‘People are hoping for someone, be it Schiff or Robert Mueller, to just deus ex machina Trump away…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) One of President Donald Trump’s most bombastic critics, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., used an appearance on Stephen Colbert’s late-night talk show to spread innuendo, without evidence, about Trump’s business dealings.
The liberal love-fest with partisan hack Colbert also offered a tease of the mudslinging to come when Schiff—a candidate heavily invested in by far-left operatives like the Soros family—replaces Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., as chair of the House Intelligence Committee in January.
Although Schiff offered little in the way of facts, he used the opportunity, framed by Colbert’s asking what he most hoped to investigate, to implicate Trump in a money-laundering scheme by claiming a tenuous connection through the world’s 15th largest bank, Germany’s Deutsche Bank.
Kooky conspiracy theorist Schiff said both Trump’s and Russia’s status as clients of the international lender was evidence enough to merit a taxpayer-funded inquiry by the U.S. legislature into whether there was a secret link.
“For many years, legitimate U.S. banks wouldn’t do business with Trump Organization. The only bank that would was Deutsche Bank,” Schiff told Colbert.
“Now, Deutsche Bank was fined hundreds of millions of dollars by the state of New York for laundering Russian money. Real estate is an attractive venue to launder money. If the Russians were—and we don’t know that they were—but if they were, it would be very powerful leverage…. that might explain his often otherwise inexplicable fondness for Putin and Russia.”
A review by Deutsche Bank offered no evidence of a link between the Trump family’s business dealings and the bank’s Moscow clients.
Moreover, many have disputed the Left’s efforts craft a narrative that Trump has a special affinity for Putin, pointing to the cordiality other presidents have shown on diplomatic missions and also the strong policy-based examples of Trump standing up to the Russian president when Russia’s actions conflicted with U.S. interests.
Schiff also directed his attack at questions of whether Trump continued to work with Russians on a business deal to build a sky-rise building—similar to New York City’s Trump Tower—while he was in the process of campaigning for the presidency.
The project ultimately was scrapped, and no link to Trump’s campaign nor evidence of wrongdoing has been presented publicly. Nonetheless, Schiff used it in his effort to cudgel the president by insinuating that he lied to the public about his “malfeasance.”
“We expect the Russians to lie. We expect a president of the United States to be telling the truth—and therein lies the problem,” Schiff said. “For two years we’ve had this deeply unethical man running the country, and for two years the Republican Congress has done nothing to oversee any of the allegations of malfeasance—and that stops now.”
Ironically, Schiff has been a leading voice in calling for the suppression of confidential materials, such as the FBI’s warrant applications to the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court, that would potentially have exposed the dishonesty and corruption in the Hillary Clinton campaign.
In February, Trump issued one of several tweets blasting Schiff, calling him one of the “biggest liars and leakers in Washington” for undermining the committee’s closed-door hearings into the FBI’s FISA abuse, which included basing their surveillance warrants against the Trump campaign on now-debunked rumors presented in the Clinton/DNC-funded “Steele Dossier.”
Little Adam Schiff, who is desperate to run for higher office, is one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington, right up there with Comey, Warner, Brennan and Clapper! Adam leaves closed committee hearings to illegally leak confidential information. Must be stopped!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2018
Schiff recently made headlines for claiming Trump could face jail time over hush-money payments he allegedly directed his disgraced former lawyer to make in an extortion scheme by Playboy bunny Karen McDougal and porn star Stormy Daniels. However, those allegations, too, prove troublesome when stacked against similar investigations of prominent Democrats.
Notably, during the Colbert visit, Schiff made no mention of the “hush-money” scandal, nor of any direct evidence of Russian collusion—the two areas where Democrats have most sought an avenue to pursue impeachment of Trump.
Instead, Schiff continued to suggest that Trump’s financial dealings were a crucial focus, adding Saudi Arabia into the mix as well.
“You have the president of the United States rejecting the conclusions of our intelligence agencies about the murder of Khashoggi, and naturally we ask the question why. Is foreign funding influencing U.S. policy in a way that is not in our national interest?”
A recent hearing by the House Oversight committee asked the same of Hillary Clinton and whether she may have used her supposedly nonprofit Clinton Foundation as a pay-to-play operation allowing foreign dignitaries like the Saudi crown prince to gain access to the State Department. The Oversight hearing also explored Clinton’s dealings with Russia through a Canadian intermediary, Uranium One.
No such direct allegations of abuse of office have been levied against Trump, despite Schiff’s calls for scrutiny of his finances while a private citizen.
Schiff said that Nunes had previously blocked Democratic efforts for a partisan fishing expedition into Trump’s businesses.
“One of the most basic rules of doing an investigation is you follow the money,” he said. “We were not allowed to follow the money.”
And Schiff menacingly rejected the notion, raised by Colbert, that Trump considered his personal finances a “red line” in what he would cooperate with Congressional probes on.
“He is not in a position to draw red lines—that’s not his job,” Schiff said. ” … He can give pardons, but even the pardon power is not absolute. You cannot use the pardon power if your intention is to obstruct justice.”
Thus far, despite calling investigations into his campaign a “witch hunt” Trump has issued no pardons to those associated with his campaign who have been indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office on largely unrelated charges.
Schiff said he hopes to press Congress to “pass a bill that says if you pardon anyone during an investigation in which you or your family is a subject, witness or target, the entire investigative files will be provided to Congress.”
But even the liberal media seemed to agree that Schiff’s tough talk on the Colbert show amounted to little more than “feel-good theater.”
GQ magazine said of the appearance that Schiff’s “remarkable popularity” (presumably based on leftist media attention) showed just how desperately liberals wish to find dirt on Trump.
“People are hoping for someone, be it Schiff or Robert Mueller, to just deus ex machina Trump away. They’re hoping for a huge plot twist that will send Trump to jail, or at least out of the White House, and bring back some feeling of normalcy,” GQ said.