Analysis by WorldTribune Staff, August 31, 2020
If Rep. Adam Schiff could time travel, he might be well advised to go back to 2017 and warn himself about the humiliation he was about to suffer for his constant insistence there was “evidence” of Trump-Russia “collusion” in “plain sight.”
Instead, it seems more like Schiff used the time machine to go forward from 2017 to 2020 to remind himself to keep regurgitating the “Trump-Russia collusion” narrative.
Who is he kidding? Well, many of his Mainstream Media listeners may never have heard the other side of his non-stop story.
“Russians are again interfering to help the president in his re-election,” Schiff, California Democrat and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“He doesn’t want the American people to know about it,” Schiff added, referencing Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe’s notification to Congress over the weekend that the DNI’s office primarily will provide written briefings on foreign election interference, instead of in-person briefings.
Ratcliffe defended his decision Sunday, telling Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo that a number of Congress members have leaked classified information for what he called the political purpose of creating a false narrative that Russia is a greater national security threat than China.
“We’ve had a pandemic of information being leaked out of the intelligence community,” Ratcliffe said. “I’m going to take measures to make sure that stops.”
Schiff said written briefings do not subject administration officials to questioning and oversight.
“It lets you conceal the truth,” Schiff said, which prompted some observers to note that concealing the truth might be better than openly pushing lies (cough), such as the dossier (cough, cough).
Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican and chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, emphasized the issue of leaking, saying the decision was made to stop the type of misinformation that allowed the media to create the false narrative that Trump’s 2016 campaign conspired with Russia to win the election.
Former special counsel Robert Mueller probed the Trump campaign for roughly two years and did not find any wrongdoing on behalf of the president or collusion with Russians.
Johnson said the issue over written versus in-person briefings was being blown out of proportion because members of Congress already know that foreign countries are trying to influence elections and destabilize politics.
He also said the U.S. has destabilized itself with leaks from Democrats and false media narratives.
“We can’t play into [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s hands,” Johnson told CNN. “We have done it to ourselves.”
Intelligence Brief __________ Replace The Media