By now you know that Adam Schiff is a chronic liar but you might not know how pervasive his lying is. At Real Clear Politics Frank Miele captures Schiff quite succinctly:
You can take your pick for the most famous liars in history — people who are willing to say anything for the sake of gaining and keeping power — but surely Rep. Adam Schiff has earned a place on that list.
I won’t call Schiff a “congenital liar” — as Fox News personality Sean Hannity does nightly — but only because the term excuses Schiff of personal responsibility for his behavior. I don’t think it was his genes that made Schiff into a consummate liar but rather his narcissistic personality.
Watching Schiff spin his yarns as chief House manager for the impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump reminds me of the great dissemblers of Shakespeare, such as “Honest Iago,” who is only comfortable in his own skin when he is making the skin of others crawl. The “motiveless malignity” that poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge ascribed to Iago is writ large in the perfunctory perfidy that Schiff practices with unassuming ease. He would destroy a king, but he assures us he takes no pleasure in it, wink-wink, nod-nod.
Yes, Adam Schiff is a monstrous liar. You will remember him fabricating out of whole cloth the conversation between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, entering it into the official record in the House.
“I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand, lots of it, on this and on that. I’m going to put you in touch with people, not just any people, I’m going to put you in touch with the attorney general of the United States, my attorney general Bill Barr. He’s got the whole weight of the American law enforcement behind him.”
Later he would call it “parody.”
The last four years have been a novel of Schiff lies
Mr. Schiff also quoted Mr. Steele on a purported conspiracy between campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Mr. Page: “According to Steele, it was Manafort who chose Page to serve as a go-between for the Trump campaign and Russian interests.”
Independent evidence shows the two never knew or spoke with each other.
Mr. Schiff also said Mr. Steele was “highly regarded” by U.S. intelligence.
When Mr. Page later appeared before the committee, Mr. Schiff repeatedly quoted the dossier in questioning the former aide, forcing him to disprove what Mr. Steele had written.
He claimed repeatedly that he had secret evidence of Russian collusion “in plain sight”:
Mr. Schiff said several times that he had seen evidence of Trump-Russia collusion to interfere in the election and it was beyond circumstantial.
He began this talking point in March 2017.
“I can tell you that the case is more than that,” he said on MSNBC. “And I can’t go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller said in his March 2019 report that he did not find a Trump election conspiracy. No Trump associate was charged in such a conspiracy.
Then there was the battle over FISA abuse
After Mr. Nunes issued a memo in 2018 disclosing FISA abuses, Mr. Schiff issued a countermemo that proved off-base on several points.
Mr. Schiff titled his Jan. 29, 2018, countermemo “Correcting the Record — The Russia Investigation.”
“FBI and DOJ officials did not ‘abuse’ the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, omit material information, or subvert this vital tool to spy on the Trump campaign,” he said.
In fact, Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz’s Dec. 9 report found that the FBI did abuse FISA. He found 17 instances in which agents submitted inaccurate information to the judge or omitted exculpatory statements about Mr. Page.
Schiff wasn’t content to be just wrong
Mr. Schiff said in his countermemo: “In subsequent FISA renewals, DOJ provided additional information obtained through multiple independent sources that corroborated Steele’s reporting.”
Not true, said Mr. Horowitz. None of Mr. Steele’s reporting in the warrant was ever corroborated. In fact, FBI agents acquired evidence from Mr. Steele’s main source, who placed great doubt in Mr. Steele’s allegations. But the FBI left this evidence out of subsequent warrant renewals.
He accused Trump of money laundering
“During the prior Congress, the Committee began to pursue credible reports of money laundering and financial compromise related to the business interests of President Trump, his family, and his associates,” Mr. Schiff said.
He said he planned to look into the “extent of any links and/or coordination between the Russian government, or related foreign actors, and individuals associated with Donald Trump’s campaign, transition, administration, or business interests, in furtherance of the Russian government’s interests.”
