Nate Jackson: Schiff's Smoking Gun Backfires

Thousands of pages of interview transcripts reveal that Dems never had evidence of collusion.

Yesterday morning, we noted that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff was in a tough spot regarding transcripts related to the probe of supposed collusion between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia. Acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Richard Grenell wrote a letter to Schiff challenging him to release 6,000 pages of transcripts from more than 50 interviews the Intel Committee conducted in its probe. Schiff once called for releasing those transcripts, but then stonewalled actually doing so because he knew it would inevitably pull the curtain back on the Democrats’ hoax. Late yesterday, those transcripts finallydropped.

Obviously, it will take time to sift through that much material, but there are some pretty significant highlights already out there. Here are some of them:

In 2017, former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe conceded: “There is a lot of information in the Steele reporting. We have not been able to prove the accuracy of all the information.” And yet the phony Steele dossier, bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC, was relied upon not just for FBI surveillance of Trump’s campaign but for acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s “scope memo” directing Robert Mueller’s investigation nearly a year later.

In 2018, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged: “I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting [or] conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.” And yet, two years later, Clapper claimed “the Trump campaign … was essentially aiding and abetting the Russians.” What changed his mind? Probably the paycheck from CNN.

Team Obama knew it had nothing. Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch said, “I can’t say that [evidence of collusion] existed or not.” Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice admitted, “I don’t recall any intelligence or evidence to that effect.” Former Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes confessed, “I saw indications of potential coordination, but I did not see, you know, the specific evidence of the actions of the Trump campaign.” Nevertheless, Democrats have spent the last three and a half years screaming about that phantom collusion.

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