Schiff report recommends impeachment inquiry of Trump proceed based on ‘evidence’ of prior witnesses

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff recommended in a report to the full House on Tuesday that the chamber proceed with an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump based on “evidence” provided by a series of witnesses during hearings last month.

“This report reflects the evidence gathered thus far by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, in coordination with the Committee on Oversight and Reform and the Committee on Foreign Affairs, as part of the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry into Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States,” the California Democrat said in a statement that accompanied the report.

“The decision to move forward with an impeachment inquiry is not one we took lightly.  Under the best of circumstances, impeachment is a wrenching process for the nation,” Schiff continued.

“I resisted calls to undertake an impeachment investigation for many months on that basis, notwithstanding the existence of presidential misconduct that I believed to be deeply unethical and damaging to our democracy. The alarming events and actions detailed in this report, however, left us with no choice but to proceed,” he added.

The White House pushed back against the recommendation, calling Schiff’s hearing process biased and non-conclusive.

“At the end of a one-sided sham process, Chairman Schiff and the Democrats utterly failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by President Trump,” White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said.

“This report reflects nothing more than their frustrations. Chairman Schiff’s report reads like the ramblings of a basement blogger straining to prove something when there is evidence of nothing,” she added.

In London, President Trump blasted the Intelligence Committee chairman as “a maniac” who is “deranged.”

“I think he’s a maniac. I think Adam Schiff is a deranged human being,” the president said in London ahead of a NATO meeting, in response to a reporter’s question.

“I think he grew up with a complex for lots of reasons that are obvious,” Trump said.

“I learn nothing from Adam Schiff,” he added. “I think he’s a very sick man. And he lies. Adam Schiff made up my conversation with the president of Ukraine.”

On Wednesday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) has four law professors on a witness list to testify about the “historical and constitutional basis of impeachment, as well as the Framers’ intent and understanding of terms like ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.'”

The witness list includes: Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman, George Washington University Law professor Jonathan Turley, Stanford Law professor Pamela Karlan and University of North Carolina Law professor Michael Gerhardt.

In September 2017, Feldman called for the president to be impeached in a piece for the New York Review. Then, he based his position on “collusion” between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia, which special counsel Robert Mueller said did not occur.