Adam Schiff


Adam Bennett Schiff is an American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States senator from California, a seat he has held since 2024. He is a member of the Democratic Party. Schiff served in the United States House of Representatives from 2001 to 2024 and in the California State Senate from 1996 to 2000. Before being elected to public office, Schiff was a law clerk, an assistant United States attorney from 1987 to 1993, and an unsuccessful candidate for California State Assembly in 1994.
In the House, Schiff sat on the Intelligence Committee from 2015 to 2023 and chaired it from 2019 until his removal by Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. He previously served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Schiff was the lead impeachment manager in the first impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. He had previously served as the joint-lead impeachment manager in two other judicial impeachment trials.
Schiff was elected to the Senate in 2024, succeeding Laphonza Butler. He defeated fellow Democratic U.S. representatives Katie Porter and Barbara Lee in the primary and Republican Steve Garvey in the general election.

Early life and education

Schiff was born on June 22, 1960, in Framingham, Massachusetts, the son of Edward and Sherrill Ann Schiff. He is the great-grandson of Lithuanian Jews who left Eastern Europe. Schiff moved with his parents to Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1970 and Alamo, California, in 1972. In 1978, he graduated from Monte Vista High School in Danville, California, where he played soccer and was both the class salutatorian and the student his peers voted "most likely to succeed".
Schiff received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Stanford University in 1982 and graduated with distinction. He obtained his Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School cum laude in 1985. Schiff was a member of the Harvard Law School Forum; his tasks included driving guest speakers from the airport to campus and back. He also worked as a student research assistant for Professor Laurence Tribe.

Law career

After law school, Schiff spent a year as a law clerk for Judge William Matthew Byrne Jr. of the United States District Court for the Central District of California. From 1987 to 1993, he was an assistant United States attorney in the Office of the United States Attorney for the Central District of California. In that position, Schiff came to public attention when he prosecuted the case against Richard Miller, a former FBI agent who spied for the Soviet Union. The first trial resulted in a hung jury; the second trial resulted in a conviction that was overturned on appeal. Miller was convicted in a third trial.
In May 1994, Schiff was a candidate for the 43rd district seat in the California State Assembly in a special election and lost to Republican nominee James E. Rogan. That November, he was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for a full term, again losing to Rogan.

California State Senate (1996–2000)

In 1996, Schiff was elected to represent the 21st district in the California State Senate, defeating Republican assemblywoman Paula Boland, who had moved into the district to run. When his term began, he was the Senate's youngest member, at 36. During his four-year term, Schiff chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee and Select Committee on Juvenile Justice, and the state legislature's Joint Committee on the Arts.
As a state senator, Schiff authored dozens of measures that were enacted into law. These included Senate Bill 1847, Chapter 1021. Passed in 1998, this legislation continued work on the stalled Blue Line light rail extension to Pasadena by renaming the Blue Line the Gold Line and creating the Foothill Gold Line Construction Authority, which separated the project from the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The construction authority finished the Pasadena line in 2003 and extended it to Azusa in 2016. A third leg was begun, which is intended to extend the line to Pomona by 2025. Schiff's work on the project earned him the nickname "Father of the Gold Line".
During his tenure, Schiff also authored "tough on crime" measures, which did not pass or were vetoed by governors, including a bill to allow minors 14 or older accused of serious crimes to be tried as adults and a bill that would have made it a felony to hire an undocumented immigrant. According to The Guardian, these proposals were in line with the "tough on crime" attitude of other politicians in the late 1990s.

