The worst prosecutor in America, whose abuses of civil rights played out on national television, is running for state attorney general.
No, I’m not talking about Thomas Binger or James Kraus, the Kenosha prosecutors who tried to convince a jury this week that mob violence is “entirely reasonable” and that Kyle Rittenhouse should have let himself be attacked because “everybody takes a beating sometimes.”
I’m talking about Daniel S. Goldman, former impeachment prosecutor for Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
Goldman, running in New York, is part of a new cohort of left-wing prosecutors who have brought their “woke” left-wing ideas into law enforcement, where their mission is to liberate criminals through “reform,” while persecuting conservatives.
He was once an obscure former Southern District of New York prosecutor who appeared occasionally on MSNBC, where he helped spread the “Russia collusion” conspiracy theory. Notably, he was taken in by Christopher Steele’s so-called “pee tape.”
He then found his way to the House Intelligence Committee, where he was employed as Schiff’s committee counsel. In that role, he led the impeachment investigation — such as it was — into President Donald Trump’s supposedly scandalous phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
It was a process rife with procedural abuses, with Schiff preventing Republicans from calling their own witnesses, shutting down questions about the “whistleblower,” and leaking to the media.
Goldman’s role in the impeachment process has never been fully explained.
When Schiff was caught lying about whether his committee had any previous contact with the “whistleblower” who initiated the inquiry, he clarified and said Intelligence Committee staff had helped the “whistleblower” file the complaint.
The “whistleblower” also reportedly had previously worked with Intelligence Committee staff whom Schiff had brought over from the National Security Council.
As the senior staffer on the committee, Goldman was almost certainly involved with all of these relationships, and likely knows who the “whistleblower” is — and whether he is in fact Eric Ciamarella, a name the media and Big Tech censored.
Goldman also was largely responsible for the committee’s report, which misstated key facts, falsified important quotes, and invented a new, unconstitutional standard for impeaching the president.
When Schiff, bizarrely, refused to appear at the House Judiciary Committee to defend his own impeachment report, he tapped Goldman to appear instead. The humorless Goldman declined to explain Schiff’s absence.
And when Republicans asked Goldman directly who had given the instruction to spy on the phone records of individuals named in the report — including the president’s lawyer — Goldman refused to answer. The phone records implicated attorney-client privilege as well as the civil liberties of private citizens and members of Congress.
Goldman is now promising to take his inquisitorial skills to New York, picking up the anti-Trump crusade that has been led by Letitia James, who is now running for governor, and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance. Both have turned the law upside down looking for some way to prosecute former President Trump and anyone close to him.
Goldman casts himself in their mold, hoping to impress Democratic primary voters by reminding them that he was “on the front lines” with Schiff, against Trump.
But anyone who cares about civil liberties, and due process, and the abuse of power by government officials should vote for whoever is running against Goldman.
And members of the press corps covering the campaign should demand that he answer the questions he has long avoided: Who was the “whistleblower”? Who gave the order to search the phone records? Why did you deny basic due process rights to the president?
Now that he’s asking for votes, Goldman should no longer be able to hide behind his boss.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.