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This is hardly the first time Adam Schiff has had Russia on his
mind.

Years ago, and long before he was elected to the U.S. House of
Representatives, Schiff was a United States Attorney in Los
Angeles who led the prosecution of an FBI agent convicted on
spy charges.

“Sex for secrets,” he recalled in a telephone interview with the
Jewish Journal last month. “He was seduced by an attractive KGB
asset named Svetlana — they’re always named Svetlana. I had to
work extensively with the FBI even though it was the first time
an FBI agent was ever indicted for espionage. … It’s so odd to
be working on a case again involving the bureau and Russia. But
it does feel like it’s come full circle.”

Congressman Adam Schiff, 56, is one of 18 Jews serving in the
House, and these days, one of the most prominent of the
chamber’s 193 Democrats. He’s been everywhere lately — a guest
on CNN and MSNBC, a focus of stories in The New York Times and
The Washington Post. His Twitter following is growing
exponentially. Already, people are suggesting he could become a
presidential candidate in 2020.

And all this for one reason: Schiff is the ranking member — the
top Democrat — on the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence, which is investigating whether the Russian
government interfered with the 2016 presidential election and
whether anyone in the Trump campaign had a role in it.

With Democrats in the minority, Schiff has only so much power in
setting the panel’s agenda. Nonetheless, he has emerged as a
forceful counterweight to President Donald Trump’s defenders,
who insist the current investigations into Russia’s election
activities — the Senate and FBI are holding their own probes —
are little more than politically motivated witch hunts designed
to undermine the Trump presidency.

“The American people do have a strong center of gravity that
will constrain [Trump’s] worst impulses, so I’m a believer in
our democracy.” — Adam Schiff

Undaunted, Schiff is pressing ahead, an effort that draws
together the most salient parts of a life in public service —
his Judaism, his law background, four years in the California
Senate and his 16-plus years in the House — not to mention his
role as a Big Brother to a young African-American boy who
Schiff’s father, Ed Schiff, says made Adam “a better person.”

It’s a foundation that also has cemented his confidence in
American institutions despite the current chaos of Washington.

“I think our democracy is resilient enough; we’ll get through
this, I think, even if the president doesn’t operate within
established norms of office,” Schiff said. “The American people
do have a strong center of gravity that will constrain his worst
impulses, so I’m a believer in our democracy. I think we’ll get
through this. But certainly, there are some rough roads ahead.”

Schiff was born in Boston in 1960, a few months before John F.
Kennedy was elected president, as the younger of two sons to Ed
and Sherri Schiff. Theirs was a mixed marriage: Ed, who now
lives in Boca Raton, Fla. — “living the ‘Seinfeld’ life,” his
son said — is a Democrat; Sherri, who died around 2009 of
complications from Alzheimer’s disease, was a Republican.

Ed Schiff was a businessman who moved around the country as a
regional sales director for Farah, a men’s pants manufacturing
company. Sherri, “bored with country club life … went into real
estate, where her boss said, ‘You are wasting time writing copy.
Why don’t you get into sales?’ ” Ed said.

After a few years of living in Arizona, the Schiffs moved in
1970 to Contra Costa County in the Bay Area, where Ed got out of
the “rag business,” as he called it, and purchased a building
materials yard.

In those days, Adam was a studious boy who, according to his
father, always did his homework, adored his mother and had a
friendly sibling rivalry with his older brother, Dan, a
relationship Adam would later write about in a screenplay —
never produced — called “Common Wall.” Adam became a bar mitzvah
at Temple Isaiah, a Reform congregation in Lafayette, Calif., in
June 1973.

“I certainly do remember making tape recordings of my [bar
mitzvah] practice sessions on cassette tape with a little
cassette recorder, and I think I may even have one of those,”
Schiff said. “It’s funny to hear your voice back then.”

In 1978, he entered Stanford University. A pre-med student, he
also studied political science, and upon graduation, he was
unsure if he wanted to pursue law or medicine. He decided on the
former and enrolled at Harvard Law School.

After graduating in 1985, he clerked for federal Judge Matthew
Byrne, a Los Angeles native who presided over the trial
involving Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Later, Schiff
spent six years as an assistant U.S. Attorney in L.A. During
that time, he met his wife, Eve Sanderson Schiff — yes, they’re
Adam and Eve — and prosecuted Richard Miller, the FBI agent
convicted of espionage.

Schiff’s success against Miller, as well as Byrne’s influence,
accelerated his interest in politics.

“After Adam convicted the FBI agent of treason, he called me and
said, ‘Dad, can you imagine what it’s like to have
representatives of the most powerful nation in the world calling
you and offering to help you in any way they could? Dad, I will
never have another case like that in my life,’ ” Ed recalled his
son saying. “ ‘I’m going into politics.’ ”

Twice he ran unsuccessfully for the California Assembly but
promised his supporters he would do better next time. In 1996,
he was elected to the State Senate.

“Adam takes things in progression, and the learning curve … with
each loss made it that much easier the next time,” his father
said.

In 2000, Schiff ran for Congress to unseat Republican James
Rogan in what was then the most expensive House race of all
time. Rogan was a two-term Congressman who had his own national
profile, in part, from working to impeach President Bill
Clinton. Schiff sought help from his mother, asking if she’d
make phone calls to voters on his behalf.

