Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) defended his staff during closing arguments in the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump on Monday.

Schiff defended several staffers by name. One was Daniel Goldman, the majority counsel on the House Intelligence Committee, a former MSNBC pundit and federal prosecutor who endorsed the discredited Russia dossier.

Goldman appeared before the House Judiciary Committee to present the committee’s report rather than Schiff, and refused to tell Republicans who had ordered the spying on phone records that appeared in the report.

Schiff also thanked Sean Mirko, a committee staffer who is allegedly close to the so-called “whistleblower” who first brought the committee’s attention to the Ukraine call, which he did not hear himself.

During the question-and-answer sessions last week, Republicans asked several questions about the role played by Schiff and his staff in shepherding the whistleblower and his complaint through the current crisis. Schiff angrily defended his staff; Chief Justice John Roberts refused to read a question by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) because it supposedly would have led to information about the identity of the whistleblower.

Schiff declared:

Some of those staff, including some singled out in this chamber, have been made to endure the most vicious, false attacks, to a point where they feel their lives have been put at risk. The attacks on them degrade our institution and who who serve in it. You have asked me why I hired certain of my staff, and I will tell you: because they’re brilliant, hard-working, patriotic, and the best people for the job. And they deserve better than the attacks they have been forced to suffer.

After further arguments by Senators themselves, a final vote will be held Wednesday afternoon on the president’s acquittal and removal. In the interim, he will also address Congress in the annual State of the Union on Tuesday evening.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.