‘These are … some horrible people and hopefully they’re going to pay a big price in the not too distant future…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The full release of House Intelligence Committee transcripts from its 2017-18 investigation of the Russia-Gate FBI scandal confirmed, once again, that there was no evidence to suggest President Donald Trump colluded with Russia.
But it also confirmed for the first time the GOP accusations that Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., lied repeatedly in claiming redacted sections of the reports contained a “smoking gun” that would implicate Trump.
Schiff used the phony claims to ride an electoral wave into the committee chairmanship after Democrats took the House majority in January 2019.
He continued making similar claims about the Mueller investigation, right until the report’s public release and special counsel Robert Mueller‘s humiliating House testimony exposed the truth that there was no evidence.
According to Breitbart, Schiff’s decision finally to release the full, unredacted reports was forced by Richard Grenell, the new acting director of national intelligence, who had promised to do so on Friday if Schiff refused.
That sent the former lead House impeachment manager into a tizzy, with Fox News reporting from a senior official that “Schiff is in panic mode.”
But he eventually decided to release the transcripts himself, while trying to get in front of the narrative and trusting in his leftist media allies to embrace the spin.
Trump’s campaign invited Russian help, made full use of it, then covered it up.
Then, Trump sought more illicit help from Ukraine, leading to his impeachment and a bipartisan vote to convict.
Read just released transcripts from our Russia investigation:https://t.co/NdE68xDBCW
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) May 7, 2020
Notably, in the “bipartisan” impeachment vote that Schiff referenced, only one Republican, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, backed Democrats on one of their fraudulent charges. No other Republicans supported the attempted coup in either the House or Senate, although several House Democrats defected.
Such egregious distortions, however, have been exemplary of Schiff’s devious efforts to selectively cherry-pick details to fit his narrative. And they offer good explanation for why he has been so adamant in opposing full transparency, both in the Russia and the Ukraine probes.
Conservative investigative reporters and leftist media hacks are likely to spend the next several days poring through the material for new details.
But as was observed by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.—Schiff’s GOP counterpart on the Intel Committee, who led the hearings during his prior stint as chair—the most noteworthy thing is that there is no there there.
It is the absence of any inking of information about Trump engaging in criminal conduct that both exonerates the president and implicates his longtime accusers, like Schiff, in a deep-state conspiracy that may well have been criminal.
Former national security adviser Susan Rice‘s response to questions about direct evidence exemplified the procession of Obama-era operatives trotted in to testify before the committee under oath.
“To the best of my recollection, there wasn’t anything smoking, but there were some things that gave me pause,” Rice claimed, according to the transcript. “I don’t recall intelligence that I would consider evidence to that effect that I saw…conspiracy prior to my departure.”
James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, likewise hemmed and hawed.
“I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election,” he testified. “That’s not to say that there weren’t concerns about the evidence we were seeing, anecdotal evidence. … But I do not recall any instance where I had direct evidence.”
It has since been established that the vague claims of having “anecdotal evidence” nearly all pointed back to the debunked Steele Dossier, which was funded by Trump’s Democratic political adversaries and strongly linked to a Russian disinformation campaign.
Despite knowing about the dossier’s credibility issues, the FBI repeatedly used it as a pretense to spy on the Trump campaign and later to launch the politically divisive investigation into him.
Trump issued his own statement after the release of the House transcripts on Friday, calling for the responsible parties in the conspiracy to be held fully accountable.
“”It was a very dangerous situation what they did,” he said during an interview with Fox and Friends. “These are dirty politicians and dirty cops and some horrible people and hopefully they’re going to pay a big price in the not too distant future.”