Is Maryland looking forward to having three senators? Sure looks like it, now that it comes to light that California's Senate frontrunner, Rep. Adam Schiff, actually lives in Maryland and has done so without anyone noticing for the past two decades.

According to the Daily Caller:

Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff has reportedly been living in Maryland for two decades, documents that surfaced Wednesday showed.

Mortgage records revealed Schiff claimed his 3,420 square foot property in Maryland as his primary residence, according to CNN. The congressman also reportedly claimed his 650 square foot condo in Burbank, California, as his primary residence to reduce his $7,000 tax bill.

Schiff did not take an exemption on his Maryland home, the outlet reported. However, he reportedly signed documents stating both his Maryland and California properties were primary residences.

A spokesperson for Schiff, Marisol Samayoa, claims the congressman’s primary residence is in California.

There's plenty of tax shenanigans throughout the piece describing the pretzel act Schiff has conducted to claim, legally or not, the lowest tax bill. For a guy who loves imposing high, higher, highest taxes on his home state, he sure seems interested in getting himself the low rates. Taxpayers who don't or can't make his strange claims, see, are suckers.

But the bigger issue, it seems is that he doesn't really live in the state he purports to represent. The condo, or better yet, apartment, should be in the D.C. suburbs so he can get to his day job. The mansion should be back home in Burbank. But that's not how he's worked it. His home is in the Washington swamp and that's where his castle is. The rest is just window dressing. One wonders who really lives in that Burbank condo since Schiff doesn't.

What's disgusting here is that this shows that residency requirements for long-incumbent members of Congress and other political leaders are an absolute joke. Nobody enforces them, unless the forces that be want to get rid of someone for other reasons.

I recall this 2010 case in Schiff's district with local powerbroker Richard Alarcon here, via Wikipedia:

In August 2010, Alarcon was indicted on perjury and voter fraud charges for not living in his district and lying in campaign disclosure documents about his official residence.^[7] Six members of his staff testified before a grand jury.^[8] Alarcon raised at least $9,000 from donors to cover legal fees.^[9]

The charges were dismissed by Judge Kathleen Kennedy in May 2012, but District Attorney Steve Cooley refiled them. Alarcon was charged with 18 counts involving false declaration of candidacy, fraudulent voting, and perjury.^[10] On July 23, 2014, Alarcon was convicted of three counts of voter fraud and one count of perjury.^[11] After serving his full sentence through 51 days of house arrest, his conviction was overturned by an appeals court.^[12] Charges were again refiled.^[13]

In 2019, prosecutors said they would not retry their perjury and voter fraud case against Alarcon and his wife, bringing an end to a nine-year legal battle.^[14]

Notice that he got off.

The same is happening in Washington, likely on a grander scale. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona reportedly lives in Texas. The current California senator who replaced the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein by gubernatorial appointment, Laphonza Butler, is another resident of Maryland. She, uh, changed her voting registration to California, so that all would be hunky dory as she took up the Senate seat and it would be interesting to see her change it back when she leaves office, presumably for Schiff's entry to the seat. Rep. Sara Jacobs, my own representative in San Diego, ran for office in at least one other district before she got hold of mine, as did her reported live-in boyfriend, Palestinian Munich-massacre terrorist grandson Ammar Campa-Najjar, who ran for Rep. Duncan Hunter's seat out in the conservative San Diego back boonies and then ran again for mayor of Chula Vista down by the Mexican border, neither race of which impressed the locals because he didn't have much in the way of roots in either district. There likely are others, because the only thing these pols care about is the promoting the interests of the Washington swamp. They don't live in their districts and they sure don't care about them.

Now it looks like Maryland will get a third Senator, and one wonders why Californians are fleeing that state. When there is no political representation, even for Democrats, based on the basic requirement of residence in the district represented, what do we have? An out-of-touch swamp that pays no attention to the interests of the voters who elect them.

Schiff ought to be disqualified from the Senate race and his House seat for his failure to live here. He's a representative in name only and there are laws on the books against this. But that's not how things are done these days, given the power of the swamp. Maybe it's time for that to change.

Image: Caricature by DonkeyHotey // CC BY-SA 2.0