Last night on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) joined Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy’s (D-VT) recent call for torture architect Judge Jay Bybee to do the “decent and honorable thing” and step down from the bench. While believing it likely that Bybee ought to resign, Schiff urged some caution saying there “should be a complete investigation” before Congress considers what he called the “extreme remedy” of impeachment proceedings:
SCHIFF: Well I think there should be a complete investigation. … When OPR finishes its report I think the Judiciary Committee ought to have hearings on it. … At this point I am inclined to think that maybe Sen. Leahy made a good suggestion when he said the judge ought to consider resigning from the bench. … I don’t think we should rule anything out, but I also think that impeachment is a word we should use very carefully and very reluctantly.
Later Schiff remarked that it “may be” that the torture memo authors knew that their justifications were “legal gibberish and only sought to provide a patina of respectability to torture.” Watch it:
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