‘Just another example of Schiff misleading the American people…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff may have mischaracterized new “evidence” provided by Lev Parnas, an indicted former business associate of Rudy Giuliani’s, in order to include Parnas’s testimony in the Senate’s impeachment trial of President Trump, according to a new report.
Schiff has lied throughout the impeachment process, and this is just the latest example.
In a letter obtained by Politico, Schiff wrote that Parnas “continued to try to arrange a meeting with [Ukraine] President [Volodymyr] Zelensky,” citing a text message in which Parnas had told Giuliani that he was “trying to get us mr. Z [sic].”
But in an unredacted version of the documentation obtained by Politico, the cited text message citing “Mr. Z” specifically refers to Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Ukrainian oil company Burisma — not to President Zelensky.
Schiff knew this but deliberately misconstrued Parnas’s text message to bolster his allegation that Trump abused his power by creating a secret diplomatic backchannel.
This is a pattern of behavior for Schiff. Before the White House released the transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelensky, Schiff tried to make up the content and context of the phone call during a House Intelligence Committee hearing. And when later confronted, Schiff claimed that his version of the phone call was never meant to be anything more than a “parody.”
Rep. Adam Schiff illegally made up a FAKE & terrible statement, pretended it to be mine as the most important part of my call to the Ukrainian President, and read it aloud to Congress and the American people. It bore NO relationship to what I said on the call. Arrest for Treason?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2019
Schiff also concealed his office’s relationship with the anonymous Ukraine whistleblower from his congressional colleagues. Reports revealed that Schiff’s staff had advised the whistleblower before the complaint against Trump had been filed, but when asked why Schiff had not divulged this information, he lied and said he had never had contact with the whistleblower.
House Republicans even entertained the idea of compelling Schiff to testify during the House’s impeachment inquiry to learn more about the anonymous whistleblower and the whistleblower’s allegations.
“If you met with the whistleblower, if your staff met with the whistleblower, who knows what was said? Well, only you, your staff, and the whistleblower. That makes you a fact witness. Nowhere in our judicial system allows a fact witness to be the prosecutor,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., had explained.
Schiff’s deception started long before the House’s impeachment inquiry. He also tried to push the debunked Russia collusion hoax, dismissing Republicans’ concerns about Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses repeatedly. However, Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report revealed that Republicans were right to be concerned: There were at least “17 significant errors and omissions” in the FBI’s FISA warrant application to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a letter to Schiff last month that given his track record riddled with “false conclusions” and wrongheaded denials, Schiff is in need of “rehabilitation.”
And Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, one of the House Republicans picked to assist Trump’s impeachment defense team, said Schiff’s latest cover-up is “just another example of Schiff misleading the American people.”
.@RepAdamSchiff produced erroneous information as evidence to support his impeachment sham.
Just another example of Schiff misleading the American people. https://t.co/vWjBqcByGa
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) January 22, 2020
One Democratic official who spoke to Politico, however, claimed that Schiff made a mistake by misidentifying Zelensky, since “z” was a common shorthand for “Zelensky” used by Giuliani and others.
Even if this was just an oversight, a Republican official said that this kind of sloppiness should not be permitted in the impeachment process.
“The most charitable view of the situation is that [Schiff’s] staff committed the equivalent of Congressional malpractice by not looking more than an inch deep to determine the facts before foisting this erroneous information on his colleagues and the American public,” said one senior GOP aide. “But given the selective redactions and contextual clues, it seems as though Chairman Schiff sought to portray an innocuous meeting with Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky as an insidious one with the President of Ukraine simply because both of their surnames start with the letter Z.”