{"id":38690,"date":"2020-04-21T08:42:12","date_gmt":"2020-04-21T12:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=38690"},"modified":"2020-04-21T08:42:12","modified_gmt":"2020-04-21T12:42:12","slug":"one-reason-transparency-about-the-russia-investigation-is-taking-so-long","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=38690","title":{"rendered":"One Reason Transparency About The Russia Investigation Is Taking So Long"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday John Solomon posted an article at <a href=\"https:\/\/justthenews.com\/accountability\/russia-and-ukraine-scandals\/how-adam-schiff-secretly-thwarted-efforts-bring\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Just The News<\/a> about some behind-the-scenes maneuvering by Adam Schiff that made it difficult to get the truth out about the investigation into President Trump and any connections he might have had with Russia.<\/p>\n<p>The article reports:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>Shortly after Schiff took over from Republican Rep. Devin Nunes as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) in 2019, he sent a letter to the office of then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>The letter obtained by Just the News specifically ordered that the witness transcripts \u2014 some of which contained exculpatory evidence for President Trump\u2019s team \u2014 not be shared with Trump or White House lawyers even if the declassification process required such sharing.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>\u201cUnder no circumstances shall ODNI, or any other element of the Intelligence Community (IC), share any HPSCI transcripts with the White House, President Trump or any persons associated with the White House or the President,\u201d Schiff wrote in a March 26, 2019 letter to then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>\u201cSuch transcripts remain the sole property of HPSCI, and were transmitted to ODNI for the limited purpose of enabling a classification review by IC elements and the Department of Justice,\u201d Schiff added.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>U.S. intelligence officials said Schiff\u2019s request made it impossible for them to declassify 10 of the transcripts, mostly of current and former White House and National Security Council witnesses, because White House lawyers would have had to review them for what is known as \u201cWhite House equities&#8221; and presidential privileges.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>But 43 of the transcripts were declassified and cleared for public release and given to Schiff&#8217;s team, but they have never been made public despite the committee\u2019s vote to do so, officials said.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>One senior official said the 43 transcripts were provided to Schiff\u2019s team some time ago, and the 10 remain in limbo. Asked how long House Intelligence Democrats have had the declassified transcripts, the official said: \u201cYou\u2019ll have to ask Mr. Schiff.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>A spokesman for Schiff and House Intelligence Committee Democrats did not return an email Monday seeking comment.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The article concludes:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>Newly declassified footnotes from the Horowitz report released last week show the FBI&#8217;s key informant in the case, the former British spy Christopher Steele, may have been the victim of Russian disinformation. More declassified evidence from that probe is expected to be released later this week.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>In the meantime, Republicans who led the House Intelligence Committee probe in 2018 when the witnesses were interviewed are trying to learn what came of the transcripts.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>Schiff\u2019s letter to Coats suggests that at the time the new Democratic chairman was still interested in releasing the transcripts.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>\u201cI hope our staff can reach agreement soon on a schedule for returning the transcripts to the Committee for ultimate public release,\u201d he wrote.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>Nearly 13 months since the letter, that release has not happened.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Elections have consequences. The consequences of turning the House of Representatives over to the Democrats was three years of wasted money on an investigation that many of the Democrats knew was unwarranted from the beginning. Because the Democrats were so focused on getting President Trump, they overlooked the looming problem of the coronavirus and were not prepared to deal with it. In fact when President Trump closed our borders to China, the Democrats criticized him for it. We may find out in the coming months why the Democrats were so intent on removing President Trump. As more information comes out about the surveillance of the Trump campaign and Trump presidency, it is becoming more obvious that laws were broken. The goal may have been to take out President Trump before that was discovered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday John Solomon posted an article at Just The News about some behind-the-scenes maneuvering by Adam Schiff that made it difficult to get the truth out about the investigation into President Trump and any connections he might have had with &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=38690\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4379,853,69,4172,11938,10743,451,11768,12498,10990,1083,11379,5526,5409,11114],"class_list":["post-38690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adam-schiff","tag-democrats","tag-department-of-justice","tag-director-of-national-intelligence","tag-exculpatory-evidence","tag-house-intelligence-committee","tag-house-of-representatives","tag-john-solomon","tag-just-the-news","tag-rep-devin-nunes","tag-russia","tag-russia-investigation","tag-select-committee","tag-surveillance","tag-trump-campaign"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38690"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38691,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38690\/revisions\/38691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}