On Wednesday, the New York Times published the bombshell report that Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, “learned about the outlines of a C.I.A. officer’s concerns that President Trump had abused his power days before the officer filed a whistle-blower complaint.”
It was widely believed that the whistleblower had received significant help in crafting the complaint, and this report appears to confirm that he or she did, along with information about where that help came from.
The early account by the future whistle-blower shows how determined he was to make known his allegations that Mr. Trump asked Ukraine’s government to interfere on his behalf in the 2020 election. It also explains how Mr. Schiff knew to press for the complaint when the Trump administration initially blocked lawmakers from seeing it.
Before going to Congress, the C.I.A. officer had a colleague convey his accusations to the agency’s top lawyer. Concerned about how that avenue for airing his allegations was unfolding, the officer then approached a House Intelligence Committee aide, alerting him to the accusation against Mr. Trump. In both cases, the original accusation was vague.
The House staff member, following the committee’s procedures, suggested the officer find a lawyer to advise him and file a whistle-blower complaint. The aide shared some of what the officer conveyed to Mr. Schiff. The aide did not share the whistle-blower’s identity with Mr. Schiff or anyone else, an official said.
According to the New York Times, “The whistle-blower’s decision to offer what amounted to an early warning to the intelligence committee’s Democrats is also sure to thrust Mr. Schiff even more forcefully into the center of the controversy.”
You think? According to the report, “By the time the whistle-blower filed his complaint, Mr. Schiff and his staff knew at least vaguely what it contained.”
Schiff’s spokesman, Patrick Boland, claims Schiff never saw the full complaint or knew exactly what the allegations were. “At no point did the committee review or receive the complaint in advance,” Boland claims. According to him, the committee received the complaint the night before it went public.
When former CIA officer and National Security Agency Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz read the whistleblower report, he said it appeared the whistleblower had help from congressional Democrats in crafting the complaint. “From my experience, such an extremely polished whistleblowing complaint is unheard of. This document looks as if this leaker had outside help, possibly from congressional members or staff,” Fleitz said. “Moreover, it looks like more than a coincidence that this complaint surfaced and was directed to the House Intelligence Committee just after Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), an outspoken opponent of President Trump, expressed numerous complaints in August 2019 accusing President Trump of abusing aid to Ukraine to hurt Joe Biden. This includes an August 28 tweet that closely resembled the whistleblowing complaint.”
It seems that we need an investigation into just what Adam Schiff and other Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee knew and when they knew it. Did they actually write the complaint, using the so-called whistleblower as a mole or a patsy? One thing is for sure, it looks like Trump is right that this isn’t impeachment, it’s a coup.
UPDATE: This revelation contradicts previous claims by Schiff that “We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower.”
On Sept. 17, he misled @samstein on MSNBC, saying: "We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower."
On Sept. 19, he said that w/o IC IG's letter "we might not have even known there was a whistleblower complaint alleging a urgent concern."
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) October 2, 2019
“Schiff defenders are claiming there’s nothing to see here in the revelation that the whistleblower conferred with Schiff staff before filing the complaint. If that’s so, why didn’t Schiff acknowledge the contact when asked about it?” Brit Hume said on Twitter. “I think the answer is obvious. He knew how it would look. So he gave this answer, ‘We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower.’ If by ‘we’ he meant only himself, he’s being slippery. If by ‘we’ he meant himself and his staff, he lied.”
I’m gonna go ahead and say he lied.
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