Tag Archives: Representative Adam Schiff

The Sad Demise Of National Public Radio (NPR)

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On Tuesday, Uri Berliner posted an article at The Free Press about his years at National Public Radio (NPR). The article states that the far-left worldview at NPR has not always been there–in recent years it has developed and gotten worse.

The article reports:

Back in 2011, although NPR’s audience tilted a bit to the left, it still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of the road, and 37 percent as liberal.

By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. We weren’t just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals. 

An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America. 

That wouldn’t be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things, it’s devastating both for its journalism and its business model. 

The article notes the coverage of the Russia Hoax:

Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff. 

Schiff, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became NPR’s guiding hand, its ever-present muse. By my count, NPR hosts interviewed Schiff 25 times about Trump and Russia. During many of those conversations, Schiff alluded to purported evidence of collusion. The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports.

But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming. 

The article also mentions Hunter Biden’s laptop:

In October 2020, the New York Post published the explosive report about the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer shop containing emails about his sordid business dealings. With the election only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye. Here’s how NPR’s managing editor for news at the time explained the thinking: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.” 

But it wasn’t a pure distraction, or a product of Russian disinformation, as dozens of former and current intelligence officials suggested. The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence peddling and its possible implications for his father.

The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with colleagues, I listened as one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good we weren’t following the laptop story because it could help Trump. 

The article also mentions the political affiliations of the editorial staff at NPR:

So on May 3, 2021, I presented the findings at an all-hands editorial staff meeting. When I suggested we had a diversity problem with a score of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn’t hostile. It was worse. It was met with profound indifference. I got a few messages from surprised, curious colleagues. But the messages were of the “oh wow, that’s weird” variety, as if the lopsided tally was a random anomaly rather than a critical failure of our diversity North Star. 

Please follow the link above to read the entire story. It’s a sad saga of failing to hold to journalistic principles. Unfortunately, we support this slanted media with our tax dollars.

This Could Get Very Interesting

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On Wednesday, Fox News posted the following headline:

GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna seeks $16 million fine against Adam Schiff for ‘lies’ about Trump-Russia collusion

The fine is roughly half the cost of the Trump-Russia probe, which found no collusion

If there are supposed to be consequences for lying to Congress, shouldn’t there be consequences if Congressmen lie to Congress?

The article reports:

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., introduced a resolution that would fine Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., $16 million for his claims that former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.

Luna says that amount is about half of the cost of the federal investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion, which was debunked by special counsel reports from both Robert Mueller and John Durham.

“The GOP Conference agrees that Adam Schiff has betrayed the trust of the American people, purposely abused positions of extreme authority, lied continuously, and as such, must be held to account,” Luna said. “Accordingly, the resolution requires Rep. Schiff to pay a $16 million dollar fine, half of the cost American taxpayers were forced to pay for the Russia hoax investigation.”

…Luna’s resolution said as chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Schiff had a position of “extreme trust” that gave him access to sensitive information not available to other members, but Schiff “abused this trust” by citing evidence of collusion that later special counsel reports showed did not exist.

“By repeatedly telling these falsehoods, Representative Schiff purposely deceived his Committee, Congress, and the American people,” the resolution said. It noted that Schiff “lent credibility” to the Steele dossier, supported a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant against Trump aide Carter Page, and publicly accused Page of being a Russian collaborator.

“Representative Schiff exploited his positions on HPSCI to encourage and excuse abusive intelligence investigations of Americans for political purposes,” it said. “Representative Schiff used his position and access to sensitive information to instigate a fraudulently based investigation, which he then used to amass political gain and fundraising dollars.”

I believe that there are a number of people who should be in jail for misusing the Justice Department for political purposes, but that has been going on since J.  Edgar Hoover. However, the people who kept the hoax going and covered up the hoax should pay a price.

Threatened With Exposure?

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Adam Schiff has an interesting relationship with the truth. He claimed to have information proving collusion between President Trump and the Russians. Somehow that information never appeared. He created a fictional telephone call between President Trump and Ukraine that he wanted to be the basis for impeachment. And he sat on the January 6th Committee supposedly investigating the events of that day. So far he has never been held accountable for his lies. However, that may be changing.

