A lot people have admitted mistakes, promised reforms or are acting further on the incredible IG report of Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz. This weekend former FBI Director James Comey even admitted he was wrong on the basis of the report. But one person has not budged: the leader of the impeachment efforts for Democrats, House Intelligence Committee Chair Rep. Adam Schiff. And besides the FBI and Obama Department of Justice, if there is one person who should be admitting he was wrong, it is Rep. Schiff.
It should be noted that much of this was available to Rep. Schiff, who denied it when Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Rep. Devin Nunes came out with a report confirming that the FISA warrants were wrong and based on information known to be false.
Schiff tells Chris Wallace he was unaware of errors and omissions in FBI use of FISA process. Bunk. The much-derided Nunes memo, which Schiff strongly disputed at the time, called attention to these very abuses. Most media, of course, echoed the Schiff version, scoffed at Nunes.
— Brit Hume (@brithume) December 15, 2019
Margot Cleveland lays out Schiff’s malfeasance in an article entitled “IG Report Proves Adam Schiff Has Been Lying About Spygate Since The Beginning”. The whole article is worth a read but let’s just highlight some key conclusions:
Following the inspector general’s FISA report that proved nearly every sentence wrong in Rep. Adam Schiff’s last high-profile report, Schiff’s work should be deemed worthless.
Schiff issued his “Correcting the Record” minority report on January 29, 2018, following the release of a memorandum by the then-chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Devin Nunes. In his 10-page response, Schiff contradicted every point Nunes made. Schiff also contradicted reality.
Schiff was also abusing the record and using selective editing to continue the attack on President Trump through a completely innocent Carter Page:
Schiff’s memo also repeated the misrepresentation the DOJ and FBI made in the FISA applications concerning Page’s prior connections with Russian intelligence: “In fact, the FBI interviewed Page in March 2016 about his contact with Russian intelligence, the very month candidate Donald Trump named him a foreign policy advisor,” Schiff wrote. Schiff also dedicated an entire two paragraphs to what the Democrat captioned, “Page’s Connections to Russian Government and Intelligence Officials” and “Page remained on the radar of Russian intelligence and the FBI.”
Those paragraphs portrayed Page’s contacts with Russian intelligence contacts as nefarious and providing an “independent basis for investigating Page.” Schiff also added several redacted passages which he explained the “DOJ described in detail to the Court,” suggesting there was even more damning evidence against Page before the FISA court.
The first of seven “significant inaccuracies and omissions” Horowitz detailed in the IG report destroy Schiff’s portrayal of Page as a compromised compatriot of Russian intelligence agents. The FISA applications “omitted information the FBI had obtained from another U.S. government agency detailing its prior relationship with Page,” Horowitz wrote, “including that Page had been approved as an ‘operational contact’ for the other agency from 2008 to 2013, and that Page had provided information to the other agency concerning his prior contacts with certain Russian intelligence officers, one of which overlapped with facts asserted in the FISA application.”
An example that has not been talked about is the allegation that Carter Page was involved in drafting the Ukraine plank of the RNC Platform.
“Although the FBI did not develop any information that Carter Page was involved in the Republican Platform Committee’s change, the FBI did not alter its assessment of Page’s involvement in the FISA applications,” Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz noted in his 476-page report released Monday.
Added Horowitz: “We found that, other than this information from Report 95 [of the Steele dossier], the FBI’s investigation did not reveal any information to demonstrate that Page had any involvement with the Republican Platform Committee.” Yet, “all four FISA applications relied upon information in the Steele reporting” alleging Page’s role in drafting the Republican plank on Ukraine and Russia. . . .
But the false narrative – that the Ukraine plank stood as early proof of the “extensive conspiracy” between the Trump campaign and Moscow that Steele alleged in his now-debunked dossier – has persisted. . . .
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, continues to insist that the Trump team “softened" the GOP platform to accommodate “Putin’s invasion of Ukraine."
All this and more caused American Commitment President Phil Kerpen to opine:
Someone should file an ethics complaint against Schiff for impugning Nunes with his knowingly false memo.
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) December 12, 2019
At a minimum, Rep. Schiff owes an apology to Rep. Devin Nunes and, especially, Carter Page.