Democrats are swinging back to the “I” word in their hate-fueled rage towards PDJT. In order to gain acceptance for impeachment in the public’s mind, they need to resurrect the Russian collusion narrative that has been discredited over and over again.
To that end Adam Schiff, current chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, recently went on CNN, the Democrat’s favorite lapdog network. Schiff told Dana Bash of “State of the Union” that he disagreed with Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr’s assessment that there was no direct evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
“Chairman Burr must have a different word for it,” Schiff said. Schiff referenced three items to “prove” collusion. The first was the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016. Schiff then mentioned George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn as further evidence of collusion.
Does Schiff really want people to look closely at the Trump Tower meeting? Ms. Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer, met at Trump Tower with Trump Jr., presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Both before and after this meeting she met with Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS. Fusion GPS was the source of the discredited Steele Dossier that was used to get a FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign.
“This was clearly a scheme using Justice resources and State resources to get the Russian lawyer into the United States,” one Justice Department insider said. “Who has the power to do this? Only the people at the very top.”
This was an attempt to entrap the Trump campaign into some quid pro quo entanglement. Fortunately they did not take the bait. The meeting was terminated less than a half hour after it started. Keep in mind that Manafort, Trump, Jr. and Kushner among others in the Trump campaign have all been wiretapped.
At the time this subject surfaced, Loretta Lynch, who appears to have signed off on allowing Ms. Veselnitskaya’s entry into the country, issued the typical non-denial denial to distance herself from that decision. Her spokesperson said that Lynch “does not have any personal knowledge of Ms. Veselnitskaya’s travel.” Note that the spokesperson did not say that Lynch did not know how Veselnitskaya gained entry into the country.
Is Adam Schiff really pointing to this as evidence of Russian collusion? Anyone taking an objective look at this would probably come to the conclusion that collusion and conspiracy were on the Democratic side of the ledger. Of course, this is typical Democratic playbook stuff. Project onto the other party the things you are actually guilty of. Then, hopefully, people won’t notice your own malfeasance. Is that what Schiff is trying to do here?
The cases of Papadopoulos and Flynn are even more suspect.
The Papadopoulos’ timeline is as follows:
Two months before the presidential election George Papadopoulos met with Stefan Halper, a Cambridge professor. Halper had close ties to both the CIA and Britain’s intelligence agencies. He may have been an agent on the British side at one time. During the meeting, Halper asked Papadopoulos, “George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?” Papadopoulos said that he knew nothing about it.
Halper later paid Papadopoulos $3000 to write a paper on issues related to natural gas fields in Europe and Asia Minor. Papadopoulos then met a Professor Joseph Mifsud, who told him that Russians had hacked into the DNC email system and had a huge number of emails. Mifsud was a Clinton Foundation member.
So, at this point, two different people had told Papadopoulos about the emails. Then Australian diplomat Alexander Downer met with Papadopoulos. Why? Papadopoulos was at best a minor functionary in the Trump campaign. Supposedly while drunk, he told Downer about the Russians having DNC emails. This was something he learned from Halper and Mifsud. After Wikileaks started posting the emails, Downer went to the FBI and reported his conversation with Papadopoulos.
There are two issues here. First, forensic examination of the DNC email file obtained by Wikileaks has shown that the emails could not have been hacked. A physical device was connected to the DNC server to download the emails.
“Key findings indicate that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack. Of equal importance, the forensics show that the copying and doctoring were performed on the East Coast of the U.S. Thus far, mainstream media have ignored the findings of these independent studies.” (Noble & Binney, 2017)
Some have tried to connect these facts with the murder of Seth Rich, a Bernie Sanders supporter, who was employed by the DNC. His murder remains unsolved at this point in time.
Second, FBI contractors had been shut out of NSA data feeds in the spring of 2016 by Admiral Mike Rogers after he discovered that 85% of such queries were illicit. It is widely believed that Fusion GPS was one of those contractors although such information has been redacted up to this point in time. The FBI desperately needed a “legal” way to surveil the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos may have been one such avenue they explored to re-gain such access by creating an atmosphere of suspicion that would allow a surveillance warrant to be issued.
Papadopoulos’ later legal troubles may have been another attempt to leverage him against PDJT and his administration.
Adam Schiff is trying to make the case that Papadopoulos “proves” Russian collusion. Again any rational person looking closely at this case could certainly come to a radically different conclusion. The only way the Russians could have been involved was if there was a Russian operative working for the DNC. Again it appears that the Democrats are trying to keep sunlight from exposing their own connections to Russian operatives.
The General Mike Flynn case is even more ridiculous. Flynn met with and spoke to foreign diplomats including Russians as part of his job on the Trump transition team. The FBI later interviewed him and then claimed he lied about some part of those conversations. They apparently had wiretaps of his electronic conversations. This became the process crime they later charged him with. Again no evidence of collusion has surfaced. He still remains to be sentenced. It appears that Judge Sullivan is skeptical about the Special Counsel’s case.
So, what is Adam Schiff really trying to do here? Is he trying to hoodwink the public by repeating a lie? Or is he trying somewhat desperately to shift attention away from Democratic malfeasance? Or both?
It is time to end the Special Counsel’s investigation. Then government officials cannot hide behind the excuse that they cannot answer questions because of an ongoing investigation.