By the time Mr. Schiff wrote this anti-Trump agenda, Mr. Mueller had completed his investigation and found no election conspiracy. There is no hint in his report of money laundering.
Schiff continued to leak false stories
In 2017 and 2018, committee Republicans said that Mr. Schiff’s side leaked a number of bogus stories, such as Russian Facebook ads in Wisconsin and Michigan, and Donald Trump Jr.’s communication with WikiLeaks.
There’s even more at the link.
When asked directly, Schiff denied having any contact with the whistleblower. It was another lie. The other day Schiff denied knowing the identity of the whistleblower. No one believes him.
After defending spying by Obama on the Trump campaign, Schiff said investigating a Presidential rival is wrong.
Schiff claimed the evidence the House committee had on Trump was “overwhelming” and “uncontested” but then asserted more witnesses were necessary because the Senate could not just “rely on what was investigated in the House.”
Schiff has frequently demanded that witnesses be allowed in the Senate in order to assure a “a fair trial.” He went to Harvard law school and apparently graduated but seems not have any understanding of the American legal system. In this country a fair trial is fair to the accused, not to the prosecution. And as I wrote previously, nowhere in the legal system is it stipulated that defendants must provide witnesses for the prosecution after the prosecution chose not to pursue them. Schiff had his chance to have witnesses. He and Nadler demurred. That’s no one else’s fault and it is NOT the obligation of the President’s team to correct their blunder.
Schiff is a former Federal prosecutor. That’s particularly frightening as it makes one wonder just how many innocent people are behind bars consequent to Schiff lies.
Politico trumpeted a story of how out of the Trump impeachment Schiff has become a superstar
Sitting shoulder to shoulder on the Senate floor as they argue for the president’s removal from office, two men — Adam Schiff of California and Hakeem Jeffries of New York — have been catapulted to the front of the nation’s consciousness, to the top of the Democratic Party and have become the fulcrum for speculation about a host of prominent positions both in the House and beyond.
One of the only real hard facts out of the impeachment is just how grandiose a liar Adam Schiff is. It’s a bad time in this country when being an inveterate liar in a trial makes you a superstar. If and when the Senate gets around to it, they should entertain witnesses to testify- with Adam Schiff being number one.
I am so pleased that this impeachment nonsense has blown up in his face. He’s done a lot of damage this country.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
@Swordmaker:
Well played, Swordmaker, well played.
Please stay so you can continue to slay the purveyors of lies.
@Randy:
L’il Eric is not a whistleblower. He is a seditionist.
@Swordmaker: Stay so we can explore real issues instead of continuing to try educating those less fortunate individuals.
@Swordmaker, #247:
I’ll leave this reference behind, as I’ve done a number of times before, for all the good it’s ever done:
The Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee formally requested Donald Trump’s tax returns from the Secretary of the IRS for review in closed executive session. That request was refused on the grounds that no reason was given. No reason is required. Under the law as written—and as has existed unchallenged for nearly 100 years—the formal request is sufficient reason.
It’s intention was to keep public officials honest in their use of official power, knowing that money is generally the motivation for wrongdoing, and that Congress has a specific oversight power that always allows them to look.
@Greg: Tax returns? That’s all ya got, now?
Pathetic.
Goodbye.
@Greg:
Yes, I am aware of that law.
Again, ask yourself, why do not the executive sessions of those committees already have President Trump’s Tax Returns? The answer is easy.
It’s easy because I am also aware the courts said, “Well, yeah, but no, you can’t have them.”
Just writing such a law does not invalidate the other privacy protection laws in the IRS Code unless Congress can show some compelling LEGISLATIVE reason for requesting them.
The Democrat’s congressional committee tried to claim that their “reason was to legislate new laws aimed only at Presidents who had over X amount of outside income and President Trump was the only president who had such a large outside income.” The court didn’t buy it.
