After announcing on Tuesday night that she’d secured the votes necessary for passage, freshman Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) brought a revised censure motion to the House floor Wednesday afternoon. Last Thursday the measure failed when 20 Republicans voted against it, many of them explicitly citing the provision for a $16 million fine, which they believe is not constitutional, as the reason. The new version of the motion does not include the fine.
Democrats voted to table the motion, but that effort failed in a party-line vote.
Introducing the resolution, Luna noted that Americans do not trust Congress – in good part because of Schiff – then said:
This man occupied a position of the highest trust and authority. As Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff launched an all-out political campaign built on baseless distortions against a sitting US President at the expense of every single citizen in this country and the honor of the House of Representatives. With access to sensitive information unavailable to most Members of Congress and certainly not accessible to the American people, Schiff abused his privileges, claiming to know the truth, while leaving Americans in the dark about this web of lies, lies so severe that they altered the course of the country forever.
Her entire introduction is sobering and makes Schiff’s destruction crystal clear.
Schiff replied with a passionate but unrepentant (and fantasy-filled) speech on the House floor, directed at Republicans. Calling it a “hollow sop to the MAGA crowd,” Schiff began:
You honor me with your enmity. You flatter me with this falsehood. You, who are the authors of a big lie about the last election, must condemn the truth tellers, and I stand proudly before you. Your words tell me that I have been effective in the defense of our democracy and I am grateful.
If you can stomach five minutes of Schiff’s delusions, the full video is below.
The motion is expected to be voted on late Wednesday afternoon, and Speaker McCarthy expects it to pass.