Adam Schiff has a tell. When he knows bad news is in the pipeline he plays a card.
The “taint” card.
This time it’s Michael Horowitz is tainted. He’s going to present a false report on the FISA abuse, you see. Trump has somehow gotten the goods on Horowitz.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz got roped into a politically-motivated scheme to protect President Trump, laying the groundwork to discredit the government watchdog’s work as he nears completion of a report on alleged surveillance abuses by the DOJ and FBI.
At the Aspen Security Forum this weekend, Schiff accused top Justice Department officials of pandering to Trump by instigating a “fast track” report last year about former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. His comments came as part of a broader answer to a question about whether he has concerns about Attorney General William Barr’s review of the origins of the Russia investigation.
Schiff claimed the president wanted McCabe, who briefly took over as acting FBI director after Trump fired James Comey in May 2017, investigated and his pension taken away and suggested someone such as former Attorney General Rod Rosenstein obliged the president by making a referral.
That cagey Trump managed to spur the intensely independent IG
“The inspector general found that McCabe was untruthful. He may very well have been untruthful,” the California Democrat said, but noted that is not where main his concern lies.
“I have no reason to question the inspector general’s conclusion, but that investigation was put on a fast track. It was separated from a broader inspector general investigation, which is still ongoing,” he said. “Why was that done? It was done so he could be fired to not get a pension. It was done to please the president when the initiation investigation is tainted. So are the results of that investigation.”
AG Barr’s involvement really has Schiff’s panties in a twist:
“….Barr’s “investigation into the investigators” is underway, and the attorney general has said he is working very closely with Horowitz. The inspector general can recommend prosecutions, and U.S. Attorney John Durham, whom Barr tasked to lead the review, has the ability to convene a grand jury and subpoena people outside of the government. Beyond that, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, has promised a “deep dive” into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation after Horowitz completes his work.
Wary of the churning cycle of investigations, Schiff tied Horowitz to Barr, saying, “this is tainted from the start because it is motivated for a political end and the damage it will do in terms of a chilling impact is of deep concern, um, the damage it will do in terms of trying to cast doubt on things that are not in doubt.”
Rep. Jim Jordan expressed his concern for Schiff
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio said today that Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California must be “worried” about the upcoming results of the investigation into alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Abuse conducted by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
The GOP’s ranking member on the House Oversight Committee was responding to comments made by the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee at the Aspen Security Forum this weekend, where Schiff suggested that Horowitz’s prior investigation of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was put on a “fast track” by the Justice Department in order to please President Trump and that its results were therefore “tainted” by politics.
“Inspector General Horowitz is a professional. He’s conducting a crucial investigation into FBI and DOJ misconduct. But @RepAdamSchiff said his investigation is ‘tainted.’ What’s got Schiff worried?” Jordan tweeted.
And there is reason for Adam to Schiff his pants. Paul Sperry:
It is one of the most enduring and consequential mysteries of the Trump-Russia investigation: Why did former FBI Director James Comey refuse to say publicly what he was telling President Trump in private — that Trump was not the target of an ongoing probe?
That refusal ignited a chain of events that has consumed Washington for more than two years – including Comey’s firing by Trump, the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and ongoing claims that Trump obstructed justice.
Now an answer is emerging. Sources tell RealClearInvestigations that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz will soon file a report with evidence indicating that Comey was misleading the president. Even as he repeatedly assured Trump that he was not a target, the former director was secretly trying to build a conspiracy case against the president, while at times acting as an investigative agent.
Two U.S. officials briefed on the inspector general’s investigation of possible FBI misconduct said Comey was essentially “running a covert operation against” the president, starting with a private “defensive briefing” he gave Trump just weeks before his inauguration. They said Horowitz has examined high-level FBI text messages and other communications indicating Comey was actually conducting a “counterintelligence assessment” of Trump during that January 2017 meeting in New York.
In addition to adding notes of his meetings and phone calls with Trump to the official FBI case file, Comey had an agent inside the White House who reported back to FBI headquarters about Trump and his aides, according to other officials familiar with the matter.
Although Comey took many actions on his own, he was not working in isolation. One focus of Horowitz’s inquiry is the private Jan. 6, 2017, briefing Comey gave the president-elect in New York about material in the Democratic-commissioned dossier compiled by ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Reports of that meeting were used days later by BuzzFeed, CNN and other outlets as a news hook for reporting on the dossier’s lascivious and unsubstantiated claims.
Comey was running a rogue investigation on Trump and lied to Trump about it. Repeatedly. It was Comey’s refusal to admit publicly what he said to Trump privately- that Trump was not under investigation- which got Comey fired.
The FBI was investigating Trump’s campaign “in hope of making a case on him,” McCarthy said. “That is why Comey told Trump only about the salacious allegation involving prostitutes in a Moscow hotel; he did not tell the president-elect either that the main thrust of the dossier was Trump’s purported espionage conspiracy with the Kremlin, nor that the FBI had gone to the [FISA court] to get surveillance warrants based on the dossier.”
“Make no mistake,” McCarthy added, “the investigation was always about Donald Trump, from Day One.”
Comey also withheld the facts that the dossier was financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign (Comey had known this since October 2016, if not earlier), that it was compiled by a private foreign contractor, and that it was not a product of the U.S. government. The omissions led Trump to believe the contents of the dossier came from U.S. intelligence and were taken seriously by serious people in the government. If he had known otherwise, he could have easily dismissed the information as biased and unreliable — and questioned why Comey was even bothering to conduct such a briefing.
The IG’s report is going to be a very bad day for democrats and it is just the beginning.
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Except for liberals being foolish.
Yes, if it EVER comes out. All I have seen is one delay after another. The deep state has many interlocking tentacles.
Here is hoping it blows up in their faces these Congressional Democrats needs moment to be humilated
Democrats see collusion where it isn’t, can’t see it where it is. They see politically motivated investigations where they aren’t and can’t see them where they are. They see racism where it isn’t, can’t see it where it is.
If Comey told Trump about SOME information the FBI had about Trump’s “Russian connections”, don’t you thing Trump might have assumed the FBI had ALL the “goods on him” and would have taken drastic action against the investigations? Why did Russian mole Trump simply sit back and let the “investigations” of him continue?
Because Trump knew, better than anyone, that there was no evidence of his Russian collusion because there WAS no Russian collusion. He assumed all there was was what Comey told him and THAT was ridiculous.
The WORST thing for Democrats is that they have thrown EVERYTHING at Trump, including illegal surveillance, wire tapping, spying, investigation after investigation after investigation after investigation, and they cannot find ANYTHING to use as a substitute for an election victory. THEN, with that failure in mind, they take a look at the utter garbage they have to draw from for their candidate.
Man, Democrats… is sucks to be you.
Informative! We always thought Adam Schiff’s “tell” was when his eyes bugged out, he got that dopey, addlepated expression, and started babbling inanities–but now that we think about it, that’s almost all the time nowadays—so that isn’t much of a “tell,” is it! Okay, we’re adopting the “taint” alternative–it’s a lot more precise!
Informative! We always thought Adam Schiff’s “tell” was when his eyes bugged out, he got that dopey, addlepated expression, and started babbling inanities–but now that we think about it, that’s almost all the time nowadays—so that isn’t much of a “tell,” is it! Okay, we’re adopting the “taint” alternative–it’s a lot more precise!
@WOOF (Watchdogs of Our Freedom): No, his eyes bug out when he is thinking of naked little boys.