New book about Jan. 6 attack will feature Rep. Adam Schiff’s ‘critical insights’
U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff of California is not done talking about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Random House announced Wednesday that Schiff (D-Burbank), a member of the committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, will be writing a foreword for the upcoming book, “January 6 Report: The Findings of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.”
According to a press release, the book is “the official report of the investigation into the attack — perhaps the most vital congressional investigation in American history — with exhibits, witness testimony, and an exclusive foreword written by Congressman Adam Schiff — who offers critical insights into this harrowing chapter in American history.”
Schiff will not be compensated for his contribution, the press release noted.
Historically, published accounts of federal investigations have done well on the bestsellers chart. Attorney Kenneth Starr‘s criminal investigation of Bill Clinton, which led to the then-president’s Senate impeachment trial in 1999 (he was acquitted), was released as “The Starr Report” and became a worldwide bestseller.
Political observers who want to get their hands on a print version of the Mueller report won’t have to wait too much longer.
And in 2019, “The Mueller Report,” which documented attorney Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, also became a bestseller and spawned multiple books about it.
In 2021, Schiff released his memoir, “Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could,” which focuses not on former President Trump’s attempts to invalidate the 2020 election, but on Congress members’ responsibility in the assault. The book was awarded last year’s L.A. Times Book Prize in the current interest category.
“Donald Trump could not have succeeded in doing any of the damage he did to our country but for the fact he had so many willing enablers in the Congress of the United States,” Schiff said at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in April.
“I wanted to ask, ‘How does it happen that people allow themselves to be so badly used?,’” he added. “A lot of these people were my colleagues, and some of them were people I had admired and respected, because I believe that they believed what they were talking about. It turned out that none of that mattered to them.”
The California representative and author of “Midnight in Washington” discussed revelations about the minority leader’s about-face on the 2020 election.
At the event, Schiff singled out House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California for enabling Trump, pointing to audio recordings that showed he had flip-flopped on how Trump should handle the post-election attack.
The Jan. 6 investigations were mostly boycotted by Republican Congress members, with only Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois crossing party lines to participate in the committee.
In 2019, Schiff led the first impeachment of Trump as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Trump was impeached by the House for withholding military aid and a White House meeting from Ukraine while pressuring that country’s leadership to announce an investigation into then-former Vice President Joe Biden.
“Is there one among you who will say: ‘Enough’?” Schiff asked GOP senators during the 2020 Senate impeachment trial.
A series of congressional hearings about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol have been televised. Here’s what you need to know.
He said that anyone who didn’t vote to convict Trump see their name “tied to his with a cord of steel for all of history.”
“A man without character or ethical compass will never find his way,” Schiff added. “You are decent. He is not who you are.”
Although Schiff did not lead the charge for Trump’s second impeachment, he stated that the insurrection at the Capitol was an “impeachable offense committed in broad daylight, in which the whole country was a witness.”
He said the lightning-fast impeachment “was required by the exigency of the circumstances, and also made possible by the very nature of the crime.”
The Senate voted against conviction at the end of both Trump impeachments.
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