by WorldTribune Staff, November 26, 2018
An FBI witness told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that none of the Russia collusion allegations made in the anti-Trump “dossier” authored by ex-British spy Christopher Steele and funded by Hillary Clinton had been proven.
But, observers say, that has not stopped Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the committee, from embracing and promoting the dossier’s narrative.
And now that he is set to chair the committee when Democrats assume control of the House in January, Schiff is expected to again try to drive home Steele’s unproven allegations through a bevy of newly-launched and newly-labeled investigations.
“Schiff pushed the dossier allegations as long as they were useful to him. But now the dossier has been discredited and has actually boomeranged back on the Democrats since it became public that they’re the ones who funded these lies and fed them to the press and to the FBI,” said a Republican congressional staffer. “So Schiff is moving on to his next inane conspiracy theory, which appears to be Trump-Russia money-laundering.”
Security correspondent Rowan Scarborough noted in a Nov. 25 report for The Washington Times that “Democrats taking over the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and its Russia-Trump probe have stayed doggedly loyal to the Hillary Clinton-financed dossier that Republicans say is a hoax,”
Schiff insists there are so many Trump scandals that “our caucus will need to ruthlessly prioritize the most important matters first.”
The Intel committee’s final report by its Republican majority in April acquitted the Trump campaign of collusion with Moscow. “To date, no Trump person has been charged by special counsel Robert Mueller on such allegations,” Scarborough noted.
Schiff, however, rejected the GOP report, saying he believes a conspiracy existed between Trump and the Kremlin.
“Throughout the investigation, committee Republicans chose not to seriously investigate — or even see, when in plain sight — evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, instead adopting the role of defense counsel for key investigation witnesses,” Schiff said.
Schiff also “bought into” Steele’s charge that Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page met secretly with two operatives for Russian President Vladimir Putin and discussed bribes for removing economic sanctions, Scarborough’s report said.
Page was on a publicized trip to Russia in July 2016 to deliver a college speech. He has denied repeatedly that he ever met with the two operatives. The FBI wiretapped Page for a year largely based on the dossier. He has not been charged.
Schiff wants “to launch completely new lines of inquiry, such as supposed Russian money-laundering through the Trump Organization – an allegation that hasn’t been broadly discussed publicly. Republicans say they heard no such evidence during their inquiry,” Scarborough reported.
Schiff, Scarborough noted, blared out his battle cry in a Nov. 21 tweet: “When the President: Denigrates the independence of the judiciary, Attempts to have Justice Dept investigate his rivals, Calls the press an ‘enemy of the people’ That’s what attacks on the rule of law look like. When Congress fights back: That is what democracy looks like.”
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