The court responded and said that kind of legislation smacked of legislating an unconstitutional law of attainder. The committee appealed and the appellate court refused to hear it. So, no, not germane.
No, Greg, a formal request is NOT sufficient reason. The law is clear. It has to be for LEGISLATIVE REASONS, Greg. Just because some Congress Critters are curious about what is in someone’s 1040 is JUST NOT SUFFICIENT. Really, it isn’t.
The auditors at the IRS are the safeguard that something below the pale is not going on. Congress Critters are not CPAs nor are they Tax Attorneys, versed in the arcane rulings of Tax Courts, to know what they are looking at in a Tax Return, with all of the rulings of what is, and is not, allowable. IRS, truth be known, isn’t either, but they are more expert at it than is anyone in Congress. It is the IRS’ Job to assure that filed Tax Returns meet the standards, and if not, turn the auditors on, and if worse comes to worse, the DOJ and criminal investigation. That is NOT the job of some committee in Congress’s job. Their job is to legislate general laws for all of us.
@Swordmaker, #256:
We should know who’s correct by the end of June.
January 31, 2020 — Supreme Court sets arguments on Trump taxes, financial records in cases that could yield major rulings
@Greg:
On who won Iowa? 😉
They are still looking in trunks of cars.
@Greg:
Remember why it was “unchallenged”? We discussed that. Because it is never used. First, if you think members of Congress having the power to just invade personal privacy on a revenge driven whim (picture Schiff and Pelosi as Republicans and TRY to think about that for a moment), you are a fool of epic proportions. Second, your current Democrats have proven they should not have the powers they have, much less extra-Constitutional, 4th Amendment violating powers. They leak everything they can get ahold of that serves their political ends. No, there is NO LAW which allows for anyone to be investigated just to see if they are doing anything wrong. That only exists in your personal police state fantasies.
The Supreme Court now has a majority that uses the Constitution as guidance, not liberal ideology. Good luck with that, Chester.
@Deplorable Me: People like greggie want the power to look for a crime in other people’s records, but would raise holy hell if it happened to him. He wants the laws to only apply to others.
@Randy: They aren’t even looking for a crime; if they found one, it would be a bonus. They are merely looking for anything that will support more of their false accusations.
@Deplorable Me: I was not going to watch the whole address last night, but was drawn in. President Trump delivered a very well written and pointed address. He even gave the dems a pat on the back. They were so ignorant that they even missed that praise. Unless a viewer had blood in their eyes, it should be evident to anyone that the dems have forfeited the 2020 election and likely many more due to their behavior.
@Greg:
Looking through the tax returns is just another cheap trick the Dems are trying to use to engineer yet another nothingburger.
Trump has been very transparent, much more so than the last administration.
@Randy: I wanted to see what Pelosi was going to do, and she didn’t disappoint. She is such a petulant, spoiled, entitled hag. I thought Trump did a good job pointing out the stark contrast between his accomplishments and what the Democrats did when they had the power. Yeah, that was abrasive, but the gloves are off. Democrats want to call Trump a liar, traitor, thief and incompetent and then expect him to treat them with respect. Well, they aren’t respectable and don’t deserve any respect.
Last night was a telling night. Democrats had the opportunity to cheer for a bright young black girl who was awarded a scholarship to the school of her choice or to sit on their butts and resist Trump. The Democrats had an opportunity to cheer for a black veteran who overcame PTSD, drug addiction and loss of his family to start a very successful business or they could sit on their butts and resist Trump.
The Democrats had the opportunity to cheer for a little girl born 14 weeks premature who is now a health 2 year old due to advanced medical care and great hospital staff or they could sit on their butts resisting Trump.
The Democrats had the opportunity to cheer for the lowest unemployment rate for minorities ever or they could sit on their butts resisting Trump. The Democrats had the opportunity to cheer for a Tuskegee Airman and his great grand son who wants to be an astronaut or they could sit on their butts and resist Trump. There were many more opportunities for the Democrats to cheer for the successes of America and Americans or they could sit on their butts resisting Trump.
