Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., promised MSNBC’s Joy Reid that he’d personally lead new investigations into President Donald Trump over the Wuhan virus pandemic.
During an interview Sunday, Schiff assured the cable news host he was “diving deeply” into Trump’s coronavirus response efforts.
Led by Schiff, liberal lawmakers are drafting legislation that would create a Democrat-led commission to investigate Trump’s leadership during the pandemic, modeled on one that examined the 9/11 attacks.
Months after criticizing Trump’s shutdown of travel from China, Democrats have shifted gears to attack Trump of being slow to respond to the outbreak and to develop tests quickly enough.
“We are diving deeply into what does the intelligence community know, what resources we would bring there, and what do we need to do prospectively to better protect the country in the future,” Schiff said Sunday. “That last piece, how do we protect the country in the future, is really the mission of that independent commission we based on, we used the model the 9/11 commission.”
The 9/11 commission had released a report in 2004 criticizing intelligence agencies for failing to adequately prepare for terrorist attacks.
Critics attacked Schiff for politicizing the pandemic while thousands of Americans are dying.
“The fact is that Adam Schiff, who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was running an impeachment coup for months,” Fox News’ Mark Levin said about Schiff’s investigation promises.
“He should have been on top of the China matter. He should have been on top of the virus matter, and so I want to know what Adam Schiff knew and when he knew it and when he started to hold hearings.”
“This guy is a disgrace, he is a reprobate, and he should stop giving aid and comfort to the enemy,” Levin added. “First, it was Russia, now it’s China.”
It’s unlikely the commission will gain bipartisan support. Spokesmen for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., did not comment.
Trump spoke out against making the COVID-19 pandemic politicized on Thursday.
“I want to remind everyone here in our nation’s capital, especially in Congress, that this is not the time for politics, endless, partisan investigations (here we go again) have already done extraordinary damage to our country in recent years,” Trump said.
“You see what happens. It’s witch hunt after witch hunt after witch hunt, and, in the end, the people doing the witch hunt have been losing, and they’ve been losing by a lot, and it’s not any time for witch hunts,” Trump concluded.
The coronavirus has caused a global pandemic that has crippled economies and forced restrictions on the movement of millions of people in an effort to stop the virus from spreading further and overwhelming health care systems.
In the United States, it has sickened more than 200,000 people and caused more than 4,500 deaths. The 9/11 terrorist attacks killed almost 3,000 people.
For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death.
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The Associated Press contributed to this article