Screengrab from https://twitter.com/jason_donner/status/1085996085519224832

(Photo of Adam Schiff leaving the bus after Trump cancelled the Pelosi-led trip to Davos.)

The Trump/Russian collusion case put Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) on the map. Prior to that time, few knew who he was and since then, Schiff has made a career out of hating President Trump.

American Greatness’ Julie Kelly made the case recently that Schiff’s role in the investigation began in the aftermath of the 2016 Democratic Convention. As you may recall, hacked DNC emails published shortly before the convention revealed that DNC leadership, which should have remained neutral, had actively undermined Bernie Sanders’ campaign. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign just before the convention and it was a chaotic time for the Democrats.

Schiff served on the House Intelligence Committee (he is currently the Chair) at that time. He and Diane Feinstein, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sent a letter to then-President Obama “which began to seed the collusion story at the government’s highest levels. The letter, written on July 26, 2016 began: “The email dissemination was clearly intended to undermine the Democratic Party and the presidential campaign of Secretary Hillary Clinton, and disrupt the Democratic Party’s convention in Philadelphia.”

Two weeks later, Schiff appeared on CNN and “claimed that the Russians certainly have a very strong interest in seeing Donald Trump be the next president, given all the admiring statements he’s made of Putin.” He continued to peddle this narrative before, during and after the election season. Naturally, the mainstream media adored him. Kelly writes:

From that point forward, Schiff weaseled his way onto the public stage and became the media’s go-to mouthpiece for yarns about Trump-Russia election collusion.

After the election, Schiff, with the help of corrupt law enforcement officials and partisans on both sides who were traumatized by Trump’s victory, expanded his con job by insisting the new president won because he was in cahoots with Vladimir Putin.

Whenever a new development arises in the case, Schiff is interviewed. He appears frequently on CNN. Kelly cited one report which said Schiff had given 227 interviews between January 2017 and February 2018. The left loves Schiff for the simple reason that he hates Trump as much as they do. A New York Times reporter had the following to say about Schiff: “Youthful, with a ruddy and cheerful visage, Schiff, 56, whose wife is actually named Eve, comes off like the guy who in high school talked to his prom date’s mother in the kitchen about the goings-on at the community garden.”

Republicans see him quite a bit differently. He is deceptive, manipulative, and despicable. He speaks eloquently, but you can almost see the wheels turning in his head while he’s talking. He manufactures his own facts.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) served as the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee throughout 2017 and 2018. When Nunes discovered that the dossier, an unverified piece of opposition research, had been used by the FBI in their FISA court application for the warrant to spy on Carter Page, Schiff realized his narrative had been exposed. He demanded that Nunes resign from the Committee. Instead, Nunes prepared what became known as the Nunes memo and after a series of negotiations, released it to the public in February 2018.

The release of the Nunes Memo was a turning point for the Republicans. And it was followed up by the Grassley-Graham Letter. Heartened by what they had learned, Republican Congressional investigators continued to dig deeper and although the progress has been slower than we would like, much of the story has been revealed.

Schiff followed up with a memo of his own, which was known as the Minority memo. Unfortunately for him, it didn’t gain much traction. It was then that the gloves came off and Schiff became truly despicable.

Kelly wrote that “even now, as his collusion story unravels, Schiff continues trying to convince people that his skullduggery is valorous. He imagines what no one except the most self-deluded sucker still insists is true.

For example, for over two years, he has claimed that Donald Trump, Jr. called his father immediately after his infamous June 2016 meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower. Last month, Trump Jr. provided phone records which proved he had made two phone calls that evening to nonpolitical friends. No calls had been made to his father. Schiff has remained silent about this.

He still maintains that Trump colluded with Russia. Just last weekend, Schiff told CNN’s Dana Bash, “You see evidence in plain sight on the issue of collusion and pretty compelling evidence.”

Bash cited the announcement from Sen. Richard Burr, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee  that they had found no direct evidence of collusion. Here are several excerpts from Schiff’s answer.

Well, it’s not just that I think he’s wrong. Mark Warner, the vice chair of the Intel Committee in the Senate, also disagrees with that assessment.

But, look, you can see evidence in plain sight on the issue of collusion, pretty compelling evidence. Now, there’s a difference between seeing evidence of collusion and being able to prove a criminal conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt.

But Mr. – Chairman Burr must have a different word for it, because, when you look, for example, at the e-mails to set up the meeting in Trump Tower, it was offered to the Trump campaign, to the president’s own son, dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of what was described as the Russian government’s effort to help Donald Trump in the campaign.

And the response from the campaign was, we would love to have the help.

Now, that’s an offer of help. That’s an acceptance of help. There’s an overt act in the Trump Tower in furtherance of that. And, of course, that’s not even contemplating the discussions with George Papadopoulos or the information about the efforts that Mike Flynn made to work with the Russian ambassador secretly to undermine sanctions and then lie about that.

All of this is evidence of collusion. And you either have to look the other way to say it isn’t, or you have to have a different word for it, because it is a corrupt dealing with a foreign adversary during a campaign.

But, again, it will be up to Mueller to determine whether that amounts to criminal conspiracy.

Sensing (or possibly actually knowing) that Mueller’s investigation will offer no evidence of collusion, he has begun looking beyond it’s release, telling reporters that he will open new investigations into “the President, his family and his business interests.”

Even left-wing CNN producer Marshall Cohen thought Schiff was pushing things a bit.

Schiff is moving the goalposts a bit here as Mueller winds down, saying there is proof of collusion but not not necessarily in a criminal sense. https://t.co/dhE7NimsUM

— Marshall Cohen (@MarshallCohen) February 17, 2019