Has Schiff Colluded With Putin?

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) assured us repeatedly the President Donald Trump colluded with Russian President Vladimir Putin to subvert the 2016 presidential election and deny Hillary Clinton her rightful place as the first woman president of the United States. He assured us that he had incontrovertible evidence that Mr. Trump served as a de facto agent of Mr. Putin and the Russian government and when asked for the evidence he responded that it was right there in front of us. Of course, the mainstream media, who collaborated with Ms. Clinton, Mr. Schiff and the Democrat leadership in Congress, declined to ever ask Mr. Schiff to detail such evidence. And Mr. Schiff refused to be interviewed by any conservative elements of the media. The net result was that we were stampeded into an investigation by Robert Mueller about the legitimacy of these claims of collusion. After an investigation lasting over two years and consuming over $30 Million of taxpayer funds, Mr. Mueller concluded that there was no evidence of any such collusion by Mr. Trump or members of his campaign or administration.

What was determined is disturbing. First, that Mr. Putin and the Russian government sought to interfere with the 2016 presidential election beginning as early as 2015 and that such activities continued unabated during the entirety of the 2016 election and thereafter. And second that then-President Barack Obama knew about the interference and did virtually nothing to stop it.

The purpose of that interference was not to install a “favorite” candidate but rather to disrupt the election process so as to create uncertainty about the outcome of the election and thus create doubt about the very underpinnings of America’s democracy. While Mr. Mueller was able to conclude that actual voting was not impacted, he was not able to conclude the success of the Russian government’s attempt to cast doubt on the validity of the election process – he left that to the American public to decide.

It is relatively clear that Mr. Putin and his government succeeded beyond its wildest dreams – so much so that it encouraged them to continue to refine their techniques during the 2018 mid-term elections and to focus once again on the 2020 presidential elections. I say that they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams because the result of the 2016 election and the allegations of Russian interference immediately resulted in calls for a) ignoring the provisions of the United States Constitution regarding the electoral college and awarding the presidency to Ms. Clinton who won a plurality of the national votes. (The creation of the electoral college was done precisely to avoid the dominance by a few states with large populations of the entirety of the republic), b) the call for Mr. Trump’s impeachment even before he was inaugurated, c) a criminal investigation by the FBI that morphed into appointment of Mr. Mueller as special counsel to continue the investigation, d) the disclosure that Ms. Clinton engineered and paid for the phony dossier and arranged its dissemination within the FBI and the Department of Justice, e) the exposure of the inherent bias of the leadership of the FBI and the extent to which they supported and propelled the investigation despite knowing from the beginning that the dossier was phony and that there was no other supporting information to the allegations of wrong doing by Mr. Trump, f) the exposure of the ease with which the FBI manipulated the secret FISA courts and thus destroyed the court’s credibility even as to real threats to the security of the United States, g) the deep partisanship of the House of Representative to proceed with impeachment without any factual basis and without a single Republican vote and h) the virtual shutdown of congressional activities in its preoccupation with all of the above. Who could ask for anything more?

So, were Mr. Putin and the Russian government successful in compromising the 2016 election? No, but they were wildly successful in compromising the institutions that underlie America’s government. And at the root of this distrust was Mr. Schiff and the apparatchik of the congressional Democrat elites. It was they that took rumor, innuendo and presumptions to the level of concrete accusations. It was they that used the vast resources of the federal government (at taxpayer expense) to pursue accusations that they knew from the start were not true in an attempt to build a stampede to an illegitimate impeachment. And all because they disagreed with the outcome of the 2016 election. But more importantly, because they knew that embedded in the government after eight years of the Obama administration were politically willing bureaucrats who would cooperate in pursuing the lie. The power of the Democrat elites had been compromised by Mr. Trump’s election and the power of the Democrat bureaucrats was being threatened.
A symbiotic relationship that could and did wreak havoc over the last four years.

And it worked so well, that the same players are at it again. Mr. Putin and the Russians are using the same means of spreading disinformation. Mr. Schiff and the congressional Democrats are seizing upon that disinformation to impel congressional investigations into rivals of the Democrat establishment – Mr. Trump, but this time including outsider Sen. Bernie Sanders (Socialist-VT). It is the same playbook. Mr. Putin and the Russians create the disinformation, the intelligence community receives the information and transmits it to Mr. Schiff’s House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Schiff holds a bogus hearing and, thereafter, leaks information to the news media, who in turn broadcasts it without any determination of whether it is accurate. And voila we have a wave of stories of how Mr. Putin and the Russians are backing Mr. Trump AND Mr. Sanders. And the chaos continues.

Mr. Schiff has become the modern-day Sen. Joe McCarthy – spreading lies, declaring proof of the lies that is never presented and destroying people along the way. Mr. Schiff demands belief in these accusations of collusion with the Russian government and yet he cannot produce a single bit of evidence – evidence, not conjecture – that such collusion exists.

Or better as reported by the Washington Examiner:

“No one has played into the Kremlin’s hands more than Democratic House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, according to a key Republican congressman.

“Rep. John Ratcliffe, a former federal prosecutor and member of the intelligence panel, addressed disputed leaks about classified intelligence on Russian inference in the 2020 election.

“’He’s at it again by putting out, through his committee, information that is false,’ the Texas lawmaker told Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures. ‘Look, I’m not trying to be hyperbolic here, but I don’t know anyone in the last three years who has done more to help Vladimir Putin and Russia with their efforts to sow the seeds of discord in American elections and American election security than Adam Schiff has.’

“The controversial classified briefing happened earlier this month and was conducted by Shelby Pierson, the intelligence community election threats executive under then-Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. During the meeting, sources cited by the New York Times on Thursday claimed Pierson warned that ‘Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump reelected.’

“Ratcliffe said he could not provide specifics about ‘a classified briefing that was intended to remain secret,’ but he did deny the accuracy of the reporting.’

“’We see when there’s a story about — that is allegedly anti-Trump or negative for the president, it shows up in newspapers because either Democratic members or Democratic staffers leak it,’ the Texas Republican said Sunday. ‘The problem is, in this case, they have leaked information that’s not accurate.’”

The inaccuracy of the original leaks was subsequently confirmed by CNN– – no friend of Mr. Trump.

If Mr. Schiff actually wants to find out who is colluding with Mr. Putin and the Russian government, he might start with the man in the mirror. Whether by design, accident or pure stupidity Mr. Schiff is at the center of the Russian collusion miasma.

Oregon Catalyst