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Schiff Knew of Ukraine Whistleblower’s Complaint Before It Was Filed
The New York Times has reported that Trump bête noire Rep. Adam Schiff (D–CA) knew about the Ukraine whistleblower’s complaint before it was filed. This revelation gives the president’s supporters more evidence that the anonymous CIA officer’s filing is a partisan effort.
Two weeks ago, Schiff claimed on MSNBC that he hadn’t spoken with the whistleblower. Well, his phrasing was a bit more lawyerly than that:
“We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower,” Schiff said on Sept. 17. The “we” and “directly” seem to be doing the heavy lifting here.
In Wednesday’s Times article, Schiff spokesman Patrick Boland admitted: “like other whistleblowers have done before and since under Republican and Democratic-controlled committees, the whistleblower contacted the committee for guidance on how to report possible wrongdoing within the jurisdiction of the intelligence community.”
And the whistleblower just happened to consult the most impeachment-happy member of Congress.
The White House was quick to react:
In a news conference in the East Room of the White House after this article was published, Mr. Trump called it a scandal that Mr. Schiff knew the outlines of the whistle-blower’s accusations before he filed his complaint.
“Big stuff. That’s a big story,” Mr. Trump said, waving a copy of the article in the air. “He knew long before and helped write it, too. It’s a scam,” the president added, accusing Mr. Schiff of helping the whistle-blower write his complaint. There is no evidence that Mr. Schiff did, and his spokesman said he saw no part of the complaint before it was filed.
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.
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump said Mr. Schiff should be forced to resign for reading a parody of the Ukraine call at a hearing, an act Mr. Trump has called treasonous and criminal.
“We don’t call him shifty Schiff for nothing,” said Mr. Trump. “He’s a shifty dishonest guy.”
Despite the blockbuster revelation, the Times piece subtly implies that Schiff and his office did nothing wrong while it casts the President in an unflattering light. This leads me to believe that the California congressman fed this news to the NYT before it was revealed by a more skeptical outlet.
Published in Politics
Yes, when the MSM like Chuck Todd can be so brazenly disinterested in things that need to be questioned, then President Trump’s only recourse is a strenuous offense. Where are the reinforcements though? Once again, this needs to be the only thing that Republicans will discuss – i.e. how the Democrats are ignoring real evidence of corruption, how the Democrats want to squelch real investigation into the origins of the Russia colluuuuusion Hoax, how the democrats are trying to cover their own asses from exposure to lying, corruption, and gross abuse of power.
It is astonishing the collective Chuck’s of the MSM appear to have no idea they urinate over their entire “Trump is really, really bad and this time we gottem” narrative when they continue do the drive by “nothing to see here folks” of: HRC’s computer antics, the FBI/DOJ/IC’s malfeasance, the Kavanaugh travesty, and the Biden family’s at least blatant appearance of corruption, etc.
If the MSM sincerely wants to gain back any credibility and get the center right to believe the MSM is not corrupted, then the MSM will have to …. stop being corrupted.
Indeed; as they regard walking/talking, they make the world go ’round.
Ed, I think that our disagreement is with your assertion that the fact of contact with the committee is not “evidence.” It is evidence. It is not conclusive evidence, but it is some evidence.
There is a tendency, in discussions of this time, to claim that there is “no evidence” of something, when in fact there is some evidence that is not conclusive.
You’re right about that being the friction point. I still don’t think that contact is any evidence that Schiff wrote the complaint. Yes, it’s a necessary condition for the theory to be true but it’s not at all suggestive of the nature of the contact.
This was a policy goal of western governments. The state prosecutor was seen as a major road block.
There was not an investigation into Burisma, there was an investigation into the guy who company owned Burisma. This was eventually settled when he paid his back taxes.
Was Hunter trading on his name? Absolutely. Was Burisma trying to curry favor with the V.P.? Absolutely. Is any of this illegal? No.
But again, if your defense is that the other guy is just as bad, you have no defense. And now Trump is openly asking both China and the Ukraine to investigate.
Supporters defended Trump during the Mueller investigation by saying Trump would never do that (collude). And now he is openly calling for foreign governments to insert themselves into the 2020 election.
