Friday, November 01, 2019

House GOP Will Call Adam Schiff as Their First Witness, and There’s a Precedent

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), currently the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, spoke to Sean Hannity on Monday night and confirmed that House Republicans will call Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) as their first witness in the Democrats’ bogus impeachment inquiry. Nunes told Hannity:
Only Adam Schiff can subpoena Adam Schiff, but there’s a precedent for this. Remember, last Congress, they were hell bent on making sure that former Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) testified. I said, ‘Look, I don’t think this is a very good idea to turn around and have members of Congress come testify and give depositions. So, congratulations Democrats that were on the House Intelligence Committee that’s now become the impeachment committee. They have set the precedent for members of Congress to give depositions and so you heard the Minority leader the Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, say that Schiff is our first witness. You’ve had John Ratcliffe, a former U.S. attorney in Congress, say Adam Schiff is our first witness. So, yes, he in fact is going to be our first witness that we are going to ask to come and give a deposition.
During the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the Democratic members insisted on calling Rohrabacher to testify about his August 2017 meeting with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Rohrabacher, often dubbed by the media as “Putin’s favorite Congressman,” was the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and emerging threats. He lost his seat during the 2018 midterms after serving in Congress for 30 years.
Clearly, calling the repellent Schiff to testify hardly means he will actually testify. After all, he is calling all of the shots.
But the reality is that at least one member of Schiff’s staff met with the so-called whistleblower before he submitted his complaint to Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson. On a September 17th appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Schiff was asked if his staff had had any contact with the whistleblower prior to the date the complaint was filed. His reply? “We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower. We would like to.” When it was later reported that there had been contact, Schiff expressed regret and said he should have been more clear.
Given that they are trying to impeach the President of the United States, it is imperative to learn how the whistleblower case evolved, the background of the whistleblower and his possible motives. Last week, investigative journalist Paul Sperry identified the individual whom he believes to be the whistleblower. Several weeks prior to Sperry’s article, Fox News’ Dan Bongino had also identified this person as the whistleblower. Considering this individual’s attorney contacted Rep. Nunes over the weekend to say his client was willing to answer questions in writing, it sure looks like we’ve got our man. The alleged whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella, is a highly partisan Democrat closely connected to Obama Administration officials such as John Brennan, Joe Biden and Susan Rice. (I wrote a detailed post about Ciaramella here.)
Dan Bongino has followed this story closely. Long before we learned the facts about the Democrats’ plot to take out first candidate, then the President, Bongino had written a book, entitled “Spygate,” in which he explained the coup against Trump in painstaking detail. In his Monday podcast (below), he pointed out several more “connections” involving Schiff, Ciaramella and two of his former National Security Council (NSC) colleagues, Sean Misko and Abigail Grace, whom Schiff had hired in August, which require further scrutiny.
Here is the narrative via Episode 1102, Bongino.com::
Bongino starts with some information he received from a source “deep within the NSC.” Trump nominated Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) in July to replace RINO Dan Coats as the Director of National Intelligence. Ratcliffe, a former prosecutor who knows Spygate inside and out, sends the “establishment” into a meltdown. The “establishment,” he notes, includes RINOs like Sen. Richard Burr. “The swamp” made it clear that Ratcliffe would never be confirmed by the Senate and on August 2, Trump was forced to withdraw Ratcliffe’s nomination.
Next, he mentions the widely read January 2017 Politico article in which writer Kenneth Vogel revealed that operatives inside the Democratic Party worked with key Ukrainian officials to help Hillary Clinton win the election. Vogel, a liberal, documented the chain of events that took place in 2016. This is not a Republican conspiracy theory.
On October 11, the Washington Examiner’s Kerry Picket reports that in August, Schiff hired two aides who had worked with the whistleblower at the White House on the NSC rdesk. They were hired right after Ratcliffe’s nomination was withdrawn.
Bongino explains Democrats knew that, if Ratcliffe were to become the DNI, the whistleblower complaint “wouldn’t fly,” because Ratcliffe would have recognized it as false. Once he was no longer a threat, they were able to proceed with it.
On August 12th, the whistleblower submits his complaint to the Intelligence Community’s Inspector General Michael Atkinson. Bongino actually cites one of my posts where I explain that Atkinson is the former general counsel for the head of the National Security Division, John Carlin. Carlin was Robert Mueller’s Chief of Staff when he was the FBI Director. I wrote:
Carlin played a role in both the framing of Trump’s National Security Advisor, General Michael Flynn, as well as the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign. In her testimony before Congress last summer, FBI lawyer Lisa Page told lawmakers that “Carlin was briefed regularly by former deputy FBI Director Andy McCabe on the Trump-Russia collusion probe.”
With full knowledge that Trump campaign advisor Carter Page was not a Russian spy, that he had actually done undercover work for the FBI, Carlin prepared the FISA Court application for a warrant to spy on him. Shortly before the application was submitted, Carlin abruptly resigned under controversial circumstances in October 2016. (He is now a CNBC contributor – surprise.)
Bongino continues. “They initiate the false narrative because Ratcliffe won’t be there to shut it down.”
His point is that all these people are connected. The same people who brought us Spygate are now bringing us Whistleblowergate. “The same scammers, Schiff, Burr, all the people involved in the spying operation on the President, were involved heavily in the Mueller probe as well…Ukrainegate is the exact same players.”
(Watch the video below. Relevant segment begins at 3:20.)
There are too many coincidences here. It is essential that Schiff testify under oath to “clear up a few things” before President Trump is impeached by the House. He has lied repeatedly to the American people for over three years.
Adam Schiff is an unscrupulous, deceitful manipul
ator who has caused great harm to our country. He should immediately be stripped of his chairmanship and thrown off the Intelligence Committee. It’s time for this liar to face justice.

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