Tag Archives: Adam Schiff

national news, political news

Intelligence panel chair channels Trump with disclosure

Well now …

What in the world is going on here? The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Republican Devin Nunes says someone surveilled Donald J. Trump’s e-mail during the time between the election and when he became president of the United States, which seems at first blush to give a tiny sliver of justification for what the president has alleged about that bogus wiretap assertion.

Not so fast, according to the Intelligence panel’s top-ranking Democrat, Adam Schiff, who says Nunes didn’t follow anything close to proper protocol by making that announcement.

Not surprisingly, Schiff has doubts about what Chairman Nunes has suggested.

Schiff said the information Nunes reportedly has should have been shared with other committee members before he went public with it. Schiff said the committee hasn’t seen anything.

This makes me wonder: Is the chairman channeling Donald Trump, suggesting something out loud without any proof of what he’s saying?

Nunes isn’t saying, to be fair, that what he has discovered gives any credence to the bogus notion that former President Obama ordered a wiretap on Trump’s campaign offices in Trump Tower. Schiff, though, is angry with the chairman for blithely introducing this information without briefing other committee members.

He calls it a “profound irregularity.”

I just hope it doesn’t become a profound cover-up.

legal news, national news, political news

Rep. Schiff: We’re at the ‘bottom’ of wiretap story

Adam Schiff strikes me as a thoughtful young man.

He’s the ranking Democrat on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee. He and the Republican chairman, Deven Nunes, also of California, have become a sort of tag-team that seeks to get Donald Trump to produce proof of a dangerous allegation he has made about former President Obama.

Today, Schiff said on “Meet the Press” that Congress appears to have reached “the bottom” of the president’s assertion — that Obama ordered a wiretap of Trump’s offices in New York City.

There is no “bottom,” Schiff said. No proof. No evidence. No substantiation. The president, said the congressman, has now introduced a dangerous new standard for recklessness that could have profound impact on any business the United States seeks to conduct at home or abroad.

Indeed, how are our allies going to react to anything that comes from the president’s Twitter account? He’s already dragged the British intelligence network into this tawdry matter, asserting that the Brits had a hand in the alleged wiretap.

He stood with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and sought to lure her into the ongoing matter, suggesting that Obama had wiretapped Merkel and other European allies.

The president is not backing off. He’s offering not a hint of proof. Nor is he offering the scent of contrition.

What in the world is this man — the president of the United States — going to do next? Who else is he going to slander?

We might find out plenty this week when FBI Director James Comey walks onto Capitol Hill to testify about what he knows and whether there was any authorization given to do what Trump has accused the former president of doing.

I would think the FBI boss would know.

If not, well, Rep. Schiff is right. We’ve found the bottom of this story. And as the late Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, Calif.: We’ve found “there is no there there.”