On February 20th, I posted an article about 14,000 hours of footage from cameras around the Capitol complex from January 6th that has been released to Tucker Carlson. Red State posted an article on February 20th about Representative Schiff’s reaction to the release. Somehow the Representative is less than thrilled that the footage will probably be made public fairly soon.

The article notes:

“Kevin McCarthy turned over Jan 6 videos to right-wing propagandist Tucker Carlson,” Schiff huffed. “A man who spews Kremlin talking points. Suggests Jan 6 was a false flag. And spreads the Big Lie. Make no mistake: This isn’t about transparency, it’s about fueling dangerous conspiracy theories.”

It’s always a conspiracy theory until we find out that it is true!

The article notes:

So the man who lied his head off about the Russia collusion hoax is concerned about “dangerous conspiracy theories” when he helped to promote one?

How is the actual video footage that was shot a “dangerous conspiracy theory”? What Schiff is saying is he has a problem with the truth coming out, that the truth is “dangerous,” and that he fears it, that’s what he’s saying here. That’s why neither he nor Pelosi wanted this video out there, otherwise, he wouldn’t be so desperate to try to attack the release now. If he cared about the truth, he’d welcome the release. But to Schiff, the truth is just something to lie about, to achieve his political aims.

During the next few weeks, I suspect that the Tucker Carlson Tonight will have many ‘get-out-the-popcorn segments.’

Get Out The Popcorn

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In 2021 Marjorie Taylor Greene was removed from her committee assignments, an unprecedented step to discipline a member over past incendiary remarks. The vote was mostly along party lines. Incendiary remarks made by other Congressmen were conveniently ignored and no penalty paid. During his campaign for Speaker, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy promised to strip Democratic Representatives Ilhan Omar, Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell of their committee assignments. Obviously the Democrats are not planning to let this happen (unlike their Republican counterparts who have  no idea how to fight),

On Monday, Townhall reported the following:

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has officially selected Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA) to the House Intelligence Committee. This is despite Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) promises he would not let that happen, setting up quite the likely showdown between the two party leaders. Earlier this afternoon, Rep. Schiff responded over Twitter, with just the kind of response you’d expect. 

The article includes screenshots of Representative Schiff and Representative Swalwell thanking Representative Jeffries for the nominations. The ball is now in Speaker McCarthy’s court. We are now going to see if he is willing to keep the promises he made. We are also going to see if it is worth it to elect Republicans.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE:  According to an article at Red State yesterday, Speaker McCarthy is standing his ground.

 

I’m Not Holding My Breath

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During her reign as Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi established a number of precedents. Some of them were highly partisan should have been undone by the Republicans. However, they were not. So here we are, waiting for Karma.

On Wednesday PJ Media posted an article about some of the actions of Speaker Pelosi and some of the promises made by Kevin McCarthy.

The article notes:

Last year Pelosi and the Democrats stripped Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) of her committee assignments over past comments she made, and later censured and removed Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) from his committee assignments over a video he tweeted.

Republicans argued at the time that Democrats were establishing a “dangerous” precedent whereby the “majority party can punish a member of the minority party by removing their committee assignments.”

In a sense, they were warned that they would “rue the day” they established this precedent, and that day is hopefully coming soon. It took long enough, but the Republican Party finally secured the House Majority on Tuesday evening, which also means that Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) will be Speaker of the House.

McCarthy has repeatedly promised that he would remove Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from their respective committees. There are more legitimate reasons to remove all four of them from their committee assignments than there were to remove Greene and Gosar. Waters infamously incited violence by urging people to confront Trump officials in public, Omar has a habit of making blatantly anti-Semitic statements, Swalwell had an affair with a Chinese spy, and Schiff lied about seeing intelligence proving Trump colluded with Russia.

If the Republicans ever want to win another election, Kevin McCarthy needs to keep this promise. Many of us are tired of being perpetual wimps. I know it’s good to be the ‘nice guy,’ but sometimes you have to stand up for yourself. Mealy-mouthed Republicans who do nothing will not get re-elected. The MAGA crowd that the establishment fears will primary them and win.

