Is anyone surprised House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff changed his mind about the whistleblower testifying before Congress?
I’m not and not only due to the phone call transcript between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The whistleblower’s claim is the crux of the impeachment inquiry. But since Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi launched the inquiry, the case has slowly crumbled at their feet.
Oh, and Schiff would have to answer a lot of questions as well.
Could THIS be the main reason why Schiff wants Congress to avoid contact with the whistleblower? Report: Ukraine Whistleblower Worked With Biden When He was Vice President
On Face the Nation, anchor Margaret Brennan asked Schiff why he would even bring the whistleblower before Congress. Republicans and Democrats would like to ask the person many questions, but Brennan asked him why he should risk the person’s identity.
Schiff immediately latched onto the leading question. He agreed that both whistleblowers (I still only know of one) need protection. Brennan gave Schiff the perfect excuse:
REP. SCHIFF: Well our primary interest right now is making sure that that person is protected. Indeed, now there’s more than one whistleblower, that they are protected. And given that we already have the call record, we don’t need the whistleblower who wasn’t on the call to tell us what took place during the call. We have the best evidence of that. We do want to make sure that we identify other evidence that is pertinent to the withholding of the military support, the effort to cover this up by hiding this in a classified computer system. We want to make sure that we uncover the full details about the conditionality of either the military aid or that meeting with Ukraine’s president. It may not be necessary to take steps that might reveal the whistleblower’s identity to do that. And we’re going to make sure we protect that whistleblower.
Schiff also moved the goalposts on the inquiry because now Congress does not need that “quid pro quo” to impeach Trump. Without seeing the transcript, Democrats made up their minds that Trump threatened to withhold aid from Ukraine if Zelensky did not investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.
REP. SCHIFF: First of all, there doesn’t need to be a quid pro quo, but it is clear already I think from the text messages that this meeting that the Ukraine president sought was being conditioned on their willingness to interfere in the U.S. election to help the president. That is a terrible abuse of the president’s power. Now whether that abuse goes further that is the withholding of military aid also as leverage. There’s certainly strong indications that that is true as well. And we’re going to get to the bottom of it. But here you have a president of the United States abusing his power to the detriment of our national security and doing so to get yet another foreign country to intervene in our election it’s hard to imagine more of a corruption of his office than that.
Since the transcript did not show that, the Democrats cling to the fact that Trump casually suggested Zelensky investigate Biden’s role in the firing of former prosecutor Viktor Shoklin.
I have no idea what transcript Schiff read, but Zelensky said he already found the matter important to him. Zelensky has also stated many times the Trump did not pressure or blackmail him.
New Neo blogged that the investigation into Biden may have started before the July 25 phone call.
Again, I’m not surprised Schiff wants to avoid a Congressional hearing with the whistleblower. I doubt Schiff cares about anything other than taking down Trump so he can save his supposed concern for the whistleblower.
Now I want the whistleblower to come to Congress.
[Featured image via YouTube]
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