Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., already facing two Justice Department investigations, could soon face another on Capitol Hill, legal experts say.
A whistleblower has alleged that Schiff—while he was the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence—orchestrated the leaking of classified information to promote the conspiracy theory that President Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government to win the 2016 election.
Meanwhile, Schiff is also under investigation for allegedly providing inaccurate mortgage information for a Maryland home. Both cases are under review by the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group.
According to the DOJ, the group is reviewing the work of federal agencies that conducted criminal or civil enforcement over the past four years to identify if their conduct may have had political objectives instead of legitimate government ones.
Schiff has denied wrongdoing. A spokesperson called the charges “baseless smears” while his lawyer said the investigations were politically biased.
Here’s what to know.
1. Potential Ethics Probe
The alleged conduct occurred when Schiff was in the House of Representatives. Now, he’s a senator.
So which body’s ethics panel could investigate?
The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, a watchdog group, is exploring a potential complaint against Schiff to the Senate Ethics Committee.
“The House Ethics Committee loses jurisdiction when someone is no longer a member,” Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust Executive Director Kendra Arnold told The Daily Signal. “The Senate Ethics Committee does have the ability to punish someone for a case before they were in the Senate, but they use it sparingly.”
“Generally, it has to be tied to their duty in the Senate. It could be conduct in running for office that would reflect poorly on the body,” Arnold said. “In this case, his conduct in the House would be related to his official duties.”
Both the DOJ and Senate should investigate, said Mike Davis, founder of Article Three Project, a conservative legal group.
“Adam Schiff is in deep trouble no matter how he tries to spin it,” Davis, formerly chief counsel for nominations for the Senate Judiciary Committee, told The Daily Signal in a statement.
“As ‘Shifty’ Schiff has said repeatedly, ‘Nobody is above the law.’ The Senate Ethics Committee—and the Trump Justice Department—must spare no resource to ensure justice is delivered,” he said.
2. Mortgage Case
In May, the Federal Housing Finance Agency sent a referral to the Justice Department alleging potential mortgage irregularities by Schiff. The agency said Schiff improperly filled out bank documents to get more favorable loan terms for a Maryland property.
“He may face more legal exposure from the investigation into alleged mortgage fraud,” Zack Smith, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a former assistant U.S. attorney, told The Daily Signal.
Smith noted that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland scored a mortgage fraud conviction against former Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby. However, the conviction was overturned this year on appeal.
The senator contends that he accurately represented to lenders that he and his wife would occupy and use the Maryland house they purchased in 2003 as a “principal residence” rather than a vacation home or an investment property, according to Schiff’s office. He further said he disclosed to his lenders that he maintained another home in California.
3. Leak Investigation
If the “Russian collusion” leak allegations are true, Smith said it could be worse than a typical leak case because it involved classified information.
“Adam Schiff had access to this information, and he has a duty as a member of Congress to protect this information. There was a certain trust placed in him. If he violated that trust, it deserves punishment,” Smith said.
A declassified FBI memo says, “The leaks were driven from the top; they were structured and intentional. The message conveyed to staff was the U.S. was facing constitutional crisis and something needed to be done,” journalist Catherine Herridge first reported.
The FBI memo said a Democrat staffer from the House Intelligence Committee was fired after objecting to the leaking of the classified information.
A statement from a Schiff spokesperson called the situation the “latest smear” and “absolutely and categorically false.” The statement went on to attack the suspected whistleblower.
“These baseless smears are based on allegations that were found to be not reliable, not credible, and unsubstantiated from a disgruntled former staffer who was fired by the House Intelligence Committee for cause in early 2017, including for harassment and potentially compromising activity on official travel for the committee,” the Schiff spokesperson said in the statement.
Schiff’s office also points to a December 2024 report by the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General into leaking, which referenced an unnamed House Intelligence Committee staffer as having “unknown reliability.”
4. Legal Personalities Clash
The Schiff leak investigation pits two major legal personalities on opposite sides, Ed Martin and Preet Bharara.
Martin, director of the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group and former acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, is investigating Schiff.
Davis, of the Article Three Project, said he thought it was fitting that Martin is leading the task force investigating the matter: “It is cosmic justice that Schiff will be held accountable by Ed Martin after Schiff opposed his nomination to be U.S. attorney.”
Earlier this year, the Senate rejected Trump’s nomination of Martin to be U.S. attorney. Democrats and some Republicans objected to the nomination because, in private practice, Martin represented individuals charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, protest at the Capitol.
Schiff hired Bharara to represent him. Bharara is a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York appointed by President Barack Obama and later fired by Trump in 2017.
Schiff’s office asked that The Daily Signal publish Bharara’s full statement on the matter because of the seriousness of the allegations:
The allegations against Senator Schiff are transparently false, stale, and long debunked.
Now Ed Martin, the most brazenly partisan and politically compromised person possible for the task, has been picked to investigate a political adversary.
The bias here is glaring. Mr. Martin’s nomination to be U.S. attorney of the District of Columbia was derailed not only by his partisanship and unfitness, but also by the hold Senator Schiff appropriately placed on the nomination.
Mr. Martin is a January 6-defending lawyer who has repeatedly pursued baseless and politically motivated investigations to fulfill demands to investigate and prosecute perceived enemies. Any supposed investigation led by him would be the very definition of weaponization of the justice process.
The Daily Signal could not immediately reach a spokesperson for Martin to respond to Bharara’s remarks. However, during a Fox News interview on Sunday, Martin said he is only focused on the facts of the case with Schiff and other investigations that the Weaponization Working Group is looking at.
“We are going to follow the facts. Every American that has a mortgage and has documents they sign has to follow the law. We are going to go to the very bottom of the facts,” Martin told Fox News.
“If somebody did something wrong, we are not only going to hold them accountable, we are also going to look at everything else they’ve been doing, because when you’re a liar, you lie not just on one thing,” Martin continued. “When you are a cheater, you cheat, not just on one thing. When you are doing corruption, you generally don’t just do it on one thing. That’s what we’re asked to do as prosecutors, and that’s what we’re doing.”
