The Patriot Post® · Schiff's Smoking Gun Backfires
Yesterday morning, we noted that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff was in a tough spot regarding transcripts related to the probe of supposed collusion between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia. Acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Richard Grenell wrote a letter to Schiff challenging him to release 6,000 pages of transcripts from more than 50 interviews the Intel Committee conducted in its probe. Schiff once called for releasing those transcripts, but then stonewalled actually doing so because he knew it would inevitably pull the curtain back on the Democrats’ hoax. Late yesterday, those transcripts finally dropped.
Obviously, it will take time to sift through that much material, but there are some pretty significant highlights already out there. Here are some of them:
In 2017, former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe conceded: “There is a lot of information in the Steele reporting. We have not been able to prove the accuracy of all the information.” And yet the phony Steele dossier, bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC, was relied upon not just for FBI surveillance of Trump’s campaign but for acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s “scope memo” directing Robert Mueller’s investigation nearly a year later.
In 2018, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged: “I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting [or] conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.” And yet, two years later, Clapper claimed “the Trump campaign … was essentially aiding and abetting the Russians.” What changed his mind? Probably the paycheck from CNN.
Team Obama knew it had nothing. Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch said, “I can’t say that [evidence of collusion] existed or not.” Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice admitted, “I don’t recall any intelligence or evidence to that effect.” Former Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes confessed, “I saw indications of potential coordination, but I did not see, you know, the specific evidence of the actions of the Trump campaign.” Nevertheless, Democrats have spent the last three and a half years screaming about that phantom collusion.
In the face of all evidence to the contrary, Schiff laughably claims, “Despite the many barriers put in our way by the then-Republican Majority, and attempts by some key witnesses to lie to us and obstruct our investigation, the transcripts that we are releasing today show precisely what Special Counsel Robert Mueller also revealed: That the Trump campaign, and Donald Trump himself, invited illicit Russian help, made full use of that help, and then lied and obstructed the investigations in order to cover up this misconduct.”
Mueller found nothing of the sort.
Predictably, Schiff also blamed the White House for the delay. “These transcripts should have been released long before now,” Schiff sniffed, “but the White House held up their release to the public by refusing to allow the Intelligence Community to make redactions on the basis of classified information, rather than White House political interests. Only now, and during a deadly pandemic, has the president released his hold on this damning information and evidence.”
Actually, as Grenell noted in his letter to Schiff, most of the transcripts were ready for release last June. It was Schiff who blocked their release.
The real reason for Schiff’s lies and blame-shifting is that the release confirms what we knew all along: There was no collusion between Trump’s campaign and the Russians. It was a Democrat hoax from the beginning, meant to punish Trump for his real “sin” of defeating Hillary Clinton.
“It was a very dangerous situation what they did,” Trump said in response to the transcripts’ release. “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.” That could be a reference to U.S. Attorney John Durham’s criminal investigation into the deep state over this collusion nonsense. Stay tuned.