The fraudulent House impeachment effort has matters exactly backward. President Trump didn’t commit high crimes, he is a crime victim. If anyone should be put on trial in the Senate, it is Rep. Adam Schiff.
The more facts continue to be revealed about the deep state coup attempt against the president, the worse Schiff looks. Justice Department Inspector General Horowitz’s report and hearing testimony last week on the abuse of the FISA process is the latest evidence of the collusion between members of Obama’s FBI and the Clinton campaign to try to destroy Donald Trump.
The IG findings, which further tied the Bureau to promoting the Clinton-funded and wholly fabricated Steele dossier, are parallel to the Mueller investigation’s findings that the Russian collusion narrative was a big lie. Yet this phony narrative became the basis for the FBI to lie to the courts and to the American people, and to break the law to target President Trump.
The current impeachment farce builds on this model, using a manufactured scandal, amplified through the media echo chamber, and orchestrated by one of the central Congressional plotters in Russiagate, Adam Schiff.
The Horowitz report proves what we at Judicial Watch have been saying for some time, that Schiff has consistently lied, dissembled and misled when it comes to the Russian collusion hoax. In 2018 Schiff insisted that the “DOJ met the rigor, transparency and evidentiary basis needed to meet FISA’s probable cause requirement.” We now know that this was not true; in fact the FBI fabricated evidence to get what it wanted.
Schiff said the FBI did not hide relevant or exculpatory information from judges when seeking FISA warrants. This also was false; exculpatory evidence regarding Carter Page was consistently and systematically omitted from the process. And Schiff maintained what all the Russia collusion hoaxsters agreed upon, that the FBI did not rely primarily on the Clinton-funded and 100% discredited Steele dossier to convince the courts to issue the warrants. Again, a total lie; according to the Horowitz report the dossier plated the “central and essential role” in the illicit process.
Schiff’s Russiagate misconduct set the stage for his central role in the Democrats’ Plan B impeachment effort: the Ukraine hoax. But the impeachment by the House can still be stopped by announcing now that Adam Schiff would be required to testify in a Senate mini-trial concerning his role in concocting this scandal.
Specifically, the Senate should not proceed to full consideration of any impeachment referral from the House until it evaluates the serious evidence of prosecutorial misconduct by House impeachment leader Schiff. If it is clear that Schiff and his coup cabal will have to answer tough questions in the Senate, the House impeachment effort may collapse rather than risk exposure of its core abuses.
Schiff’s misconduct includes but is not limited to his collusion with the whistleblower and those who leaked information related to the complaint. The timeline of these events, Schiff’s role in them, and his staff’s contacts with the whistleblower, all need to be investigated.
Schiff also stunned Washington when he subpoenaed and released private phone records of his political enemies in his impeachment report.
Schiff’s underhanded move was ethically – as well as legally – suspect. He spied on a fellow member of Congress (Rep. Devin Nunes), on a working journalist (John Solomon), and the president’s personal lawyers (Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow). Like President Trump, these innocent Americans are victims of Schiff’s undoubtedly illicit and potentially criminal abuse of power.
In addition to perhaps stopping impeachment dead, pursuing this preliminary hearing would be an effective way for Schiff and a limited number of other witnesses to testify so that the public is educated about the sham. This could expose the abusive nature of the impeachment and its fraudulent predicates without the need for a full-blown Senate trial.
Tom Fitton is president of Judicial Watch, a nonprofit government watchdog.