 

An Interesting (And Necessary Lawsuit)

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On Tuesday, The New York Post reported that John Paul Mac Isaac, the Delaware computer repairman who lost his business after turning Hunter Biden’s laptop over to authorities, has sued Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, CNN, The Daily Beast and Politico, saying they falsely accused him of peddling Russian disinformation.

The article reports:

Mac Isaac came to legally own the laptop after Biden’s son Hunter dropped it off at his store for repairs in April 2019 and never came back. The material on the laptop has raised serious questions about what Biden knew of his son’s overseas business deals, during which he and the president’s brother Jim Biden often invoked his powerful name.

Mac Isaac handed over a copy of the laptop’s hard drive to the FBI in December 2019, and eight months later, alerted then-President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who provided a copy of the hard drive to The Post.

When The Post’s first story broke in October 2020 — just three weeks before the presidential election — Twitter and Facebook moved to censor it. Then Schiff (D-Calif.) and 51 former intelligence officials labeled the laptop Russian disinformation. 

In the aftermath, Mac Isaac says, his business and reputation were ruined.

“Twitter initially labeled my action hacking, so for the first day after my information was leaked, I was bombarded with hate mail and death threats revolving around the idea that I was a hacker, a thief and a criminal,” Mac Isaac said.

When The New York Post posted information about the laptop on Twitter, they were banned from Twitter (the ban was lifted on October 16, 2020).

The article concludes:

Mac Isaac has penned a book about his ordeal — “American Injustice: My Battle to Expose the Truth” — which will be released in November.

The Post exclusively revealed the existence of Hunter Biden’s emails in a series of reports in October 2020 based on the contents of a damaged MacBook Pro laptop that was abandoned at Mac Isaac’s shop in the Biden family’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.

After downplaying the emails as unverified, both the New York Times and the Washington Post authenticated many of them — including some apparently being used in a federal probe of suspected tax fraud, money laundering and foreign lobbying violations by Hunter Biden.

Calls to Schiff, CNN, the Daily Beast and Politico were not immediately returned.

As long as the Democrats control the Justice Department, no one in the Biden family will never be held accountable for the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop.

An Ordinary Citizen Would Be Arrested For This

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Falsifying evidence is a criminal offense. We are about to find out whether the laws actually do apply to the people in Congress.

On Wednesday, The Western Journal reported the following:

It’s amazing to me that California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff is not in jail. This lawmaker has played it fast and loose, first during the Trump/Russia collusion investigation, which put him on the map, and next in the House impeachment inquiry of former President Donald Trump. There is no line this unethical, truth-challenged, repellent snake won’t cross in the name of politics.

The Federalist’s Sean Davis reported on Wednesday that Schiff was up to his old tricks at Monday night’s hearing of the Jan. 6 Committee. According to Davis, Schiff “claimed to have proof” that Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican, texted then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows “to instruct former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.”

Davis claims that Schiff misrepresented “the substance of the text message and its source.” Schiff “even doctored original text messages, which were obtained and reviewed by The Federalist in their entirety.”

The article explains the changes Representative Schiff made to the text messages:

Davis (The Federalist’s Sean Davis) explains that in addition to lying about “substance” and the “source” of the text, Schiff “even doctored the message and graphic that he displayed on screen during his statement. The full text message, which was forwarded to Meadows from Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on the evening of Monday, Jan. 5, was significantly longer than what Schiff read and put on screen, but Schiff erased significant portions of the text and added punctuation where there was none to give the impression that Jordan himself was tersely directing Meadows to give orders to Pence on how to handle the electoral vote certification.”

Davis continues: “The original text was written by Washington attorney and former Department of Defense Inspector General Joseph Schmitz and included an attachment of a four-page draft Word document drafted by Schmitz that detailed Schmitz’s legal reasoning for suggesting that Pence had the constitutional authority to object to the certification of electoral votes submitted by a handful of states. The piece that Schmitz had sent to Jordan was published at the website everylegal.vote the next day and even included the same ‘DISCUSSION DRAFT’ heading and timestamp on the document that Schmitz sent to Jordan.”

He explains that Schmitz sent this text to Jordan “on the evening of Jan. 5, including the Word document as an attachment. Schmitz then texted to Jordan a three-paragraph summary of his Word document, which Schiff sliced and diced and then attributed to Jordan.”

