Former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) slammed Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) Thursday night for making “wild accusations” regarding the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation, comparing it to the more serious Senate panel.
Phone records obtained by the Senate Intelligence Committee reveal that Donald Trump Jr. did not speak with his father from a blocked telephone number in the days before the infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016.
The finding contradicts the Democratic narrative that Trump Jr. may have talked to his father about the meeting in a mystery phone call ahead of time, a claim Trump Jr. has denied.
The theory was heavily promulgated by Schiff, the current chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
“We wanted to get the phone records to determine, was Donald Trump talking to his son about this meeting,” Schiff told CNN in November 2018. “It’s an obvious investigative step, but one the Republicans were unwilling to take because they were afraid of where the evidence might lead.”
The phone records show that the calls were actually between Trump Jr. and two business associates.
The two people Don Jr. was talking to were Brian France, the chief executive of Nascar, and the investor Howard Lorber. W/@maggieNYT @npfandos https://t.co/EPKisNOUwr
— Michael S. Schmidt (@nytmike) February 1, 2019
Trey Gowdy made his debut on Fox News’ The Story with Martha MacCallum Thursday evening to talk about the finding.
Gowdy said he wanted to commend the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), for running a serious investigation.
“They actually figure out the facts before they make allegations,” Gowdy explained, adding that “sometimes some folks do it in the reverse order — they make these wild allegations.”
“I think one of those people that you’re referring to is Adam Schiff, who you’ve been very critical of in this whole process, saying that he made up his mind before he saw any of the evidence,” MacCallum said. “Is that true?”
“Well, I’m just quoting him,” Gowdy shrugged, pointing out that Schiff once said that he had “evidence that rises above the level of circumstantial evidence, but not quite direct.” He added that “of course there is no such thing.”
Schiff also claimed that “President Trump colluded with Russia,” Gowdy noted. “I think Adam also said there’s a very real chance Donald Trump is going to be indicted and/or arrested the day he leaves office.”
Gowdy said he liked Schiff better when he was a federal prosecutor because back then he had to “go in a courtroom and prove these things as opposed to just speculating and accusing people.”
McCallum also asked about former Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr, who did opposition research on the Trump kids while her husband was the associate deputy attorney general and working with British spy Christopher Steele on getting the unverified anti-Trump dossier into the hands of the FBI.
“It’s the strangest fact pattern I think I’ve ever seen,” Gowdy declared. “You have a private entity in Fusion GPS and they’re working with Chris Steele, who was an FBI source but then was terminated for violating his FBI agreement.”
Gowdy explained they were “laundering” political oppo research “to the world’s premier law enforcement agency and to the Department of Justice” and “using a DOJ official as the conduit of that information.”
He said the latest revelations were “really surprising,” and lamented that in “a different political environment, everyone would be outraged.”
The former lawmaker stressed that the misconduct of these top officials in the FBI and DOJ was not normal or acceptable.
“If you can hire a group to dig up information and then use a DOJ official who gets his information from a terminated FBI source, and it still winds up in the hands of the federal government — that should alarm all of us and I hope that we get back to a time in our lives where it is alarming to everyone,” he said.
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