Tag Archives: Adam Schiff

Democrats Hate Being Held to Their Own Standards: Committee Assignments Edition, by Guy Benson

Is anybody going to feel sorry for a worm like Adam Schiff because he lost his prized Intelligence Committee assignment? He had it coming. From Guy Benson at townhall.com:

AP Photo/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades
Back in 2016, with a presidential election underway, I made the case that Senate Republicans should force Democrats to live under their own power-hungry rules.  They should do so, I said, by applying the Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer standards to the newly-created Supreme Court vacancy, following the death of the late great Justice Antonin Scalia.  Then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did precisely that, holding the seat open until after the election, paving the way for President Trump’s trio of superb SCOTUS nominations.  The Democrats got red in the face and stomped their feet, but after decades of hyper-partisan, unilateral escalations in the judicial confirmation wars, they were merely getting a taste of their own medicine.

When Democrats attempted to filibuster Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to fill that seat, I urged Republicans to enact the Harry Reid standard and change the Senate rules to confirm Gorsuch.  They did so, thus fulfilling McConnell’s famous prophesy that his colleagues across the aisle would come to rue the day they’d nuked the filibuster on executive and judicial nominations, for short-term partisan gain (eliminating a tool of the minority they’d abused for years while it benefited them).  In Washington, no one squeals louder than a Democrat held to his or her own standards.  A few Democrats mumbled about ‘regrets’ after their GOP colleagues pressed the Reid Rule button, but nearly all Senate Democrats now favor doubling down even further by jettisoning the legislative filibuster, which they’ve called a racist vestige, even as they’ve repeatedly used it themselves.  Expect some of them to change their tune if and when they lose the Senate majority in 2024.  They never fully learn, which is why the teachable moments need to be clear and painful for them.

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“We Don’t Do This”: Adam Schiff and the Underbelly of American Censorship, by Jonathan Turley

To call Adam Schiff a cockroach is to malign cockroaches. From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.org:

Below is my column in the Hill on the recent disclosure of efforts by Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Cal.) to pressure Twitter to censor critics, including a columnist. This effort occurred shortly after Schiff’s office objected to one of my columns accusing him of pressuring social media companies to censor those with opposing views. While publicly denying that he supports censorship, Schiff was secretly pressuring Twitter to censor an array of critics.

Here is the column:

“We don’t do this.” That response from Twitter to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is a singular indictment, coming at the height of Twitter’s censorship operations. Apparently, there were some things that even Twitter’s censors refused to do.

One of those things was silencing critics of Schiff and his House committee.

In the latest tranche of “Twitter Files,” journalist Matt Taibbi revealed that Twitter balked at Schiff’s demand that Twitter suspend an array of posters or label their content as “misinformation” and “reduce the visibility” of them. Among those who Schiff secretly tried to censor was New York Post columnist Paul Sperry.

Sperry drew Schiff’s ire by writing about a conversation allegedly overheard by one of his sources. Sperry’s article, which appeared in RealClearInvestigations, cited two sources as overhearing two White House staffers discussing how to remove newly-elected President Trump from office. The article raised the possibility of bias on the part of an alleged key player in launching the first Trump impeachment, CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella. The sources reportedly said that Ciaramella was in a conversation with Sean Misko, a holdover from the Obama administration who later joined Schiff’s staff. The conversation — in Sperry’s words — showed that “just days after [Trump] was sworn in they were already trying to get rid of him.”

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Some Heroes You Got There! By Raúl Ilargi Meijer

You are in trouble when your heroes are people like Robert Mueller, Adam Schiff, and Anthony Fauci. From Raúl Ilargi Meijer theautomaticearth.com:

We associate the term “mass psychosis” with the reaction(s) to Covid, but I would argue it’s been around a lot longer, and broader. At least since 2015, and the media coverage (if you can even call it that) of Donald Trump, his campaign and his presidency. I have no special sympathy for Trump (though some people doubt that), but that episode, and the “coverage” of it, did wake me up -even more- to how the media -and US “intelligence”, and Trump’s various opponents- influenced the way they wanted people to think.

And perhaps the best way to illustrate this is the “heroes” they have been promoting ever since. It’s not just Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden during the “Trump days”, this model is still used to date. They make people like, and thereby trust, certain characters, and we’re off to the races. One thing that sticks out is how in the cases of Trump-Russia, Covid, and Ukraine-Russia, there are these personae that were getting adorned with celebratory candles and stuff like that.

