Rep. Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff Suspected of Ethics Violations Especially Leaking Classified Intel
Conservatives have seized on the exchange between FBI lawyer Lisa Page and FBI agent Peter Strzok, which was sent after the 2016 presidential election, as potential evidence of an anti-Trump bias at the FBI. Strzok was a member of the FBI team investigating Hillary Clinton’s email server and, later, a member of Robert Mueller’s special counsel operation looking into Russia’s attempted interference in the 2016 election.
The top man on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee after the Democrats took over the majority of seats in the House in 2018, is still under suspicion for a number of violations during the election cycle and the transition.
A successful conservative watchdog group is on record as filing a complaint urging the do-nothing Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) for multiple ethics violations including leaking classified intelligence and information.
According to a number of law enforcement and intelligence officers who spoke with Conservative Base’s editor, “Shifty Schiff” would routinely appear on TV and radio talk shows and proceeded to tell the hosts and their audiences that he was privy to an enormous amount of evidence that President Donald Trump is a puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But not once did he reveal any such evidence and in fact Schiff did reveal classified information about the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the secret hearings of the federal grand jury set up to indict Trump and his associates.
According to a letter written to the chairman of the House Office of Congressional Ethics, Doc Hastings, Judicial Watch is requesting that Schiff, in addition to Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), be investigated for “disclosing classified information to the public in violation of House ethics rules.”
The letter comes after House Intelligence Committee member Rep. David Nunes (R-Calif.) came under fire from Schiff and other Democrats for similar concerns regarding the committee’s investigation into alleged connections between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia.
Nunes recused himself from the investigation as a result of those concerns.
“At least two leading Democrats, Reps. Schiff and Speier, on the House Intelligence Committee seem to have improperly disclosed classified information,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said in a statement.
Citing the ethics complaints filed against House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) charging that he “may have made unauthorized disclosures of classified information, in violation of House Rules, regulations, or other standards of conduct,” Judicial Watch wrote:
If the standard for filing a complaint or opening an ethics investigation is that a member has commented publicly on matters that touch on classified information, but the member does not reveal the source of his or her information, then the complaints against Chairman Nunes are incomplete insofar as they target only Nunes. At least two other members of the House Intelligence Committee have made comments about classified material that raise more directly the very same concerns raised against Chairman Nunes because they appear to confirm classified information contained in leaked intelligence community intercepts.
On March 21, 2017, the Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff spoke to an audience at the Brookings Institution in which he commented on an intelligence community intercept of a December 29, 2016 conversation between Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislayak and retired U.S. Army General Michael Flynn, who had been selected by then-President Elect Donald Trump to serve as National Security Advisor.
Both the fact of the conversation and the conversation’s contents were leaked to the news media and reported widely. In his Brookings Institution speech, Rep. Schiff stated:
“And then you have leaks that expose malfeasance or illegality. Now, I put that kind of leak, I put the Flynn leak in that category. And what was most disturbing to me, frankly, about that was: here you had a situation where the president is informed that his national security advisor . . . has lied to the vice president, and probably others . . . about a conversation with the Russians over sanctions imposed over hacking in the election to help the president.”
Likewise, an April 3, 2017 report in the Daily Caller quotes Representative Jackie Speier as commenting publicly on both the contents of the Kislayak-Flynn conversations and Flynn’s subsequent “unmasking” as a U.S. person incidentally intercepted by the intelligence community:
“Now, if in fact, it was unmasked and if it was General Flynn you have to understand the context in which it was unmasked. We do know that Ambassador Kislayak and General Flynn were freelancing sanctions relief at the end of December, when he had no portfolio in which to make any kind of negotiations with Ambassador Kislayak.” [Emphasis added]”
Like Rep. Schiff, Rep. Speier did not disclose how she knew about the conversation between Ambassador Kislayak and General Flynn or about General Flynn’s “unmasking,” but the statement attributed to her also appears to confirm the contents of leaked, classified information.
CNN’s Jake Tapper appeared incredulous when Speier admitted that the DHS and FBI were not permitted to go through the DNC computers they claimed were hacked by the Russians. Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson testified he “was not pleased” that he was locked out of the DNC’s IT system as part of the investigation..
First of all, we knew a year ago that this took place and we knew the FBI wasn’t allowed into the DNC computers. Instead, the Democrats hired a fly-by-night, private company CrowdStrike.
Secondly, Jackie Speier lied in response and said the seriousness of the situation was not presented to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who knew about the hacking of DNC’s computer system by either China or Russia.
Sen. Patrick Leahy
The antics by Rep. Schiff are reminiscent of another fellow Democrat who had a reputation for leaking classified information to selected news reporters.
In a previous article, I provided readers with a brief history of Sen. “Leaky” Leahy’s experience in handling top security information:
Senator Patrick Leahy was annoyed with the Reagan administration’s military strategy in the 1980s. At the time he was vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Therefore, “Leaky Leahy,” threatened to sabotage classified strategies he didn’t like.
Leahy “inadvertently” disclosed a top-secret communications intercept during a 1985 television interview. The intercept had made possible the capture of the Arab terrorists who had hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered a American citizen. But Leahy’s leak cost the life of at least one Egyptian “asset” involved in the operation.
In July 1987, it was reported that Leahy leaked secret information about a 1986 covert operation planned by the Reagan administration to topple Libya’s Moammar Gaddhafi. US intelligence officials stated that Leahy sent a written threat to expose the operation directly to then-CIA Director William Casey. Weeks later, news of the secret plan turned up in the Washington Post, causing it to be aborted.
A year later, as the Senate was preparing to hold hearings on the Iran-Contra scandal, Leahy had to resign his Intelligence Committee post after he was caught leaking secret information to a reporter. The Vermont Democrat’s Iran-Contra leak was considered to be one of the most serious breaches of secrecy in the committee’s 28-year history.
Video: Conservatives have seized on the exchange between FBI lawyer Lisa Page and FBI agent Peter Strzok, which was sent after the 2016 presidential election, as potential evidence of an anti-Trump bias at the FBI. Strzok was a member of the FBI team investigating Hillary Clinton’s email server and, later, a member of Robert Mueller’s special counsel operation looking into Russia’s attempted interference in the 2016 election.
