TIME with ... Adam Schiff

FOR MOST OF HIS 17-YEAR CAREER IN CONGRESS, Adam Schiff was boring. A Harvard-trained lawyer, he was careful and precise in his remarks to the media and lurked on low-wattage committees, like Intelligence and Judiciary, that are heavy on policy, light on political power. On the sometimes raucous congressional trips abroad known as CODELs, he stayed sober and went to bed early.

But now, as a leader of one of the investigations into Russia’s 2016 election operation, Schiff is suddenly exciting passion on all sides. At the annual Gridiron Club dinner in Washington on March 3, President Donald Trump lashed out at Schiff. “Adam is constantly on television pushing the idea that somehow I would undermine democracy,” Trump lamented. “He was going to come tonight, and then