

This week, he argued that if the Senate rejects Democrats’ demands for more witnesses, Trump will be considered “guilty” despite the verdict reached by the Republican-controlled Senate.