The Democrats instead of cheering, showed their distain for America and those who have found the opportunity to be successful in life. They sat on their butts and actually hissed like a poisonous snake in one instance. What did the Democrats do for America and Americans during the last year except sit on their buts and resist? Do Democrats really believe that real Americans will vote to re-elect them without thought? Do Democrats believe that voters hold them in high esteem? Do Democrats actually believe that voters are so stupid that they will vote Democratic no matter what? I guess we shall see!
Pelosi fired the first shot last night the tradition of the SOTU introducing the President after he entered was violation of protocol
traditionally says he or she has “the high privilege and distinct honor” of presenting the president.
Hers “Members of Congress, the President of the United States.
He hands off the speech and turns away from her.
The stupid becomes strong as noted in Randy’s #265 Post.
As the President made his case for results from chosen policies, the Speaker chewed her cud and played with paper.
They dont like the successes, cant we just pour good money after bad into failed policies, blame the Republicans for not being able to waste more?
It is’nt that they dont mean well, its that they cannot accept that their ideas suck, all the youth centers in the big cities, lowering standards to hide failures hasnt helped.
The finale she tore up the speech, well huny your petulant temper tantrum cant tear up the successes, they remain.
4pm ET they vote, I believe the President will also remain.
@Deplorable Me, #259:
And do you recall how it was pointed out that you don’t have a clue how many times it has been used, since the statute also provides that such reviews-on-demand are to be conducted only in closed executive sessions, unless written authorization is obtained from the person under review?
For all you know, the tax records of every high-level public official who has been in a position to abuse his or her powers of office for personal financial gain have been routinely examined for decades.
For all you know, the tax records of every high-level public official and person with access to the most sensitive classified information who could be vulnerable to financial compromise by a hostile foreign government have been routinely examined.
Indeed, it would be completely crazy if a watchful eye were not being quietly and routinely kept on all such potential national security vulnerabilities. A person would have to be naive in the extreme not to understand that foreign intelligence agencies are constantly seeking such vulnerabilities to exploit. In many cases, adversarial foreign powers actively seek to create such vulnerabilities where they do not already exist, by luring targets into such compromised financial or personal relationships. This is so routine a part of Russian government culture that there’s a well-known word for it: kompromat. Anyone who doesn’t know what it means should take a moment to look it up.
@Greg: Do you fully understand what you just wrote? You just approved the surveillance described in “1984”. You want a police state where everyone is guilty and must prove their innocence. You really are a communist! In your world, there is no Constitution. You just described Cuba, Russia, China, and many of the failed countries.
@Randy, #268:
Yes, I DO fully understand what I just wrote. Apparently you do not.
The statute in question strikes a necessary balance between the fundamental rights of every individual to privacy (which, by the way, your lot argue doesn’t exist in the Constitution the moment the matter of reproductive choice and personal privacy come up) and the need to protect our collective national security from compromise by foreign adversaries.
That such reviews on demand are restricted by law to closed executive sessions is the feature that strikes that balance. Without the power to look for the sake of common-sense vigilance, the government that’s there to protect our individual and collective freedoms and security would be forced to do so blindfolded.
I expect the Supreme Court to uphold the oversight power of Congress in this particular instance. The danger of not doing so is too obvious for the court to ignore.
@Greg: Have you forgotten that there needs to be a just cause? A policeman can not get a search warrant unless there is just cause, neither can the HOR.
@Randy, #270:
This isn’t about policemen. It’s a congressional oversight power, put in place nearly 100 years ago following a serious financial scandal involving the abuse of powers of public office. It’s a practical application of the checks and balances principle. That’s the just cause behind the law’s existence.
By intention, there is no requirement in the law for the designated congressional committees to provide any reason for their request. To allow the IRS to refuse the request at the order of the public official whose returns are to be examined would nullify the oversight power, making the law entirely pointless.
