In one of the least surprising outcomes on Election Day this year, Democrat Adam Schiff easily defeated Republican Steve Garvey in California’s U.S. Senate election. But as Schiff prepares to take the oath of office on January 3, it will be under the cloud of yet more speculation that he used his prior position in the U.S. House to leak classified information for his own political gain.
The big news coming out of the Department of Justice this month was a report on January 6 that found that 26 FBI informants were present among the crowd during the Capitol riot. But around the same time as that report was dominating headlines, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz quietly released another report looking into the FBI’s handling of the Russia collusion hoax.
That report spanned 100 pages and was largely ignored by the media, despite containing some damning implications about who was responsible for propping up the false narrative that President Donald Trump was somehow a Russian operative – a completely debunked conspiracy theory now known as “Russiagate.”
According to the Horowitz report, a Democrat whistleblower on one of the congressional committees investigating Trump told the FBI that a number of other Democrat staffers and two members of Congress were voluntarily leaking classified information to the media. That information, which was itself manufactured to make Trump appear guilty, was dutifully reported as verified fact by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other legacy media outlets – with a trio of journalists even winning a Pulitzer Prize for their blatantly incorrect reporting.
The Horowitz report does not specifically identify who those two members of Congress were. But as Molly Hemingway noted for The Federalist, “a 2021 New York Times story already identified then-Rep. Adam Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell, both of California, as the two congressmen on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) who were under investigation.”
“Both Schiff and Swalwell were notorious for going on left-wing media outlets such as CNN and MSNBC to push the Russia conspiracy theory,” Hemingway continued. “Schiff, now California’s junior senator, lied publicly for years about the matter, falsely claiming to have secret evidence substantiating the hoax.”
The Horowitz report concludes that the whistleblower did not provide enough “direct evidence” of the two members leaking information to justify charges or further investigation. However, while that standard may not have been met by the DOJ, the American people have at least some reason to suspect that Schiff, now a United States Senator, gave classified information to members of the media in order to hurt Trump politically and advance his own political career – a scheme that, on the latter account, appears to have been wildly successful.
Schiff was far from a household name before Trump became president. He was first elected to the U.S. House in 2000 and remained relatively obscure for more than a decade. However, Schiff endeared himself to former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, saw Schiff as her political mentee.
In January 2015, Schiff’s loyalty was rewarded. That month, Pelosi helped Schiff become the Democrats’ Ranking Member on HPSCI. This committee is arguably one of the most influential and powerful in Congress. Members have direct oversight of all United States intelligence agencies, including the FBI, NSA, and CIA. As such, they have access to some of the most sensitive and classified information currently in the possession of the United States government. Being on HPSCI puts a significant amount of heft behind the statements – public or private – of anyone on the committee.
Shortly after Trump won the 2016 election, Schiff began weaponizing his position and making himself the face of the liberal “resistance” against Trump. He became a fixture on CNN and MSNBC, asserting multiple times that senior members of the Trump campaign and even Trump himself were compromised by Russia.
In a March 2017 appearance on Meet the Press, Schiff said that he had seen “evidence that is not circumstantial and very worthy of investigation” confirming the Russia collusion hoax. In another appearance on CNN, he stated: “The Russians offered help, which we know they did, the campaign accepted help, which we know they did, the Russians then delivered help, which we know they did.” Whenever he was pressed on such statements, Schiff merely said the evidence he was referring to was “classified,” so he couldn’t go into it further.
Despite repeatedly lying to the American people, Schiff was rewarded again for his loyalty to Pelosi’s anti-Trump crusade when Democrats won the House majority in 2018. Schiff became Chairman of HPSCI, and shortly thereafter, he helped launch Democrats’ first impeachment effort against Trump.
Once again, Schiff was at the center of a liberal plot to weaponize intelligence agencies against a sitting president and manipulate the media and the American people. And once again, Trump was vindicated, as the Senate trial exposed Democrats’ charges as entirely baseless, resulting in his acquittal.
But Schiff had by now learned that his true constituency was liberal media pundits and Democrat Party bosses, not the American people or even his California voters. When Democrats decided to mount a second bogus impeachment against Trump in 2020, Pelosi named Schiff as a lead impeachment manager.
After retaking the majority in 2020, House Republicans quickly removed Schiff from HPSCI and later censured him in 2023. But even these rebukes Schiff wore as a badge of honor – a testament to his loyalty to the Democrat Party establishment. That loyalty was again rewarded following the death of Dianne Feinstein when high-profile California Democrats, including Pelosi, rallied around Schiff to replace her.
In many ways, Schiff’s political ascendancy is indicative of just how obsessed the modern Democrat Party has become with rabid opposition to Trump at the expense of public trust and common decency. For the better part of the past decade, the coin of political currency on the left has been very simple: oppose Donald Trump no matter how dishonest you must be to do so, and you will be rewarded.
That strategy worked for Schiff in deep blue California. But the results elsewhere in the country this year showed that Schiff’s cynical brand of political opportunism, anti-Trump fanaticism, and lying to the public is only further driving the public away from the Democrat Party.
Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.
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