What can be done to hold Adam Schiff accountable?
Congressman Lee Zeldin discusses if anything can be done to punish Adam Schiff for his actions during the Russia investigation and impeachment
MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell spoke with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff on Wednesday, hours after the Wall Street Journal published a scathing editorial calling him a liar, but the liberal host allowed Schiff to largely avoid a vague question about the damning piece.
“Americans expect that politicians will lie, but sometimes the examples are so brazen that they deserve special notice. Newly released Congressional testimony shows that Adam Schiff spread falsehoods shamelessly about Russia and Donald Trump for three years even as his own committee gathered contrary evidence,” the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board wrote to begin the scathing editorial.
Mitchell asked Schiff about a variety of topics before getting around to the Journal editorial, including the Democratic congressman’s thoughts on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort being released from prison because of coronavirus concerns while Michael Cohen remains behind bars. The veteran MSNBC host asked about the WSJ editorial nearly seven minutes into the interview, mentioning it during a long-winded question.
MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell let Adam Schiff dodge a question about the Wall Street Journal's Editorial Board calling him a liar.
“I also want to ask you about President Obama, and now in a separate instance… the acting DNI Rick Grenell, going after Democrats, going after the Obama administration, resurrecting the whole unmasking issue, the president accusing former President Obama of the greatest crime ever. What’s going on here? There is also a Wall Street Journal editorial against you, as well, against the ‘Adam Schiff transcripts’ as they put it,” Mitchell said.
“Well, what’s going on is," Schiff said, “this is the president’s effort to distract from the fact that, under his watch, we’ve now lost 80,000 American lives and our economy is in the worst shape it’s been in since the Great Depression. This is what this is about, they want to distract attention, they want to create some kind of counter-narrative that it was actually Obama committing crimes, not Donald Trump.
"It was all the Obama administration," Schiff continued, "it was Adam Schiff. Don’t pay attention to Americans dying right now. Don’t pay attention to Americans employed right now, but instead let’s focus on this counter-narrative.”
Schiff never directly addressed the Wall Street Journal editorial, instead saying, “American people see through this.”
Mitchell did not offer any follow-up questions and wrapped up the interview.
Last week, the House Intelligence Committee released 57 transcripts of interviews it conducted in its investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. The probe found no evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin and the Journal wrote that Schiff “knew all along that there was no proof” of collusion.
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“Most of the transcripts were ready for release long ago, but Mr. Schiff oddly refused to release them after he became chairman in 2019. He only released them last week when the White House threatened to do it first,” the editorial board wrote. “Now we know why. From the earliest days of the collusion narrative, Mr. Schiff insisted that he had evidence proving the plot.”
The scathing editorial ended, “As for Mr. Schiff, no one should ever believe another word he says.”
Fox News’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
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