Well, this whole impeachment circus just got shadier. Piggybacking off what Katie wrote five days ago, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) knew about the whistleblower complaint a month ago and didn’t say anything. Now, The New York Times is reporting that Schiff knew there was going to be such a report from a whistleblower before this person had formally filed the complaint. The person is reportedly a CIA agent.
House Democrats decided to execute their impeachment plan, which has been in the works since 2016, over Trump’s alleged shakedown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. According to the liberal media, Trump threatened to withhold military aid unless the Ukrainians opened a corruption probe into Hunter Biden’s position on the board of an energy company, which many see as a move to sell access to his father, Joe Biden, who was vice president at the time. Zelensky never felt pressured. There was no mentioning of aid. There was no quid, so the quid pro quo is another belly flop by the anti-Trump media establishment. Still, do we have Democrat-Intelligence Community collusion here? (via NYT) [emphasis mine]:
The Democratic head of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, learned about the outlines of a C.I.A. officer’s concerns that President Trump had abused his power days before the officer filed a whistle-blower complaint, according to a spokesman and current and former American officials.
The early account by the future whistle-blower shows how determined he was to make known his allegations that Mr. Trump asked Ukraine’s government to interfere on his behalf in the 2020 election. It also explains how Mr. Schiff knew to press for the complaint when the Trump administration initially blocked lawmakers from seeing it.
Before going to Congress, the C.I.A. officer had a colleague convey his accusations to the agency’s top lawyer. Concerned about how that avenue for airing his allegations was unfolding, the officer then approached a House Intelligence Committee aide, alerting him to the accusation against Mr. Trump. In both cases, the original accusation was vague.
The House staff member, following the committee’s procedures, suggested the officer find a lawyer to advise him and file a whistle-blower complaint. The aide shared some of what the officer conveyed to Mr. Schiff. The aide did not share the whistle-blower’s identity with Mr. Schiff, an official said.
This whole fiasco is even more pathetic than the Russian collusion nonsense that was peddled for over two years. Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report was the final blow to this whole conspiracy theory: there is no evidence to suggest the Trump team and the Kremlin colluded; a point that many saw from the get-go.
And now, the complaint that set off this impeachment push that’s pretty much been exposed as a nothing burger was known to overtly anti-Trump Democrats before it was even filed. There’s a lot of shadow business being done here regarding a process that should be very public, but hey—I’m just one who thinks there’s a rule of law and doesn’t think a president should be booted because he won an election.
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