Adam Schiff intentionally concealed witness transcript evidence which may incriminate former officials in Barack Obama’s administration. He’s still doing it too. “Adam Schiff is thwarting the will of the House Intelligence Committee,” Devin Nunes asserts. “He has appointed himself arbiter of what the public should see.”
Schiff intentionally concealed damaging evidence
Nunes explained to the Washington Examiner that Schiff won’t even let the White House see it’s own paperwork. The chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence “has refused to allow the White House to review its own equities, making declassification of 10 of the transcripts impossible.” The reason why he concealed the documents is obvious. “It’s difficult to imagine any motive other than Schiff is still trying to control the narrative on Russia collusion.”
For 10 of 53 separate documents, a declassification process by the Director of National Intelligence – which was expected to only take a few weeks – never ended. Even without those records, there are 43 more transcripts that should have gone out a long, long time ago. Every one of them contains evidence likely favorable to President Trump and incriminating to Barack Obama’s former officials.
In late 2018, when Nunes was still in charge of the committee, every single member agreed to publicly release dozens of Russian interference investigation transcripts. They were interviews with seriously big name witnesses. Adam Schiff has been sitting on them ever since.
Big name witnesses with something to say
These aren’t unknown whistleblowers that Schiff concealed, These are big name witnesses with crucial things to say. Interviews with John Podesta, Andrew McCabe, Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, and Mary McCord, are all locked up tight, hidden away in Schiff’s desk.
Devin Nunes is fed up about it. They are believed to have said things that directly contradict the Russiagate narrative. According to Rep. Nunes, “HPSCI Democrats opposed every Republican document request and subpoena that helped to expose malfeasance in the FBI’s Russia collusion probe.” This only makes things worse.
Also sitting in the pile are concealed transcripts from Jared Kushner, Corey Lewandowski, James Clapper, and Donald Trump Jr. along with other heavy hitters. Most of those interviews are expected to be testimony supporting the president’s side of the story and showing that the administration did nothing wrong.
It proves they are covering up their lies. “Now, by refusing to publish the witness transcripts or the transcript of the committee’s briefing with former [intelligence community Inspector General] Michael Atkinson, the Democrats are blatantly continuing to hide documents that expose their own mistruths.” It’s not hard to figure out why. “There is no reason for keeping these documents secret except that they want to hide what’s in them.”
Declassified a long time ago
One of Schiff’s staffers threw him under the bus to the Washington times. The majority of the transcripts already went all the way through the declassification process. They were handed back to Schiff a long time ago. In September of 2019, he promised the committee it was a done deal. He fibbed.
“They have been released, yes.” Schiff lied. “They have been returned to us with either redactions or with the attestation that there is nothing classified in them. There are, I think, a couple others that they have not returned to us, but they have said are unclassified, and since we possess them, it is our intention to release those as well.” They have been concealed ever since.
Schiff was holding back the testimony Atkinson gave “about his controversial handling of the Ukraine whistleblower complaint. Especially the way it was improperly done. The official noted “it did not technically count as a deposition.” That means, “contrary to what has been said, the chairman does not have the ability unilaterally to classify or declassify [an Intelligence Committee] transcript.”
White House can’t even see it’s own paperwork
There’s no doubt that the 43 unclassified transcripts could have been public all along but the fight over the other 10 is bizarre. As part of the declassification process, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence gets to go through them to look “for mention of interactions or communications with current or former [White House] and [National Security Council] officials either during transition or after descriptions of policies or direction established within the [White House] and [NSC].”
Schiff came unglued. He concealed the records for a powerful reason. There’s no way the White House can be allowed to see those. “Under no circumstances shall ODNI, or any other element of the Intelligence Community, share any HPSCI transcripts with the White House, President Trump, or any persons associated with the White House or the President,” Schiff wrote to the ODNI. “Such transcripts remain the sole property of HPSCI, and were transmitted to ODNI for the limited purpose of enabling a classification review by IC elements and the Department of Justice.”
It’s known already that two of the ten transcripts don’t contain a single word of classified information but Schiff isn’t about to let anyone see them either.
Another senior official confirmed that Schiff has no excuse at all for his behavior. “There is no excuse for Adam Schiff personally controlling the release of information that the Intelligence Committee voted 19 months ago to release and that the intelligence community has declassified.” According to the unnamed source, “If he was interested in transparency, as he has claimed, he would make all of these transcripts public.”