@Greg: Quit while you’re behind. Watching the SOTU, it’s clear Trump has completely restored America after that “fundamental transformation” Obama promised.
I’d be pissed like you, if I were a Leftist like you. You guys f*cking suck right now.
Maybe they need you to do some real work rather than try to salvage the complete failure that is the policies they are still paying you to propagandize?
Get a life.
Is it just me, or did those Dem “white shirts” at the SOTU address remind you of the KKK?
Going back to the roots, I see. If you can’t kill minorities, keep them permanently locked in poverty while they give you votes.
That’s finally over, thank God.
@Greg: Congress oversight does not exceed the rights of an individual. That is law. Congress needs to have a just cause to require the release of personal documents.
@Nathan Blue: If I had been Trump, I would my first statements would have been, “Did I just go to Heaven. With all of these people in white clothing, I was not sure!”
@Nathan Blue, #272:
Let the record show that you banged your sippy cup against your playpen bars.
Trump has added $3 trillion to the national debt in 3 years. It’s projected he will have added $5.088 trillion by the end of his first term. He’s on track to add more debt than Obama did, and he doesn’t even have a disastrous recession to blame it on.
@Greg: greggie, you really do need to seek professional help!
@Greg:
Wow. THAT’S your support for illegally violating someone’s privacy? It MIGHT have happened in secret? Golly, that’s a really good try, but not quite convincing. No, how about YOU provide an example where someone in Congress (other than the current gang of socialists living their police state fantasy) had the GUTS to demand someone’s…. ANYONE’S private income tax returns just because they want to see them. Go ahead… I’ll be waiting and watching.
@Randy: Greg and his fellow whiny crybabies are yearning for the moment they can condemn Trump and execute him with an anti-aircraft gun. Just like in N. Korea, these leftists desire a surveillance state where everyone watches everyone and reports those who don’t abide by the party line and they think they have supreme power to dig into the lives of anyone they think are a threat to their ideology and to be able to hide whatever they choose to do.
@Deplorable Me, #278:
No. That’s my observation that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Any such reviews would have been conducted only in closed executive committee sessions and would ALWAYS have happened in secret. That’s what the statute requires, for the sake of privacy. Consequently, your claim that the statute has never before been used is nothing more than a claim. I see more compelling reasons to think that it has been used frequently than to think that it hasn’t been used at all—one being that there’s so obvious and continuous a threat that it guards against. If money isn’t the root of all evil, it’s at least the motivation for much of it.
The reasons for my support of the statute were clearly stated.
—————
It turns out that the Republican Party still has at least one Senator who is a man of conscience and integrity.
Mitt Romney just announced he will vote to convict on Article 1. I applaud him. That cannot have been easy for him, and clearly wasn’t motivated by his own self interests.
@Greg:Play pens like yours are not even made anymore, no more bars. I know that you have your head stuck in the bars of yours .
Nice job dragging the subject away from Schiffs possibly criminal acts.
@Greg: Oh. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Well, it is not I that is making an argument that something has been done because it was probably done in secret and nobody knows about it. In fact, had it been used successfully, secret or otherwise, would have been a good point for these crybabies to mention before the judges told them to get their stupid assess with their stupid violations of the 4th Amendment out of their courts.
Romney is a butthurt, gutless idiot. His loss in 2012 must have damaged his mind.
Here’s what’s wrong with his reasoning for his vote. One, he laid out the seemingly wrong and corrupt actions of Joe and Hunter Biden, but that, apparently, no crimes were committed. Well, without an investigation, how do we know? There is EVIDENCE of crimes, so why is an investigation not proper? It is simply coincidental that Biden is a Presidential candidate; he was Vice President and what he did was VERY corrupt. Two, though Trump wanted corruption investigated, which would include the participation of the Biden’s, and Trump wanted a public announcement of investigation of corruption, no such public announcement. In fact, (three) Zelensky never knew the aid was delayed, so there was no “quid pro quo” and, thus, no crime committed by Trump. And, finally, Trump released the aid. He released the aid after the Ukrainian parliamentary elections and the indication that Zelensky has control of the government and the investigations Biden killed would move forward; indeed, indictments have already been handed down.
