PrintCommissar Schiff says 'nyet' to GOP witnesses
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff is taking his "Soviet-style" impeachment to another level.
After first setting the House rules to allow himself alone to say which witnesses can appear before his committee hearings, now going public, he's now vetoing one by one pretty much every witness being called by the GOP to present some kind of defense of President Trump.
Here's his list of eight who are being blocked by Schiff, via CNN's report on Mark Levin:
In a letter to Schiff earlier Saturday, Republicans had listed the anonymous whistleblower, Hunter Biden, former US special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker, high-ranking State Department official David Hale and Tim Morrison, the top Russia and Europe adviser on the National Security Council among the people they wanted to testify.The GOP also requested Nellie Ohr, a former Fusion GPS contractor, and Alexandra Chalupa, a former Democratic National Committee staffer —a sign that Republicans still want to focus on unsubstantiated claims related to the 2016 presidential campaign."As of right now, they are giving us no witnesses," [House intelligence committee ranking member Devin] Nunes told Fox News' Jeanine Pirro on Saturday night.
When I was prosecutor I couldn’t decide who defense called as a witness. Why does @AdamSchiff get to decide Republican witness list for #UnfairImpeachment of @realDonaldTrump? What did @HunterBiden do for #Burisma @ $80,000+ month after kicked out of Navy for coke use?#maga
— Victoria Toensing (@VicToensing) November 11, 2019
Here's more here:
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It makes any sane person wonder what the standards are. This is a Soviet-style kangaroo court, rigged well from the start.
Some observers note that Schiff's refusal on Tim Morrison, is particularly noteworthy. Morrison testified earlier during Schiff's secret basement hearings. No transcripts from that have been released and now the Republicans are calling on this guy to testify again. Somehow, Schiff doesn't want to hear from him again even though he wanted to hear from him earlier.
What can one conclude from that? Two things: That Morrison is saying things that aren't helpful to Schiff's Get Trump effort, and more disturbing still, that he held those secret basement hearings as exclusively auditions, the better to hear from all the witnesses and the cherrypick only the most damaging, silencing the ones who exculpate Trump. It was pre-planned, same as the whistleblower complaint itself.
The GOP demand to hear from the whistleblower is a particularly strong flashpoint, too. Schiff is yelling there won't be any whistleblower at all to testify, and too bad what the GOP wants to know from him. It's Schiff's way or the highway.
Over at the Senate, Sen. Lindsey Graham 2.0 has shown an admirable use of backbone by throwing it right back at Schiff and his Schiff-show: Graham says any chance of impeachment passing in the Senate is dead-on-arrival if Schiff doesn't allow even that tiny element of fairness. Graham is the end of the line for the Democrats' Impeachment Dream.
Which means that either Schiff is going to yield, or the Democrats are going to see their grand impeachment project dead in the water, floating belly up and smelling bad.
Schiff's recalcitrance is not just a matter of not playing fair in other words, it's a sign that he's on a different mission - to never have an impeachment but to use the Schiffshow as a tool with which to weaken President Trump at the 2020 election. How abusive a use of power is that? Only the Soviets would understand.
Image credit: Maria Bartiromo / Fox News, via YouTube screenshot
