![]() ![]() government for years to roll back human-rights sanctions on officials tied to the imprisonment and death of the Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. Schiff neglects to mention that Veselnitskaya had been lobbying the U.S. Schiff describes Veselnitskaya as someone with “ties to senior Kremlin officials but no official role.” He says she made her approach as a way for Moscow to determine whether Trump’s campaign would be open to cooperation down the road. and a British promoter revealed that Veselnitskaya had promised dirt on Hillary Clinton and that Don Jr. Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and campaign manager Paul Manafort all met with a delegation led by a Russian lawyer named Natalia Veselnitskaya. Schiff’s argument rests primarily on a meeting that took place in New York’s Trump Tower in 2016. “Whether Mueller believed he could satisfy a jury that all of the elements of the crime of conspiracy had been met was another matter, and that would be up to him.” “The president’s campaign could, and did, try to collude with the Russians to get help in the election,” he says in explaining why he declined to apologize for his earlier accusations in an interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos. citizen, for that matter) for conspiring with the Kremlin’s election interference. Schiff now maintains that his committee and other investigations did find collusion, but that Mueller failed to find enough evidence to prosecute the Trump campaign (or any U.S. Then there is the matter of the Trump-Russia conspiracy itself. Schiff and his committee’s Democrats waged an 18-month campaign to defend the surveillance of Page, claiming without evidence that it was his Republican counterpart, Devin Nunes, who had misrepresented the classified record. Schiff makes no mention of Michael Horowitz, the FBI inspector general who uncovered abuses so grave in his agency’s surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page that the secret court which had granted the bureau’s four surveillance warrants withdrew three of them. For most of his memoir, Schiff writes as though he actually did reveal a Trump-Russia collusion scandal-and he ignores the ample public evidence of its debunking. But it’s best to read this admission as calculated contrition. This passage gives the reader the false impression that Schiff is reflective and honest about his mistakes. “But I screwed up and wanted him to know it.” As Schiff hung up the phone, he felt sick to his stomach, he says. “I had been thinking about securing the whistleblower’s testimony before the committee, not any prior contact with my staff,” he recalls telling Stein. But he does share details of the sheepish conversation he had with reporter Sam Stein, during which he had to walk back his earlier comment that the whistleblower had not had contact with the House Intelligence Committee he chairs. Nor does Schiff acknowledge that Hunter Biden did indeed entangle himself in seedy foreign dealings. We never learn the identity of the whistleblower Schiff once promised would testify. Then the House Intelligence Committee, of which Schiff became chairman in 2019, received a whistleblower’s complaint that alleged a sordid scheme to strong-arm the new Ukrainian president into cooperating with Trump crony Rudy Giuliani’s “investigation” of Hunter Biden. When special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation yielded no evidence of such a conspiracy, Schiff looked ridiculous-the supposedly dogged prosecutor had suddenly become the boy who cried collusion. Schiff claimed to be in possession of evidence proving that Trump’s 2016 campaign conspired with Russia. The whole affair was a gift from heaven for the Democratic congressman who represents Burbank, California. The bulk of Schiff’s new memoir, Midnight in Washington, focuses on the scandal that erupted when President Trump sought to pressure Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden’s son Hunter. He was a showman playing the role of a statesman. He would jab the air and lower his voice. In his role as one of the House impeachment managers, Schiff pressed his case on the Senate floor by summoning an earnest indignation. Adam Schiff was one of the star attractions at Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial. ![]()
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