Would anyone like to wager on how much of the above chicanery will be reported by the mainstream media?

A Portent Of Things To Come?

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Sometimes people say really stupid things. Most of the time, those comments can be easily dismissed. However sometimes even when a comment seems totally insane, it needs to be paid attention to because it may be a clue to future events.

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about a recent comment made by Representative Adam Schiff.

The article reports:

Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that we could not ignore the so-called predominant domestic threat was the white national threat and “some of the folks are part of the Trump base.”

Wallace (Nicole Wallace) said, “I want to ask you about the work on the intelligence committee. Is it different now that the intel chiefs testified to the tragic new reality that the gravest threats to the country are domestic violent extremists? Currently, under the threat warning, we know about radicalized by the big lie still being repeated by Donald Trump. I believe six times since last week and some COVID restrictions where he was also a leading and rater with tweets of liberate Michigan and liberate Virginia?”

…Schiff said, “We ought to be able to find common ground that the predominant terrorism threat facing the country right now is a domestic threat. The predominant part of that domestic threat is white national threat. That has international, transnational links as well. We can’t ignore that because of a political sensitivity that some of the folks are part of the Trump base. So I hope we can find common ground. We need to make sure we protect the country.”

I firmly believe that this is the prelude to the talking points that will be utilized if the audit of the Arizona presidential vote shows systematic fraud. Rather than face the issue and admit there is a problem, people saying that there was systematic fraud will be charged with undermining the election and labeled as domestic terrorists.

In another Breitbart article that was posted yesterday, Senator Schumer had the following comment:

On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The ReidOut,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) stated that if Democrats can’t come to a bipartisan agreement on voting rights legislation “everything will be on the table to get it done.” And that one of the pieces of leverage he has for Democratic senators is that if Democrats don’t block some state election laws, “the chances of our caucus retaining the majority and people who are up for re-election like Kelly and Warnock winning is greatly diminished.”

Essentially what he is saying is that if the Democrats don’t tilt the playing field, they can’t win. Federalizing elections (which is against the Constitution) and calling anyone who opposes what you are doing domestic terrorists is one way to tilt the playing field.

Will The Other Side Of The Story Get Equal Coverage?

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The mainstream media has praised Representative Adam Schiff for his ‘masterful’ performance this week. The major networks have highlighted various charges Representative Schiff has made (even when those charges have already been proven false). The mainstream media has obviously taken sides. There have been many instances where that was obvious, but The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today about one particular instance.

The article reports:

A good reminder of what we can expect when President Trump’s defense team has their first opportunity in five months to defend him. During a broadcast segment on ABC news reporters in the Capitol were interviewing President Trump defense attorney Jay Sekulow.

Back in the ABC studio, Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos did not want to see ABC broadcasting statements from the defense and he is caught on camera using hand signals to tell the producers to cut-off the broadcast. Stephanopoulos realized he was caught:

The article contains video clips of the incident.

There are a few things to consider here other than the obvious. First of all, this ‘trial’ started five months ago. Saturday will be the first opportunity the defendant will have for his representatives to defend him. Would you be willing to go into court in that situation? Secondly, because of the rules of the Senate, the Senators were not able to spotlight the lies told in the presentations made this week–and there were many lies told.

I don’t know how many people will actually watch the President’s defense team on Saturday. I do know that anyone who watched the House Impeachment Managers this week and then watches tomorrow will be very surprised at how much of what they heard this week was not true. It is unfortunate that the mainstream media will probably carry very little of the defense after fawning over those making the charges all week.

It Will Be Interesting To See If He Keeps His Word

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Breitbart is reporting today that Senator Lindsey Graham made the following statement on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” Senator Graham stated, “It’s impossible to bring this case forward in my view fairly without us knowing who the whistleblower is and having a chance to cross-examine them about any advice they may have, if they don’t call the whistleblower in the House, this thing is dead on arrival on the Senate.”

Representative Adam Schiff, who has appointed himself to decide who the Republicans can have as witnesses in the impeachment hearings has already stated that he does not see the need for the whistleblower to testify.

