The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee recently announced that after two years of investigation — including interviewing more than 200 witnesses and reviewing more than 300,000 documents — they were unable to find any “direct evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.”
That matches the conclusion reached in 2018 by the then-Republican-led House Intelligence Committee, but with Democrats now in charge of the House, new House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff has stated his intention to reopen and expand the investigation into President Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.
However, before Schiff heads down that path, Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has a few rather pertinent questions for Schiff that go straight to his inherent bias and objectivity as an investigator, as he has a questionable alleged connection of his own that needs to be explained.
Adam Schiff and Glenn Simpson
Writing in a blog post to his congressional website, McCarthy noted the recent revelation that Schiff — who has long claimed to have “evidence” of Trump-Russia collusion, though he has never shown it — met with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson in July 2018 at the Aspen Security Forum.
With funding from the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, Simpson and Fusion GPS were behind the creation of the dubious anti-Trump Steele dossier in 2016 that led to federal investigations and damaging media leaks — a fact that Schiff and his fellow Democrats went to great lengths to conceal.
When Simpson was questioned by the committee, Schiff went out of his way to defer to Simpson as some sort of infallible witness. However, since that time, Simpson’s testimony and credibility have crumbled as testimony from other witnesses repeatedly contradicted his own.
Schiff also made a big deal out of then-Republican committee chair Devin Nunes having quiet meetings with the White House, which prompted Schiff to demand that Nunes recuse himself from any investigations related to Trump, citing a pro-Trump bias and lack of objectivity.
McCarthy has questions
With all of that in mind, McCarthy laid out a series of six questions for Schiff that the chairman should answer prior to going any further in his multi-lateral investigations of Trump. First, he asked how many times Schiff and Simpson met over the past three years, including the meeting at the Aspen Security Forum and also inquired about what the two men discussed during such meetings.
He also asked why Schiff had gone to such lengths to try and conceal the role of Fusion GPS in creating the anti-Trump dossier — including trying to block it in court — as well as why Schiff seemingly sought investigatory guidance from Simpson during his testimony before the committee.
McCarthy also asked why, if Schiff was so concerned about “false and misleading testimony to Congress,” he didn’t begin by questioning Simpson’s own false and misleading testimony.
Finally, McCarthy also asked why Schiff has not recused himself from the investigations, as he had demanded Nunes and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions do over their connections and lack of objectivity.
Those are all incredibly pertinent questions posed to Schiff by McCarthy, and it will be interesting to see if Schiff has any answers or will simply ignore this massive challenge to his credibility and trustworthiness.