Adam Schiff, chairman of the powerful House Intelligence Committee, lied about his contact with the so-called whistleblower. He’s been holding closed-door hearings to keep the Democrats’ impeachment efforts shrouded in secrecy. And he’s had the gall to say the whistleblower may not need to testify because other witnesses are proving to be damning enough. But we’re supposed to believe Democrats are conducting their attempted impeachment coup on the up and up.

On Sept. 24, Schiff said, “We have been informed by the whistleblower’s counsel that their client would like to speak to our committee and has requested guidance from the Acting DNI as to how to do so. We’re in touch with counsel and look forward to the whistleblower’s testimony as soon as this week.” After his connections to the whistleblower were revealed, however, Schiff began to change his tune. Nearly two weeks ago, Schiff was already hinting that the whistleblower’s testimony “might not be necessary.”

Several other Democrats involved in the impeachment “inquiry” are also now insisting it’s not necessary. “It’s quite clear we have a surfeit of evidence that corroborates in full every aspect of what happened,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-VA). Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-MD) added, “The whistleblower will go down in history as a hero for kicking off this process. But the whistleblower is no longer integral to the investigation in any way.”

The whistleblower is a political hack who coordinated with a Democrat hack, but why quibble over semantics?

It’s true that President Donald Trump’s careless words to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky provided the opening for Democrats to pivot from their utterly failed Russia-collusion narrative after the nothingburger that was Robert Mueller’s report to Trump’s supposed improprieties in advance of the 2020 election. But it’s not exactly self-evident, as Democrats want us to believe, that Trump committed an impeachable offense by requesting help from an ally to investigate shenanigans in the 2016 election. Shenanigans that, by the way, involved Democrat contacts in Ukraine.

And given what we already know about Schiff and the whistleblower, it’s clear that Democrats, who are carefully scripting the impeachment narrative via strategic leaks and the like, know that having the whistleblower testify won’t actually help their case. Beyond that collusion, there are unanswered questions about the whistleblower reporting form — questions Democrats almost certainly don’t want answered by giving Republicans a chance at cross-examination.

(Updated.)