The article at Breitbart continues quoting Lindsey Graham:

He continued, “Well, if the whistleblower comes from Brennan world would be stunning, I think if the whistleblower had connection to Democratic candidate, that would be stunning. The only way you can fairly deal with this issue for us to find out who the whistleblower. No American can be accused of a crime based on an anonymous allegation. The whistleblower is foundational to what they are doing to the House and the fact that they don’t want to call him tells you everything that you need to know how about valid the effort is to impeachment the president.”

He added, “What’s going to happen, When you find out who is the whistleblower is, I’m confident you are going to find out it’s somebody from the deep state. You are going to find out they had interactions with the Schiff, and this thing’s going to stink to high Heaven. The only reason we don’t know who the whistleblower is it hurts their cause, they are not trying to find the truth here.”

I am hoping this means that the Republicans are going to develop a backbone. I’m not entirely optimistic, but I am hoping.

Is We Can Read The Transcript, Why Do We Need The Whistleblower?

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This entire news narrative about the ‘whistleblower’ has been a farce from the beginning. As usual, President Trump handled the situation beautifully by releasing the transcripts of his conversation with the Ukrainian President. He should not have had to do that, but because of all the accusations the Democrats are so freely throwing around, it was the best thing to do. It was also the thing that the Democrats hurling the accusations assumed that the President would not do. It blew a hole right in the middle of their little scheme. When the actual transcript was released, the ‘whistleblower’ became moot. He wasn’t needed anymore. In fact, he was a liability because it became obvious that his report had little to do with what actually happened. Now the story has a new twist.

The Daily Caller posted an article today reporting that Representative Adam Schiff has stated that the House Intelligence Committee might not have to interview the ‘whistleblower.’  Oddly enough, Representative Schiff seemed to lose interest in interviewing the ‘whistleblower’ after it was learned that the person had contact with a Schiff aide prior to filing the complaint Aug. 12. Wow. What a coincidence.

The article concludes:

House Democrats have given indications that they were shifting away from pushing for the whistleblower’s testimony.

House Democrats were considering disguising the whistleblower during any potential interview in order to prevent Republicans from leaking the whistleblower’s identity, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

A Republican source familiar with the matter told the Daily Caller News Foundation in response to that report that it appeared Schiff was “laying the groundwork” to announce the whistleblower will not testify, “and to blame that on Republicans.”

“Schiff may not want the whistleblower to testify anymore because the whistleblower would have to reveal more details about this cooperation with Schiff,” the Republican source told the DCNF.

I wonder how many Americans realize how totally contrived and dishonest this ‘impeachment investigation’ is. The President’s civil rights are being violated, and the Republicans are being as quiet as mice. Does anyone in Washington have enough backbone to stand up for the Constitution?

What Happens When The Investigation Doesn’t Go In The Direction You Had Hoped

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Breitbart posted an article today about some recent comments by Representative Adam Schiff.

The article reports:

Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) hinted that he would not accept the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller as the end of the investigation into President Donald Trump and Russia.

CNN’s Dana Bash asked, “We expect at some point maybe soon, maybe not, the findings of the Mueller investigation to finally be completed. If he finds that there was no direct collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, will you accept that?”

Schiff, “We’re going to have to do our own investigation, and we are. We’ll certainly be very interested to learn what Bob Mueller finds. We may have to fight to get that information. Bill Barr has not been willing to commit to provide that report either to the Congress or to the American people. We’re going to need to see it. The American people need to see it. We may also need to see the evidence behind that report. There may be, for example, evidence of collusion or conspiracy that is clear and convincing but not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

He added, “The American people are entitled to know if there is evidence of a conspiracy between either the president or the president’s campaign and a foreign adversary. At the end of the day, the most important thing for the American people to know is whether the president is somehow compromised, whether there’s a leverage the Russians could use over the president and if the Russians are in a position to expose wrongdoing by the president or his campaign. That’s compromising.”

There have been a lot of insinuations that Robert Mueller’s report is not going to find anything. If Representative Schiff has his own investigation, he can keep the unfounded suspicions against the President in the news until the 2020 election and hope that he can create enough innuendo to cause the President to lose the election. That is what is actually going on here. Finding the facts has very little to do with anything in Congress.

