Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas., asks questions to former special counsel Robert Mueller, as he testifies before the House Judiciary Committee hearing on his report on Russian election interference, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Wednesday, July 24, 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Eighteen witnesses testified in closed sessions before Adam Schiff’s House Intelligence Committee last fall and Schiff has released seventeen of the transcripts. The last one, however, remains under seal and has been classified as “secret.”

The eighteenth transcript contains the testimony of Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, the man to whom the whistleblower complaint was submitted on August 12, 2019.

It was discovered shortly after news of the whistleblower complaint broke, that IG Atkinson had gone to extraordinary lengths in order to even receive the complaint. He eliminated the requirement that a whistleblower must have first-hand knowledge which allowed those with second-hand knowledge to file a complaint.

Kind of unusual for an inspector general to change the definition of a whistleblower in order to be able to accept a complaint, isn’t it?

And then, IG Atkinson took another extraordinary step. Once a complaint is received, an IG has fourteen days to determine if it constitutes an “urgent concern” or not. When an IG regards a matter as “urgent,” according to the Washington Post, it meets a “legal threshold that requires notification of congressional oversight committees.” If he believes it does, he forwards the information to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), which Atkinson did on August 26.

The acting DNI, Joseph Maguire, did not consider the complaint to meet the requirements of an “urgent concern” as defined by the statute, and therefore, did not forward the complaint to Congress. He turned it over to the Department of Justice. The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a statement explaining why the DNI did not send the complaint to Congress. The statement can be viewed here.

The OLC memo states, “Although the ICIG’s preliminary review found “some indicia of an arguable political bias on the part of the Complainant in favor of a rival political candidate,” the ICIG concluded that the complaint’s allegations nonetheless appeared credible.” In other words, the OLC considered this a political attack and nipped it in the bud.

Atkinson took matters into his own hands and on September 9, he wrote a letter to Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and Devin Nunes (R-CA), the ranking member. This letter can be viewed here.

Well, Schiff took this ball and ran. He immediately arranged for Atkinson to appear before his committee on October 4.

Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) spoke to Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures.” He had attended Atkinson’s hearing and here’s what he had to say about it.

The House managers kept putting up charts talking about the 17 witnesses. But there were 18 … I was there. It’s the one transcript out of 18 that hasn’t been released. It’s a 179-page transcript … It’s the one transcript that talks about Adam Schiff and the whistleblower…

Now, everyone knows by now that Adam Schiff was not truthful about his contacts with the whistleblower. What they don’t know and what’s in that transcript is that the whistleblower wasn’t truthful about his contacts with Adam Schiff. This whole thing started, Maria, when the whistleblower filed a complaint with the inspector general under penalty of perjury that wasn’t true and correct, made representations in writing and verbally that weren’t true and correct. And when we found that out and tried to get into the details of that, Adam Schiff, who was in charge of this investigation, shut it down, and now he’s trying to bury that transcript.

Bartiromo noted that this isn’t really much different than “the 2 1/2 years of hysteria” Schiff put the country through. She cited his famous line, “there is collusion in plain sight” and how he denounced the “Nunes Memo” which was found to be accurate by the December 9 Inspector General’s report. She referenced a Schiff tweet from July 22, 2018 where he acted precisely how he’s acting now to help us recall just how disingenuous he is.

The release of the Carter Page FISA application makes clear, once again, the FBI acted lawfully and appropriately.

This hasn’t stopped the President and Republicans from repeating the same fraudulent taking points in the discredited Nunes memo.

Sadly, some things never change: https://t.co/b4JPj86Mka

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) July 22, 2018

She pointed out that Ratcliffe, then-Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) and Schiff were the only members of Congress to view the documents, yet Schiff’s version was the opposite of Ratcliffe’s and Gowdy’s. She asked Ratcliffe to comment.

Trey and I were the designees on our side able to see those documents. Adam was one of the designees on their side…So, you can imagine how remarkable it was for me to sit in the Senate and for three days, listen to Adam Schiff spin this Ukraine hoax without any evidence to support it, at the same time that these details that you just mentioned about the last hoax that he played such a prominent role in – the Russia hoax.

Because it was Adam Schiff who was leading the charge on that, who said he had evidence that Donald Trump was a Russian agent, he had evidence of a Russian conspiracy. And he was the one who came out and said, when we raised questions about the FISA process and withholding of exculpatory evidence, the using of a dossier that was known to be fake and phony as the central part of it, he knew all of that. He said, no that’s not true and put out a memo, said President Trump and the Republicans aren’t telling you the truth about that.

That’s the very same person who is now out there spinning this Ukraine hoax, in his latest impeachment effort. It wasn’t true about Russia. It’s not true about Ukraine.

Adam Schiff says things he knows that aren’t true with supreme conviction. Democrats think that makes him effective, we think that makes him dangerous.