Democrats appear to be plumbing the depths of the Washington swamp, desperately seeking fodder for their impeachment of Trump. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff thinks he may have struck gold.
Schiff issued a subpoena to acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, accusing him of withholding the complaint of a whistleblower even after the agency’s inspector general characterized the complaint as credible and of “urgent concern.”
The Democratic committee chair — who still insists Trump is guilty of colluding with the Russians — is looking to make a splash in the media and begin a feeding frenzy in the press that would make impeaching Trump easier.
“A Director of National Intelligence has never prevented a properly submitted whistleblower complaint that the [inspector general] determined to be credible and urgent from being provided to the congressional intelligence committees. Never,” Schiff said in a statement. “This raises serious concerns about whether White House, Department of Justice or other executive branch officials are trying to prevent a legitimate whistleblower complaint from reaching its intended recipient, the Congress, in order to cover up serious misconduct.”
Schiff indicated that he learned the matter involved “potentially privileged communications by persons outside the Intelligence Community,” raising the specter that it is “being withheld to protect the President or other Administration officials.” In addition, Schiff slammed Maguire for consulting the Justice Department about the whistleblower complaint “even though the statute does not provide you discretion to review, appeal, reverse, or countermand in any way the [inspector general’s] independent determination, let alone to involve another entity within the Executive Branch.”
We don’t know what the “complaint” is. We don’t know what insider — if it is an “insider” — is making the charge. We don’t know if Maguire is even aware of the complaint so how could he “withhold” it? But Schiff decided to toss a subpoena into the mix and make all sorts of baseless accusations.
Yep. Sounds like the Democrat’s impeachment strategy, all right.
“The Committee can only conclude, based on this remarkable confluence of factors, that the serious misconduct at issue involves the President of the United States and/or other senior White House or Administration officials,” Schiff wrote in a letter to Maguire on Friday.
Schiff must have been miffed because he wasn’t getting much face time lately on the TV. Even after the Mueller report was released debunking the collusion narrative, Schiff doubled down and said there was plenty of evidence for collusion:
Rep. Adam Schiff on Sunday insisted his criticism of the Trump administration was not wrong, saying there was “ample evidence of collusion in plain sight.”
“I use that word very carefully,” the California Democrat said on ABC’s “This Week,” “because I also distinguish time and time again between collusion, that is acts of corruption that may or may not be criminal, and proof of a criminal conspiracy. And that is a distinction that Bob Mueller made within the first few pages of his report. In fact, every act that I’ve pointed to as evidence of collusion has now been borne out by the report.“
Keep looking for that pony in the manure pile, Adam. It’s there somewhere.
The feeding frenzy has already started as leaks and rampant, wild speculation on what the complaint might be is already circulating.
You can bet Schiff is not going to give up on this any easier than he did with the Russian collusion narrative.
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