The first person we saw that with was Robert Mueller. He did a 2-year “investigation”, which resulted in absolutely nothing -other than some vague allegations he had no proof of either-, and which he should have halted at least a year before he did, something nobody ever called him on. At his “closing” testimony he even claimed he had never heard of Fusion GPS, one of the key components in his own “investigation”, so we wondered if he ever had any control of this probe, or if it were perhaps Andrew Weizmann and the other 40-odd lawyers, paid god knows how many millions, and had god knows what other resources.

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The Steele Dossier and the End of Shame In American Politics, by Jonathan Turley

Adam Schiff is pond scum and it appears not to bother him that he’s pond scum. From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.com:

The famous philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal once declared that “the only shame is to have none.” The problem with shame is that it requires a sense of guilt over one’s actions. In the age of rage, there appear fewer and fewer actions that are beyond the pale for politics. Take Adam Schiff and the Steele dossier. While even the Washington Post has admitted that it got the Russian collusion story wrong in light of the findings of Special Counsel John Durham, House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is still insisting that he was absolutely right to promote the discredited Steele dossier. Schiff’s interview on NBC’s Meet the Press may be the final proof of the death of shame in American politics.

Schiff was one of the greatest promoters of the Steele dossier despite access to briefings casting doubt about Steele and the underlying claims. However, Schiff recently has attempted to defend himself by claiming that Steele was a respected former spy and that he was lied to by a Russian source.

Schiff told host Chuck Todd:

“I don’t regret saying that we should investigate claims of someone who, frankly, was a well-respected British intelligence officer. And we couldn’t have known, of course, years ago that we would learn years later that someone who is a primary source lied to him. [Igor] Danchenko lied to Christopher Steele and then lied to the FBI. He should be prosecuted. He is being prosecuted. And I’ll tell you this, if he’s convicted, he should not be pardoned the way Donald Trump pardoned people who lied to FBI agents, like Roger Stone and Mike Flynn. There ought to be the same standard in terms of prosecuting the liars. But I don’t think there ought to be any pardon, no matter which way the lies cut.”

Schiff’s spin is enough to cause permanent vertigo.

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Trump DOJ Obtained Data on Schiff and Swalwell, Two Long-Time Champions of Domestic Spying, by Glenn Greenwald

Most of official Washington believe in all-encompassing surveillance on everybody but themselves. From Glenn Greenwald at greenwald.substack.com:

The two California Democrats join the long list of politicians who enable spying on ordinary citizens, then angrily object when they themselves are targeted.

: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) (L) and committee member Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) return to a closed-door hearing at the U.S. Capitol March 06, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The Trump Justice Department in 2017 and early 2018 issued subpoenas to Apple to obtain the communications records of at least two Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee, Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA). According to The New York Times, DOJ prosecutors attempting to determine who leaked classified information to the media about Russiagate suspected the two House Democrats were the culprits, and to prove that, they obtained their communications records as well as those of family members, including minor children.

A DOJ leak investigation aimed at sitting members of Congress is highly unusual. Both the Obama and Trump administrations, in a hunt for leakers, created controversy by obtaining the communications records of journalists, including — in the case of the Obama DOJ — the family members of those journalists. But investigating members of the House Intelligence Committee for leaking crimes — as opposed to corruption or other standard criminal charges — can present different dangers. Neither Congressman was charged with any crimes and the investigation reportedly bore no fruit.

The two House Democrats, among the most fanatical disseminators of baseless Russiagate conspiracies and long known to serve as anonymous sources of leaks to liberal media outlets, reacted with predictable outrage. “This baseless investigation, while now closed, is yet another example of Trump’s corrupt weaponization of justice,” Schiff intoned on Thursday night. As difficult as it is, Swalwell, as he often does, found a way to be even more melodramatic than Schiff: “Like many of the world’s most despicable dictators, former President Trump showed an utter disdain for our democracy and the rule of law.”

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Biden, the Media and CIA Labeled the Hunter Biden Emails “Russian Disinformation.” There is Still No Evidence. By Glenn Greenwald

Remember the Hunter Biden emails? You’re not hearing about them much now, but no, they haven’t been discredited as Russian disinformation. From Glenn Greenwald at greenwald.substack.com:

The same factions that constantly claim to abhor Fake News and disinformation continue to be the most aggressive and shameless propagators of it — especially the media.

Congressman Adam Schiff, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and, not coincidentally, the single most shameless pathological liar in the U.S. Congress by a good margin, appeared on CNN with Wolf Blitzer on October 16 to discuss The New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s emails. The CNN host asked him a rhetorical question embedded with baseless assumptions: “does it surprise you at all that this information Rudy Giuliani is peddling very well could be connected to some sort of Russian government disinformation campaign?

