Rep. Adam Schiff is running for the Senate in California

Rep. Adam Schiff announced Thursday that he was running for Senate, launching a bid to talk the place of 89-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein. 

Schiff becomes the second Democrat to jump in the California race, while Feinstein hasn’t officially said she’s retiring. 

Schiff’s announcement video heavily promotes his prominent role as impeachment manager in former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, as he pledges to take on ‘MAGA extremists.’

It comes two days after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy removed Schiff, the former chairman, from the House Intelligence Committee, with the California Republican accusing the Democrat of lying about Russiagate and the veracity of Hunter Biden‘s laptop. 

Rep. Adam Schiff announced Thursday that he was running for Senate, launching a bid to talk the place of 89-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein

The 89-year-old incumbent, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has yet to announce her retirement, yet Reps. Katie Porter and Adam Schiff have already announced their intentions to run for her seat

With Schiff’s entry into the race, there will likely be a protracted primary. 

Earlier this month, Rep. Katie Porter said she would run. 

At the same time, Rep. Barbara Lee has told lawmakers she plans to enter the race, though has not made an official announcement, Axios reported.

And it could get ugly.  

A ‘source close to Adam Schiff‘ called it an ‘incredible mistake’ for Porter to announce her candidacy at that time, as California was reeling from dangerous rains and flooding. 

NBC reported in the same story that Schiff had met with Feinstein to tell her he planned to run. 

Feinstein told the Los Angeles Times in December that she planned to serve out her term and would announce her plans for 2024 ‘at the appropriate time.’ 

For months, Feinstein’s been plagued by reports that her memory is fading. 

If she left her post early, California Gov. Gavin Newsom could name a temporary replacement. The state’s other senator, Sen. Alex Padilla, was first appointed to his position, taking the place of now Vice President Kamala Harris after she was sworn-in. 

Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat who served as Sen. Bernie Sanders’ national co-chair in the 2020 presidential primary, told NBC he’d make his decision about jumping in the Senate race in the next few months. 

Schiff became one of the most high-profile House Democrats during the Trump years – so much that he earned a nickname from the former president, ‘little pencil neck,’ which Schiff included in his campaign launch video. 

Fellow Californian, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, named him lead impeachment manager during Trump’s first impeachment in January 2020. 

He pointed to that role Wednesday during a press conference after McCarthy removed both he and Rep. Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee.

‘The cardinal sin appears to be that I led the impeachment of his master in Mar-a-Lago, for withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid from Ukraine, a nation that was even then at war with Russia, in order to extort that country into helping Donald Trump’s reelection campaign,’ Schiff said.  

McCarthy said he removed Schiff because he ‘lied to the American public.’ 

‘When Devin Nunes put out a memo, [Schiff] said it was false. When we had a laptop, he used it before an election to [play] politics and say that it was false and said it was the Russians when he knew different,’ the House speaker said. 

‘He used his position as chairman, knowing he has information the rest of American does not, and lied to the American public,’ McCarthy continued.