California Democrat Senator-elect Adam Schiff is doubling down on his false, unfounded claims of Trump-Russian collusion years later.
In an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” host Jake Tapper questioned Schiff regarding President-elect Donald Trump’s recent cabinet picks, which included Florida Representative Matt Gaetz and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“You were censured in the House last year for, in their view, holding positions of power during the Trump presidency as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and, according to them, ‘abusing this trust by saying there was evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia,’” Tapper said.
“And I wonder if you are feeling at all, introspective at all, about that was, according to the Mueller report and according to your Republican colleagues, an overstatement? And I wonder if you think, in any way, you helped set the table for these disruptors?” Tapper asked.
“First of all, it wasn’t an overstatement,” Schiff answered. “There is evidence of collusion. The Trump campaign manager was meeting with Russian intelligence and giving them internal polling data, just to give you one example. And the Mueller report sets all this out.”
“It does say, ‘The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,’ which doesn’t mean that he didn’t, that there weren’t meetings, but they didn’t find evidence of it,” Tapper followed up.
Schiff said, “Mueller says that, too. He says, ‘The fact that we didn’t find proof beyond a reasonable doubt doesn’t mean there wasn’t evidence of conspiracy or coordination.’”
The House of Representatives censured Schiff in 2023 in a party-line vote for his repeated allegations that Trump’s 2016 campaign conspired with Russia to gain the presidency. Earlier that year, he was also dismissed from the House Intelligence Committee.
His allegations were based on the notorious Steele dossier, which said that the Kremlin possessed blackmail information against Trump and that Trump’s team had conspired with Russia.
In his report, Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded in 2019 that there was no proof of Trump’s collusion with Russia.
In 2021, Special Counsel John Durham accused Russian analyst Ivan Danchenko, who was thought to be the main subsource for the Steele dossier, of lying to the FBI, further undermining the dossier’s credibility.
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