So, Mitt’s “moral” decision is based on severely flawed assumptions. There was, in fact, NO crime committed; it’s not that Trump is innocent… there WAS NO CRIME COMMITTED.
@Deplorable Me: Mittens should know exactly how corrupt Burisma is Mitt Romney’s national security adviser in his 2012 campaign — a career CIA spook who rose to its top levels — sits on the board of directors of Burisma, Copher Black.
Trump Acquitted, on both counts…FOREVER!!!!
I wish McConnell had a copy of the articles to tear up.
@Nathan Blue: I expect that the left is already trying to get the President for Jay Walking back in 1956
@Randy:
It was 1955 and they have witnesses, but don’t want to subpoena them until after the trial begins.
@Redteam: Was Berni or Joe the witness?
@Randy: At what point can they actually be held accountable, instead of allowing them to have a sub-government inside of our own in which they can do whatever they want?
The Dems are still staging a soft, slow coup.
@Greg:
No, it’s you who doesn’t know, not us. The IRS Commissioner stated such demands for individual Government official’s tax returns were unprecedented and disturbing, The law requires the permission of the taxpayer to allow anyone but authorized IRS employees to examine tax returns. Yes, that particular section of the Act allows the specified committees to examine non-anonymized tax returns, but it doesn’t imply the power to do so for non-legislative purposes, which is what YOU are claiming they can do. They can’t. It implies that individual tax payers will be notified of such requests, and the opportunity to give or deny permission, which also implies the right to go to court to block even an executive session exposure. Congress has no investigative role over an individual’s privacy rights. That is an executive branch DOJ/IRS role.
@Greg:
Excuse me, Greg, but where in that law is it cited is the phrase “public official” cited? Oh, it isn’t.
You are assuming the law targets an oversight function when absolutely nothing cited in that section of the act refers about Congressional oversight! you cannot read into a statute that which is not there just because you wish it to be there. It just isn’t there.
I suggest you learn how to read law before you try to lecture others on what the law says and means. You aren’t very good at either.
@Swordmaker, #290:
That is correct. “Public official” isn’t stated, because the law applies equally to every taxpayer, including the President and other public officials. The law, however, was created in the wake of the Teapot Dome Scandal, out of serious concern about the hidden financial dealings of corrupt, high-level public officials. It didn’t come into being because Congress was taking some particular interest in what shopkeepers or factory workers might be doing in the shadows. It’s purpose is to allow Congress to keep a watchful eye on public officials—members of Congress included.
In my opinion, anyone who believes a certain percentage of human beings wouldn’t secretly misuse their powers of a public office to enrich themselves if they believe no one is watching is very naive. There’s an obvious need for Congress to be able to quietly check without having to establish probable cause. It’s the best deterrent.
That’s another of retire05’s lines.
@Swordmaker, #289:
Which Commissioner was that? Trump quickly replaced his first appointee with a second after the House Committee on Ways and Means sued Mnuchin and Commissioner Rettig for failure to comply with the law requiring that his tax returns be provided. The strategy may be to stay one commissioner ahead of the posse.
@Swordmaker: If you keep beating Greg about the head and shoulders with immutable facts, he will devolve into his childish “Trump is evil, Trump is a conman, Trump is Satan, Trump lies” crybaby diatribes. Just don’t be shocked when it happens.
