The Senate impeachment trial has vacillated between being ridiculously boring to incredibly nonsensical claims from House Intel Chair and impeachment manager Adam Schiff.
But it may finally be heating up if what Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham is saying comes to pass.
Graham is saying they intend to turn the tables on the House impeachment managers and they will be asking about contact or coordination with the whistleblower.
Now this could be a lot of fun with folks like House Intel Chair and impeachment manager Adam Schiff being questioned on this.
From Washington Examiner:
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Friday he and his GOP colleagues plan next week to ask Democratic House impeachment managers about the Ukraine whistleblower and coordination with the staff of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who has led arguments on the Senate floor this week advocating Trump’s removal from office by two-thirds of the Senate.
“I think they’ve brought up a lot of a lot of issues [during the House impeachment investigation]. They put people forward to testify in their case. Did any of these witnesses that were presented to us, did they have any contact with the whistleblower? I don’t know? I’d like to ask,” Graham told the Washington Examiner. “I think some people may ask about is there a connection between the whistleblower and anybody on the manager’s staff? Yeah, that would be a good question to ask. I also think it’s very relevant who this person is.”
Schiff refused to answer questions about the whistleblower in the House proceedings and he prevented anyone else from answering them as well. He refused to even let people mention the whistleblower’s name. The whistleblower is believed to be NSC official on Ukraine, Eric Ciaramella.
Schiff’s staff had contact with the whistleblower prior to him even filing his complaint. Schiff falsely claimed in public interviews that “we” had not had any contact with the whistleblower. The WaPo gave him four Pinnochios for that claim. The whistleblower also declined to tell the IG about his contact with Schiff’s staff when he filed out the forms for his complaint under oath, despite the fact there was a part on the form where one could fill in if one had alerted Congress.
As House Intel and Judiciary member Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) has observed, the one transcript we haven’t been given from Schiff is that of the testimony of IG Michael Atkinson about the whistleblower’s claim. So what is being covered up and why doesn’t Schiff want to turn that over?
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