“He said, ‘Mama, I would like you to do something for me. I
would like you to call these people and tell them a little about
me and ask them to vote for me. She jumped into that for 2 1/2
years like it was eating ice cream,” Ed said. “Her spiel went
like this: ‘Good evening. My name is Sherri Schiff. My son Adam
is running for Congress in your district. May I tell you a
little about him?’ ”

Schiff currently is serving in his ninth two-year term in the
House, representing a district that now extends from West
Hollywood to the eastern edge of Pasadena and from Echo Park to
the Angeles National Forest. He has a reputation as a moderate
who works with members of both parties. With a large
constituency of Armenians, he has championed legislation that
would formalize United States recognition of the Armenian
genocide of 1915-17. He once delivered an entire speech on the
House floor in Armenian and worked with the Armenian members of
a hard-rock band, System of a Down, toward seeking recognition
of the genocide.

Regarding Israel, which is never out of the headlines, he said,
“I’m deeply concerned with a trend I’ve seen over the last
several years, where the U.S.-Israel relationship, which always
had been very bipartisan regardless of who was in office in
Israel or in the U.S., has been trending toward a situation
where you have a GOP-Likud relationship and Democratic
relationship with other parties in Israel. I think that’s a very
destructive trend.”

In 2015, as Jews became polarized over the Iranian nuclear
agreement, Schiff considered both sides, then came out in favor
of it. Recently, he expressed concern that in the event Trump
believes Iran has violated the agreement by developing a nuclear
weapon, the president’s outlandishness on Twitter and elsewhere
will undermine his credibility in efforts to galvanize allies
into action against Iran.

“I have been so appalled by this president’s conduct. I feel I
have to vigorously oppose his efforts to undermine our system.”
— Adam Schiff

“If they are cheating and the president calls them out on it and
thinks there should be some response to it, will the country
believe it?” he asked. “The allies we’d need to participate with
us, would they believe us? The intelligence agencies that he’s
maligning? This is the reason why presidential credibility is to
be treasured and not squandered.”

Like Trump, Schiff uses Twitter to communicate his positions.
One of his most shared tweets — more than 43,000 retweets and
nearly 83,000 likes — addressed Trump’s tweet aimed at the “so-
called judge” who had blocked his executive order barring
individuals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering
the U.S.:

“This ‘so-called’ judge was nominated by a ‘so-called’ President
& was confirmed by the ‘so-called’ Senate. Read the ‘so-called’
Constitution.”

Tweets aside, Schiff’s 17-minute opening statement during the
Intelligence Committee’s first public hearing on Russia on March
20 was less attack-dog and, befitting his usual public demeanor
in television interviews, more lawyerly. He cited events of the
presidential campaign that could suggest coordination between
Russians and the Trump campaign, improving the Republican’s
chance of victory.

“Is it possible that all of these events and reports are
completely unrelated and are nothing more than an entirely
unhappy coincidence? Yes, it is possible,” Schiff said,
addressing FBI Director James Comey and Michael Rogers, director
of the National Security Agency. “But it is also possible, maybe
more than possible, that they are not coincidental, not
disconnected, and not unrelated, and that the Russians used …
techniques to corrupt U.S. persons. … We simply don’t know.”

In the interview with the Journal, he said, “I have been so
appalled by this president’s conduct. I feel I have to
vigorously oppose his efforts to undermine our system, and so, I
certainly think there is more than a grain of truth to the idea
this is a different kind of role for me.”

Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in West L.A. met Schiff five
years ago at a memorial service at Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills.
Wolpe was leading the service, and Schiff said he was impressed
with how eloquently and powerfully he spoke. The two struck up a
friendship, exchanging book recommendations via email. The first
book Schiff recommended to Wolpe reflected Schiff’s earlier
involvement with Russia. It was “Eugene Onegin,” a masterpiece
by the Russian novelist Alexander Pushkin.

“When he’s in town, we have lunch,” Wolpe said. “I talk a little
bit about politics, but we talk a lot about literature and life.”

“When I saw him at AIPAC [in March], I told him how proud I am
of how he’s been conducting himself,” Wolpe continued. “He’s in
a tricky position. This is a very fraught time and I think he
has conducted himself with a great deal of dignity. I am not
trying to take political sides; I try my best not to. I think he
is a nice, thoughtful, decent, caring and very intelligent man,
so I’m impressed with him.”

Schiff’s own rabbi concurs.

“I felt personally very proud that Adam has taken stances on
issues that really move him personally, and he hasn’t backed
down on that,” said Rabbi Baht Yameem Weiss of Temple Beth Ami
in Rockville, Md., a suburb of Washington, D.C.

“From where I sit, I think he’s certainly one of the leaders in
the Democratic Party right now.” — Ed Schiff, father of Adam
Schiff

For all his supporters, not everyone appreciates his approach to
the investigation.

“Adam Schiff is a bright guy. He’s a talented legislator, but
right now, instead of focusing on the substance of the
investigation, he’s focusing on politics and partisanship,” Ken
Khachigian, a San Clemente-based Republican strategist and
former senior adviser to President Ronald Reagan, told the L.A.
Daily News last month.

Schiff and his wife, who is Catholic, are raising their two
children, Alexa, 18, and Elijah, 14, Jewish. The family has
belonged to Temple Beth Ami since 2010. They formerly belonged
to Temple Sinai in Glendale. Alexa is involved with the Hillel
at Northwestern University, where she is a freshman. She has
traveled to Israel with a Jewish summer camp and will be working
as a counselor at the camp this summer, Weiss said.

https://jewishjournal.com/cover_story/217845/making-adam-schiff- man-taking-president/

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