Annoying Things Done By Politicians

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Representative Adam Schiff released the Democratic memo about FISA surveillance on Saturday (when he assumed no one would be paying attention). The memo is an effort to deflect charges that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) were weaponized for political purposes during and after the 2016 presidential campaign. The memo itself was a purely political move, and the release of the memo on a Saturday night was also a political move. The release of the memo is interesting bercause the memo does not help the Democrats’ case.

Yesterday Andrew McCarthy posted an article at National Review explaining that the memo does more damage to the Democrats’ arguments than helps them. Because of his extensive legal background, Andrew McCarthy is the perfect person to dissect this memo.

The article is detailed, and I suggest that you follow the link to read the entire article, but I will try to summarize it.

The article reports:

The memo concedes that the FISA-warrant application relied on allegations by Steele’s anonymous Russian hearsay sources that:

Page met separately while in Russia with Igor Sechin, a close associate of Vladimir Putin and executive chairman of Roseneft, Russia’s state-owned oil company, and Igor Divyekin, a senior Kremlin official. Sechin allegedly discussed the prospect of future U.S.-Russia energy cooperation and “an associated move to lift Ukraine-related western sanctions against Russia.” Divyekin allegedly disclosed to Page that the Kremlin possessed compromising information on Clinton (“kompromat”) and noted the possibility of its being released to Candidate #1’s [i.e., Donald Trump’s] campaign. . . . This closely tracks what other Russian contacts were informing another Trump foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos.

1) This was obviously the most critical allegation against Page. The Democrats attempt to make much of Page’s trip to Moscow in July 2016, but the uncorroborated Sechin and Divyekin meetings, which Page credibly denies, are the aspect of the Moscow trip that suggested a nefarious Trump–Russia conspiracy. That’s what the investigation was about. Far from clandestine, the rest of Page’s trip was well publicized and apparently anodyne.

2) Democrats implausibly insist that what “launched” the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation was not Steele’s allegations but intelligence from Australia about George Papadopoulos’s contact with what Democrats elusively describe as “individuals linked to Russia.”

…Even if we assume for argument’s sake that these characters had solid regime connections — rather than that they were boasting to impress the credulous young Papadopoulos — they were patently not in the same league as Sechin, a Putin crony, and Divyekin, a highly placed regime official. And that, manifestly, is how the FBI and the DOJ saw the matter: They sought a FISA warrant on Page, not Papadopoulos. And, as the above-excerpted passage shows, they highlighted the Steele dossier’s sensational allegations about Page and then feebly tried to corroborate those allegations with some Papadopoulos information, not the other way around. (More on that when we get to Schiff’s notion of “corroboration.”)

The article also notes:

…because Page was an American citizen, FISA law required that the FBI and the DOJ show not only that he was acting as an agent of a foreign power (Russia), but also that his “clandestine” activities on behalf of Russia were a likely violation of federal criminal law. (See FISA, Section 1801(b)(2)(A) through (E), Title 50, U.S. Code.) It is the Steele dossier that alleges Page was engaged in arguably criminal activity. The Democrats point to nothing else that does.

Because of the way this whole story has been reported, I am not sure many Americans realize that the constitutional rights of one of their fellow citizens were violated by the FISA Court. All of us need to remember that this could happen to any one of us. We also need to note that if the use of the FBI and DOJ for political purposes is not dealt with and the guilty parties punished, we will see more of this behavior in the future.

The article continues:

How’s this for transparency? The FISA warrant application says that Steele, referred to as “Source #1,” was “approached by” Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, referred to as “an identified U.S. person,” who

indicated to Source #1 that a U.S.-based law firm had hired the identified U.S. Person to conduct research regarding Candidate #1’s [i.e., Trump’s] ties to Russia. (The identified U.S. Person and Source #1 have a longstanding business relationship.) The identified U.S. Person hired Source #1 to conduct this research. The identified U.S. Person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1’s ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. Person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign. [Emphasis in Schiff memo, p. 5]

The first thing to notice here is the epistemological contortions by which the DOJ rationalized concealing that the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid for Steele’s reporting. They ooze consciousness of guilt. If you have to go through these kinds of mental gymnastics to avoid disclosing something, it’s because you know that being “transparent” demands disclosing it.

As I stated, it is a very long and detailed article. Please follow the link above to see the other problems with the Schiff memo.