Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Rep. Adam Schiff takes materials and testimony and then selectively leaks them in order to paint a specific narrative. Then a few days later it comes out that he was either lying or purposely taking things out of context.
It’s a story as old as time, or at least the current impeachment push, and Schiff is back at it.
If you’ll recall, last week, former Giuliani associate Lev Parnas handed over supposed “evidence” on Trump and Ukraine to the House. Parnas then went on a media tour because back in the real world, the SDNY won’t even bother talking to him about a cooperation deal because he’s so non-credible.
Now, news is coming out that Schiff lied about what Parnas’ documents contained.
This per Politico.
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff appears to have mischaracterized a text message exchange between two players in the Ukraine saga, according to documents obtained by POLITICO — a possible error the GOP will likely criticize as another example of the Democrats’ rushed effort to impeach President Donald Trump.
It’s typical that this would be played up as a “Republicans pounce” story, but the meat of what Schiff did is what we are interested in here, not the media spin.
And this wasn’t just a small mixup. This was a major lie by Schiff.
The issue arose when Schiff (D-Calif.) sent a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) last week summarizing a trove of evidence from Lev Parnas, an indicted former associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. In one section of the letter, Schiff claims that Parnas “continued to try to arrange a meeting with President Zelensky,” citing a specific text message exchange where Parnas tells Giuliani: “trying to get us mr Z.” The remainder of the exchange — which was attached to Schiff’s letter — was redacted.
Remember, the “meeting with President Zelensky” is the entire basis of the goalpost shifted theory now being bandied about by Democrats. This happened because the evidence of the aid being withheld in any kind of quid pro quo simply didn’t exist outside of some assumptions made by Bill Taylor.
The problem? The unredacted version of the document shows Parnas was not talking about Zelensky, but instead the founder of Burisma.
But an unredacted version of the exchange shows that several days later, Parnas sent Giuliani a word document that appears to show notes from an interview with Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma, followed by a text message to Giuliani that states: “mr Z answers my brother.” That suggests Parnas was referring to Zlochevsky not Zelensky.
In other words, this wasn’t part of some scheming plot by the President to use Zelensky for political purposes. It was Giuliani trying to get relevant information from Burisma, likely on why Hunter Biden was getting paid $80,000 a month for no conceivable reason. There’s nothing improper or illegal about that.
Schiff had access to the unredacted documents. The only logical explanation here is that he lied. Ignore the media spin that this could have been a mistake. This was a purposeful, selective leak in which the head of the Intel Committee lied for political purposes.
Meanwhile, Schiff was right back to making things up again yesterday.
Schiff also made up another conversation today that attributed comments to Sondland that were made by Holmes (also dubious).
— Julie Kelly (@julie_kelly2) January 22, 2020
And this is the guy the Democrats want to lead an impeachment effort against Trump’s supposed corruption? Give me a break.
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