@Greg:
And yet you claim a request from Congress is all that is required, but Congress has found already slapped down by courts when it went directly to the IRS for President Trump’s and his family members’ private tax records from before he ever thought of running for president, so they used an end run by using New York State prosecutors to go after his bank and accountant’s copies of those same records on the flimsy charges based on exploring the Stormy Daniels payments and looking for foreign payments there’s no other evidence for. The courts originally quashed the House subpoenas because they could not show they had any serious legislative purpose in seeking just President Trump and his family members’, and especially the ten years prior to his seeking office, tax returns! It was obvious, on its face, a political fishing expedition. So the Democrats looked elsewhere.
A pet Liberal judge allowed it until the SCOTUS voluntarily stepped in and agreed to hear arguments, putting an unusual halt to the normal progress of the case, expediting and elevating the case rapidly.
I doubt it’s going to come down the way you think. SCOTUS frowns on prosecutorial fishing expeditions of this type. There is no way that the documents requested would shed any light at all on the pretextual basis of their cases. There is nothing in an income tax return that would show information on the personal expenditures such as the $160,000 paid to Stormy Daniels. Nor would there be anything showing at all about “foreign” income to Donald Trump’s myriad businesses that would not have already been red flagged by IRS were there anything amiss, or out of the ordinary.
Similarly, the absurd notion that Trump would have somehow manipulated his assets’ valuations “when it suited him for property tax purposes” is, again something that will not appear on an income tax return. Real estate and property taxes are generally not filed with the Federal tax returns, but are filed with county, city, and state government taxing authorities. . . all facts which make the prosecution’s pretext even weaker. It’s another Democrat fishing expedition, looking for something they can use to politicize to damage the President in the 2020 campaign or to Form a new impeachment on.
@Swordmaker: Let poor ignorant greggie have his dreams!
@Swordmaker, #294:
One matter of congressional interest might be the possibility of Money from Russia, by way of improbable Deutsche Bank loans. New York prosecutors might be more interested in tax evasion and loan fraud.
(Time for a musical interlude and my exit, waving my hat and cane as I go. )
@Swordmaker: Plus, Democrats are attempting to prove to opponents that they have the power to delve into their most personal and no matter how irrelevant information which can be selectively leaked and harm them and their families should they choose to oppose their agenda. Literally, their message is if they can do this to Trump, they can do it to anyone. Of course, you don’t see any interest in Biden’s, Pelosi’s, Schiff’s, Water’s or Schumer’s income “just to make sure everything is on the up and up”. This is a tool Democrats intend to aim solely at opponents and Republicans, thank God, simply don’t play that way.
They will do whatever they can get away with. People like Greg simply didn’t think we’d notice.
@Greg:
In case you did not notice, the only members of the committees who Were listening to the depositions of all eighteen pre-screened witnesses against President Trump in Adam Schiff’s SCIF Sealed Bunker Hearsaying Room, who spoke not a single word of what was spoken by those witnesses, who didn’t run to a microphone in front of the slavering press reporters agog to hear the latest titillating tidbits of leaked gossip, eagerly spilled to them by every Democrat member, especially Adam Schiff, were every single Republican Congress Member whom to this day has not said a word of what Michael Atkinson testified. . . although they are still demanding the transcript of his testimony be released by schiff!.
What is my point? That closed executive sessions where such Identified Tax Returns would have juicy data leaked to the press as soon as a Democrat member could find a microphone. Guaranteed!
We already suspect that if top secret plans to capture or kill a terrorist leader are relayed to Democrat leaders in Congress, that terrorist leader will suddenly change his plans and mysteriously isn’t there when our forces arrive. . . Obvious to us because too many people “who need to know” get told. . . which is why we now don’t tell Congress Democrats in advance of such important moves. And they get miffed.
@Randy:
Obviously, it was Greg!
@Swordmaker: Keeping classified information classified used to be an important responsibility of Congress. Democrats now will leak ANYTHING, no matter who gets hurt or killed, simply to try and embarrass Trump. No, they should not have anyone’s tax returns even if they could somehow prove they needed them.
Democrats have made themselves into a serious security threat.