Rep. Schiff sets Intelligence Committee’s new course: ‘We need to ruthlessly prioritize’

by WorldTribune Staff, November 14, 2018

The man expected to chair the House Intelligence Committee is likely to pump taxpayers’ dollars into re-interrogating Trump campaign and administration officials who the committee’s Republicans have already cleared of any 2016 election collusion, a report said.

“The do-overs” will help California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff “fulfill promises of a full-throttle attack on President Trump, including forays into his business empire and the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory,” Rowan Scarborough wrote in a Nov. 13 report for The Washington Times.

Rep. Adam Schiff. / Reuters

“We are going to need to ruthlessly prioritize on the intel committee which investigative threads we go down,” Schiff said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Nov. 11.

Schiff, who consistently cited the since discredited anti-Trump dossier during the Trump-Russia investigation, has “likened his upcoming probe to a criminal investigation that will aid special counsel Robert Mueller,” the report said.

In an October op-ed for The Washington Post, Schiff wrote: “What will oversight look like under a Democratic majority? Given the wealth of disturbing conduct by the Trump administration, our caucus will need to ruthlessly prioritize the most important matters first.”

Campaign figures Donald Trump Jr., former campaign advisers Michael Caputo and J.D. Gordon, former White House communications director Hope Hicks, former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen, and businessmen Erik Prince and Carter Page are likely targets of the panel under Schiff.

“Like I’ve always said, I’ve been ready and willing to talk with anyone who wants to speak,” Page told The Washington Times. “Other than pure harassment, I can’t think of what more they’d like to possibly discuss, though.”

In the Russian dossier, author Christopher Steele accused Page of working with former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort to help the Kremlin hack Democratic Party computers. Page testified that he has never met or spoken with Manafort and that there is no public evidence to the contrary.

Page has not been charged.

“In fact, no public confirmation has emerged proving any of Steele’s core collusion charges,” Scarborough wrote.

Schiff also said he plans to use contacts between wealthy Russians and the Trump Organization in New York to justify an investigation into the president’s hotel/condo business.

“There are serious and credible allegations the Russians may possess financial leverage over the president, including perhaps the laundering of Russian money through his businesses,” said Schiff, citing an opinion piece in The New York Times that has promoted the Trump-Russia narrative. “It would be negligent to our national security not to find out.”


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