In a year of really weird news this may be up there in the top of weirdest events imaginable.

Via the Daily Mail. Pardon the extensive blockquotes because, well I just can’t write this:

The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee was the victim of a prank phone call by Russian comedians who offered to give him ‘compromising’ dirt on Donald Trump – including nude photos of the president and a Russian reality show star. [She’s hot in that Russian porn star kind of way.]

DailyMail.com can disclose that after the prank, his staff engaged in correspondence with what they thought was a Ukrainian politician to try to obtain the ‘classified’ material promised on the call.

On an audio recording of the prank call posted online, Adam Schiff can be heard discussing the committee’s Russia investigation and increasingly bizarre allegations about Trump with a man who claimed to be Andriy Parubiy, the chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament.

The call, made a year ago, was actually from two Russian comedians nicknamed ‘Vovan’ and ‘Lexus’ who have become notorious for their phony calls to high-ranking American officials and celebrities, including UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and Elton John.

Its existence was first reported by The Atlantic but not how a staff member working for the minority on the House Intelligence Committee pursued the information after the call.

Schiff’s office said the congressman suspected the call was ‘bogus’ from the beginning and reported it to authorities afterward.

But in a recording of the eight minute conversation, Schiff appeared to take the call seriously – or at least played along convincingly – and emails from the Democrat’s staff to the fake politician afterwards said he had found it ‘productive’.

As they say, Schiff is claiming that they knew it was a prank all along and were just playing it for laughs but they sent a follow up email.

Visit the website. I don’t want to rip off their images, particularly the image of the staff email, and our WordPress won’t accept the Daily Mail embed code.

All of this goes to show that Schiff is so intent upon damaging Trump that there is nothing he won’t do or say.

In context, how is this any different from the meeting Donald Trump, Jr. had with Fusion GPS contractors at Trump Tower? It isn’t. In both cases they thought they were being offered dirt on a political opponent (Schiff, of course, was trying to bring down a sitting president so there is a different level of ambition). In neither case did either one get what they’d hoped.

If what you saw at Trump Tower was collusion with Russia to gain an edge in an election, what you see here is collusion with Ukraine to bring about impeachment.