U.S. House of Representatives (2001–2024)

Elections

In 2000, Schiff challenged James E. Rogan, the incumbent, in what was then California's 27th congressional district. The district had once been a Republican stronghold but had been trending Democratic since the early 1990s. In what was the most expensive House race ever at the time, Schiff unseated Rogan, taking 53% of the vote to Rogan's 44%. He became only the second Democrat to represent this district since its creation in 1913.
After the 2000 census, the district was renumbered the 29th and made significantly more Democratic. As a result, Schiff never faced another contest nearly as close as his 2000 bid, and was reelected 11 times. His district became even more Democratic after the 2010 census, when it was renumbered the 28th and pushed into Los Angeles proper. Even before that, none of his Republican challengers had cleared 35% of the vote.
In 2010, Schiff defeated Tea Party–backed Republican John Colbert for a sixth term. In 2012, he defeated Republican Phil Jennerjahn. In 2014, he defeated independent candidate Steve Stokes. In 2016, he defeated Republican candidate Lenore Solis.
In 2018, Schiff initially competed in the primary with Democratic challenger Kim Gruenenfelder. After Gruenenfelder dropped out of the race, Schiff defeated Republican nominee Johnny Nalbandian.
In 2020, Schiff faced a crowded primary, which included Republican attorney Eric Early and Democratic drag queen Maebe A. Girl. He won the primary with a majority of the vote, with Girl and Early in a close race for second. On March 27, Early was finally determined to have advanced to the general election. Schiff easily won the general election.
After the 2020 census, Schiff's district was renumbered the 30th and made more Democratic. In January 2022, Schiff announced he would run for reelection in the new 30th district. He defeated Girl with 71% of the vote.
In lieu of running for a 13th term, Schiff ran to succeed Dianne Feinstein in the United States Senate in 2024, and won. In preparation for an appointment to finish the remainder of Feinstein's term, he resigned from the House on December 8, 2024.

Tenure

2003 invasion of Iraq

Schiff voted in favor of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In February 2015, discussing how or whether to tailor Bush-era plans from 2001 and 2002 to fight ISIS, he was asked whether he regretted that vote. He said: "Absolutely. Unfortunately, our intelligence was dead wrong on that, on Saddam at that time. The vote set in motion a cascading series of events which have disastrous consequences."
File:Adam Schiff, Maria Karras, and Heather Podesta.jpg|thumb|Schiff and Heather Podesta at a party hosted by the Podesta Group in Washington, D.C., honoring the inauguration of Barack Obama

Armenian genocide resolution

Schiff has been a leading voice in Armenian-American issues; he claims that over 70,000 Armenian-Americans reside in his district. He introduced U.S. House Resolution 106, recognizing the Armenian genocide, which the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved on October 11, 2007, but which began to lose support after Turkey's prime minister said that approval of the resolution would endanger U.S.–Turkey relations. On March 4, 2010, the House Foreign Affairs Committee again approved the resolution by a 23–22 margin. Immediately, the Turkish government recalled its U.S. ambassador. Schiff said in 2007, "When you think about what we have against us – the president, a foreign policy establishment that has condoned this campaign of denial, the Turkish lobby – against that you have the truth, which is a powerful thing but doesn't always win out". On October 29, 2019, the full House of Representatives passed the resolution by a vote of 405–11. Schiff has an "A+" rating and is endorsed by the Armenian National Committee of America.

Helicopter noise

Beginning with Representative Howard Berman before Berman was voted out, Schiff worked on the Helicopter Noise Relief Act, a measure to reduce unwanted helicopter noise across Los Angeles County by authorizing the Federal Aviation Administration to study and regulate it. After reintroducing his legislation, Schiff worked with Senator Dianne Feinstein to push the FAA to act, and together they attached a provision in the 2014 omnibus appropriations package directing the U.S. secretary of transportation and the FAA to address helicopter noise in Los Angeles County. As a result, in 2015 the FAA created a countywide helicopter noise public complaint system, the first step toward regulation.

Intelligence and surveillance reform

Schiff has been a prominent supporter of surveillance reform, especially in the wake of Edward Snowden's leaks of classified intelligence. In 2007, in response to disclosure of the Terrorist Surveillance Program, Schiff and Representative Jeff Flake offered a successful amendment to clarify that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is the exclusive means for collecting foreign intelligence information within the U.S. Schiff criticized the National Security Agency's bulk collection of telephone metadata. In 2014, he introduced the Telephone Metadata Reform Act, which would prohibit the bulk collection of domestic phone records. Schiff also introduced several bills aimed at reforming the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, including a bill to require outside counsel to be appointed to argue for privacy and civil liberties protections in certain cases before the Court.