No, he’s asking for cooperation in investigating possible illegal actions by members of our political class. Calling it an attempt to influence an election is a rather shaky conclusion. The election was still 16 months away at the time of the phone call.
But I guess that’s the only thing the Trump-haters have.
Why are people allegedly on our side so anxious to help the Democrats spread their lies? Maybe they’re not on our side after all.
So …. The Biden’s skate because any request by the incumbent administration for an investigation of an opposition party Presidential primary candidates alleged wrong doing in a foreign country, is automatically inferred to be interfering with the Presidential election …
Can you say awesome!
Are there any alleged crimes where you feel this get out of jail free pass “loop hole” should be waved, or is this an all encompassing any crimes (ie: murder, rape, robbery, etc.)?
Do you suppose that if Burisima could dump $50 large in Hunter’s pockets that they couldn’t spread the graft around a bit wider? Who exactly is it that says that his removal was also a goal of our “allies?” anyway? Maybe I missed it, but our “allies” seem to be uncharacteristically quiet about it at the moment. If the foreign minister of Whogivesastan had announced that Viktor Shokin was a latter-day Hinky-Dink Kenna, the MSM would have told me by now.
What I want to know is why I haven’t seen Hunter Biden out here in the Permian Basin of West Texas at the behest of the area’s oil companies. I mean, even with his coke-and-meth problems that might have made him not the most reliable employee to engage, the man has to be a genius about the ins-and-outs of the oil and gas industry if a big foreign company like Burisma is willing to cough up $600,000 a year for him to impart his vast trove of petrochemical legal and technical knowledge to them.
“Was Hunter trading on his name? Absolutely. Was Burisma trying to curry favor with the V.P.? Absolutely. Is any of this illegal? No.”
Perhaps, but then there is the issue that Biden used his influence to get the Prosecutor General Shokin who was investigating his son’s involvement with Burisma fired. Remember Biden was the designated “point man” in the Obama Adminstration’s diplomatic relations with Ukraine and a man of great influence with American – Ukrainian policy. He used that power as an American public official to influence internal Ukrainian affairs in support of his son. I would hope that is very illegal.
Slo Jo was even caught on tape:
“In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko.
“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event, insisting that President Obama was in on the threat.”
From Debra Heine at American Greatness:
“documents gathered by the Hill’s John Solomon greatly contradict Biden and his defenders’ narrative about the firing.
Solomon revealed Thursday evening on Fox News that he has gathered over 450 pages of never-released memos and documents from Burisma’s American legal representatives, the State Department, the Ukraine Prosecutor General’s Office, and the Ukraine Embassy in Washington DC.
“There is an enormous body of documents—on the record statements from Ukraine authorities—that these issues occurred,” Solomon told Fox News Host Sean Hannity.
According to one Ukrainian government official memo, a few days after Biden forced Shokin’s ouster, Burisma’s American legal team met with Ukrainian officials and offered “an apology for dissemination of false information by U.S. representatives and public figures” about the Ukrainian prosecutors.”
“According to a sworn affidavit prepared for a European court, Shokin said that he was told in March of 2016 that the reason he was fired was because Biden was unhappy about the Burisma investigation. “The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors,” Shokin testified.”
Exactly. Why should we trust that conventional wisdom? Why should we trust that even if it were the policy that that policy wasn’t driven by the free money machine that Ukrainian corporate boards apparently were?
Sure, and Michael Jackson settled all of his problems too. Must mean he wasn’t schtupping kids then. Right?
Exactly. As I said we’re living in an alternative universe. Biden is caught on tape on a quid pro quo and no evidence of the like on Trump.
Really? It’s not illegal to use your political pull to put your son on the board of foreign companies for a very, very large sum of money? I find that very hard to believe.
I suppose Burisma can put any drug-addicted 40-something lawyer they want on their payroll at better than half a million per year, and that’s legal. The question comes in whether or not wacky-but-lovable Uncle Joe was trying to kill two birds with one stone in forcing Ukraine to oust Shokin from his position in order to protect Hunter’s $600,000 per year deal (i.e. — others may have had questions about Shokin’s anti-corruption efforts in other areas, but that doesn’t mean that was the overriding reason Biden wanted him gone from his job, if Shokin was looking into corruption in a place dad and son didn’t want him to go).