Schiff stated definitively that it is: “we know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin,” adding: “clearly, the origins of this whole smear are from the Kremlin, and the President is only too happy to have Kremlin help in amplifying it.” Referencing Trump’s promotion of The New York Post reporting while at his White House desk, Schiff said: “there it is in the Oval Office: another wonderful propaganda coup for Vladimir Putin, seeing the President of the United States holding up a newspaper promoting Kremlin propaganda.”

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-WA), Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Oct. 16, 2020

Schiff, as he usually does when he moves his mouth, was lying: exploiting CNN’s notorious willingness to allow Democratic officials to spread disinformation over its airwaves without the slightest challenge. Schiff claimed certainty about something for which there was and still is no evidence: that the Russians played a role in the procurement and publication of the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop.

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Twin Pillars of Russiagate Crumble, by Ray McGovern

The Russiagate promoters peddled a bald-faced lie for two and a half years to try to take down President Trump. From Ray McGovern at consortiumnews.com:

For two and a half years the House Intelligence Committee knew CrowdStrike didn’t have the goods on Russia. Now the public knows too.

House Intelligence Committee documents released Thursday reveal that the committee was told two and half years ago that the FBI had no concrete evidence that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee computers to filch the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks in July 2016.

The until-now-buried, closed-door testimony came on Dec. 5, 2017 from Shawn Henry, a protege of former FBI Director Robert Mueller (from 2001 to 2012), for whom Henry served as head of the Bureau’s cyber crime investigations unit.

Henry retired in 2012 and took a senior position at CrowdStrike, the cyber security firm hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign to investigate the cyber intrusions that occurred before the 2016 presidential election.

The following excerpts from Henry’s testimony speak for themselves. The dialogue is not a paragon of clarity; but if read carefully, even cyber neophytes can understand:

Ranking Member Mr. [Adam] Schiff: Do you know the date on which the Russians exfiltrated the data from the DNC? … when would that have been?

Mr. Henry: Counsel just reminded me that, as it relates to the DNC, we have indicators that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have no indicators that it was exfiltrated (sic). … There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in this case, it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left.

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Tucker Carlson: Adam Schiff Should Resign

Schiff Is Laying Groundwork for Tying Up Trump’s Second Term in More False Charges, by Paul Craig Roberts

Adam Schiff isn’t giving up, that would manifest intelligence. From Paul Craig Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:

There is no evidence that Russia is interfering in the 2020 US presidential election in order to reelect Trump.  Nor is there any reason for Russia to prefer Trump, who has done nothing for Russia.  Indeed, Trump has imposed sanctions and endangered Russia by withdrawing from arms control agreements.  The claims of interference reported by the New York Times come from unnamed sources, described as “US intelligence officials,” in a recent briefing of the House Intelligence Committee organized by Rep. Adam Schiff.  We do not even know if such claims were made or whether this is another of Schiff’s many inventions planted on the New York Times, Schiff’s partner in crime and fake news.

Schiff is the highly partisan chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who was a driver of Russiagate and the subsequent effort to impeach President Trump.  He is a known liar, having been caught in numerous lies and misrepresentations.  Schiff arranged these new claims of Russian interference in order that, in the event of Trump’s reelection, the Democrats can tie up Trump for the entirety of his second term with bogus charges just as they did Trump’s first term. In that way the Democrats, the political party of racial minorities, sexual perverts, and immigrant-invaders, can prevent Trump from politically organizing white Americans whose lives, careers, and safety have been harmed by global US corporations transferring their jobs abroad and by the increasing attacks on white Americans as racists and “white supremacists.”  Despite the First Amendment, white Americans are losing the right of free speech, because if they “offend” a protected category of person when they exercise their free speech right, they risk being fired from their job and being investigated for a “hate crime,” a crime that can only be committed by white people. White Americans are slowly being marginalized, and, rightly or wrongly, they see Trump as a protector.

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Adam Schiff: Exhibit A? by Tyler Durden

It kind of undermines the whole effort when your lead impeachment manager has zero credibility. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

While Joe and Hunter Biden have been absurdly off limits in the impeachment of President Trump, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is quickly becoming the GOP’s “Exhibit A” over claims of an unfair trial in the House, as well as his involvement – and alleged coordination – with the anti-Trump CIA ‘whistleblower’ who kicked off the entire proceeding.

Schiff, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has repeatedly come under fire for conducting ‘secret basement’ hearings, while refusing to call key witnesses such as the Bidens, their business associates, or Ukrainian authorities with intimate knowledge of corruption claims.

Of note, Schiff’s office hired a former colleague of whistleblower Eric Ciaramella the day after a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, in which Trump asked for an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden. Ciaramella worked with Biden with during the Obama years.

In short, Schiff’s conduct has made him a target.

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