Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence, has announced that he will release the transcripts of 53 Russiagate interviews if Chairman of the House Intel Committee, Adam Schiff, continues to refuse to do so. According to Grenell, the transcripts have undergone the declassification process and are ready to be released. Schiff is the only thing holding them up.
In 2018 the House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously to release the transcripts. Grenell will release them directly from the office of the Director of National Intelligence if Schiff continues to refuse to do so. On Tuesday, a group of Republican Congressmen sent a letter to Adam Schiff imploring him to release the transcripts. Included among them are interviews with top Obama Administration officials and some Trump Administration officials, as well as the lawyers who financed the Steele Dossier.
Powerless Schiff: @RepDevinNunes says Adam Schiff has no say in stopping Acting DNI Richard Grenell from releasing 53 Russia probe transcripts because the House Intel Committee already voted to approve such action. #AmericaFirst #MAGA #Dobbs pic.twitter.com/sJtUrv88y6
— Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) May 6, 2020
Schiff running scared
A review of the documents to be released shows that many of Schiff’s public statements on the matter contradict the facts in the transcripts themselves. As such, Schiff is likely delaying their release either to save his image or avoid more severe, possibly legal, repercussions. Lives have been ruined thanks to the quixotic Russiagate debacle led by the likes of Schiff in indignation that Hillary was cheated out of her coronation. Schiff has publically quoted the now discredited Steele Dossier to no end, lending it claims credibility in the media that it did not deserve. These claims included ties between Trump associates and Russian elites that never existed.
In December, Department of Justice Special Investigator Michael Horowitz submitted his report on Russiagate that showed that the Steele Dossier was known from early on to be unreliable. Some notable ‘fake news’ knowingly repeated by Schiff is Steele’s claim that Russia offered the Trump campaign to publicize information about DNC corruption through Wikileaks. Schiff has misrepresented the facts of the Russiagate investigation in dozens of similar instances in public and before Congress.
Schiff has tried to protect himself by pursuing whether or not Grenell, a Trump ally, had any part in expediting the declassification process. Unluckily for Schiff, the process was completed before Grenell took office, leaving him no fig leaf for his continued refusal to release the transcripts. Despite Schiff’s continued claims that evidence exists of wrongdoing, no Trump associate has been changed with any conspiracy, only procedural crimes related to the investigation, which have largely also fallen apart.
Correct. Grenell noted yesterday that 43 of the 53 transcripts have been finished since June 2019–long before Ric Grenell arrived at IC. https://t.co/Fad7hiQUen https://t.co/DfpiKBYLR0
— Byron York (@ByronYork) May 7, 2020
