Who are the Trump impeachment managers? Meet Pelosi's hand-picked prosecutors

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Adam Schiff: Trump was soliciting foreign aid to cheat in 2020

Adam Schiff claims President Trump was soliciting aid from Ukraine to cheat in the next election and suggests Mitch McConnell is covering up for the president

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has named her seven impeachment managers who will prosecute the case against President Trump in the upcoming Senate trial.

Unlike former President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial where the 13 managers were white men, Pelosi selected a diverse group of representatives with a range of experience.

"The emphasis is on litigators. The emphasis is on [their] comfort level in the courtroom," Pelosi said Wednesday. "The emphasis is making the strongest possible case to protect and defend our constitution, to seek the truth for the American people. I'm very proud and honored that these seven members, distinguished members, have accepted this serious responsibility."

Here are the seven members who will try to convince two-thirds of the Senate that President Trump should be removed from office.

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Adam Schiff will help lead the impeachment manager team. 

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., 59, has been the public face of the impeachment inquiry as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He’s a former California state senator and federal prosecutor who successfully prosecuted the first FBI agent ever indicted for espionage in 1990.

He’s become a regular target for President Trump, who called for Schiff to be punished for making a mockery of his phone call with the Ukraine president in the opening hearing of the impeachment inquiry. Trump has also demanded that “shifty Schiff” testify in the Senate trial along with former Vice President Joe Biden, his son, Hunter, and the whistleblower who reported Trump’s July 25 phone call with the Ukraine president.

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Schiff has been steeped in impeachment before. In 2000, he entered Congress by defeating GOP incumbent Rep. James Rogan, who was a prime target for his central role as one of the 13 House impeachment managers in the Clinton trial.  It was the most expensive House race in history at that time.

Schiff was named a House manager twice before in two successful impeachments of federal judges: Samuel B. Kent in 2009 and G. Thomas Porteous Jr. in 2010. Kent resigned before the trial concluded. Porteous was found guilty in the Senate and removed from the bench.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., 72, is the longest-serving House member of the seven managers, having been first elected to Congress in 1992. Prior to that Nadler, served in the New York State Assembly for 16 years.

Nadler has a long history of tussling with Trump dating back to the '80s and was a chief opponent to Trump’s plans to build a “Television City” development in Manhattan where Trump planned to live in the penthouse of the tallest building of the world, the New York Post reported.

The two have sparred for years over Trump’s real estate plans and Nadler is firm that he won’t be bullied by Trump.

Now as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Nadler was prominent in the investigation of Trump for his dealings with Russia. Special Counsel Robert Mueller didn’t find sufficient evidence that Trump or his campaign conspired with Russia to win the 2016 election, but left the door open on obstruction of justice. However, the appetite for impeachment lessened after lackluster testimony from Mueller before Nadler’s committee.

On the Ukraine controversy, Schiff took the lead, but Nadler’s committee was in charge of writing the two articles of impeachment that passed the House: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

He’s in his 15th term in Congress.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y, 49, sits on the Judiciary Committee and is the No. 5 Democrat as chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. The latter role means that Jeffries has been in the spotlight for Democratic messaging, as he holds a weekly press conference on what the Democrats are working on. He's considered by colleagues to be a potential future House speaker. Until then, Jeffries is well-known for his colorful speech on the House floor nominating Pelosi to be House speaker again in 2019.

“House Democrats are down with NDP -- Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi, the once and future speaker of the United States House of Representatives!” Jeffries said at the time.

Jeffries is a former New York State assemblyman. While he’s been a tough critic of Trump on matters of impeachment, he worked with the White House previously on passing bipartisan criminal justice reform, known as the First Step Act.

Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California.  Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., 72, is chair of the House Administration Committee, which has jurisdiction over elections, and is a veteran member of the House Judiciary Committee.

She is the only member of the House to have worked on three impeachments: Clinton, former President Richard Nixon and now President Trump.

During the Nixon impeachment, Lofgren was a congressional staffer for a member of the House Judiciary Committee. She sat on that committee during Clinton the impeachment, where she argued that Clinton's conduct, while bad, didn’t warrant an impeachment that would further divide the country and weaken the executive branch. She favored a censure resolution against Clinton.

"The Republicans will vote to impeach the president whom they could not defeat at the polls for reasons that do not add up to treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors," Lofgren said at the time.

Unlike the left wing of her party, Lofgren didn’t want articles of impeachment on Trump’s Russia dealings included and successfully argued they should be narrowly tailored to the Ukraine controversy.

Lofgren has served in Congress since 1994. Like Schiff, she was a previous House manager in the impeachment trial of two federal judges: Samuel B. Kent in 2009 and G. Thomas Porteous Jr. in 2010.

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Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., 40, is a lawyer and former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s among the moderate group of freshman Democrats that helped Pelosi win back the House majority. Crow didn’t back Pelosi for speaker, honoring a campaign pledge in his swing district.

Crow is the only House manager who does not sit on either the House Intelligence or Judiciary Committees that ran the impeachment inquiry.

But Crow helped open the door to impeachment on Ukraine when he penned an op-ed with six other freshman Democrats with national security and military experience calling for an impeachment inquiry into whether Trump withheld security assistance to Ukraine to help with this reelection.

“This flagrant disregard for the law cannot stand,” Crow and others wrote in the Washington Post, which prompted Pelosi to announce the opening of the impeachment inquiry the following day.

Crow sits on the House Armed Services Committee and has taken the spotlight most recently on backing a new war powers resolution to check Trump’s ability to launch military strikes without congressional approval.

Republicans, seeking a chance to win back Crow's seat in 2020, immediately pounced on his role of prosecutor in Trump’s case and have dubbed him a pretend moderate.

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Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., 62, is a member of both the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, the two lead panels in Trump’s impeachment inquiry. She’s been a more outspoken proponent of impeachment, even before the Ukraine controversy, saying Trump had made numerous attempts to obstruct justice related to the Russia probe.

Demings is the only non-lawyer in the group. But she brings with her more than 25 years of law enforcement experience, working her way up from a patrol officer to eventually becoming chief of police of the Orlando Police Department in 2007. She was the first woman to hold that position.

Demings was first elected to House in 2016 to represent an Orlando district that includes popular tourist attractions like Walt Disney World and SeaWorld.

She gave a personal speech during the House Judiciary Committee debate about how she, a daughter of a maid and a janitor, believes in the promise of America and her oath of office.

“I come before you tonight as an African American female," she said at the Dec. 11 hearing. "I come before you tonight as a descendant of slaves -- slaves who knew they would not make it, but dreamed and prayed that one day that I would make it. I come before you tonight proclaiming that in spite of America’s complicated history, my faith is in the Constitution.”

Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas. (Photo by Cengiz Yar/Getty Images)

Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, 69, is a member of the House Judiciary Committee. She was first elected in 2018 to Congress to represent Houston and, along with Veronica Escobar of El Paso, became the first Latina congresswoman from Texas.

Garcia is a former Houston municipal court judge and former member of the Texas State Senate.

Though she’s new to Congress, she’s known Pelosi for a long time through the Houston Democratic Party fundraising circuit, the Texas Tribune reports.

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Pelosi touted Garcia’s trailblazing career in her press conference Wednesday.

"Previously, she was the director and presiding judge of the Houston municipal system and was elected city controller,” Pelosi said. “Ms. Garcia was later elected the first Hispanic and first woman to be elected in her own right to the Harris County Commissioners Court."

Garcia was among the 95 House Democrats in July who voted to move forward with an impeachment effort led by fellow Texas Rep. Al Green, who accused Trump of fanning racial flames by telling four squad members to “go back” to their countries.