by Thaddeus G. McCotter
One of the carnival barkers of the Russiagate lie and media darling, U.S. Representative Adam “Pathfinder” Schiff (D-Calif.) is the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. In a saner age, the press would have pilloried the Pathfinder and his own party would have removed him long ago for pimping the myth that a duly elected president of the United States is a wholly kept subsidiary of Putin, Inc.
But those were the days before the Russiagate lie was peddled in a Democratic funded dossier, laundered through the Obama Administration as if it were legitimate, and used by the Left and its media cohorts to attack then-candidate and now-President Trump. Now, in the event the Democrats capture the U.S. House on Tuesday, Pathfinder Schiff would become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Sure, Pathfinder Schiff will continue to ignore both the forest and the trees that stand in the way of his proving Trump guilty of something other than defeating Hillary Clinton (though this is certainly enough of a high crime and/or misdemeanor to impeach him in eyes of Democrats).
In Pathfinder Schiff, one is dealing with a person who deliberately conflates the entirety of the executive branch with the person of Trump. For example, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray are but two Trump appointees who have been held accountable by Congress (if grudgingly), as have been numerous Obama-era executive branch personnel. (Just ask Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz.) Such conflation allows Pathfinder Schiff to claim Congress has completely abdicated its oversight responsibilities. It’s nonsense, but the message resonates on cable.
Yet this is the same Pathfinder Schiff who didn’t want to know—or more likely didn’t want you to know—who funded the Steele dossier; and he obstinately continues to oppose every governmental oversight effort to investigate and all the subsequent and still mounting evidence of how the Clinton campaign and the Obama Administration colluded to weaponize the government for political purposes against Trump and others.
Undeterred that all of his past accusations of “strong and credible evidence of Russia-Gate have dead ended at FISA-Gate (Doh!), during his multitudinous media song and dances, Pathfinder Schiff has mapped out where as chair he will take the HPSCI. Unlike the Starship Enterprise, Pathfinder Schiff fully intends to boldly go where [one] man has gone before”—Robert Mueller.
Ergo, as HPSCI Chair, Pathfinder Schiff vows to forge ahead by hunting down whether or not President Trump is a laundromat for rubles; and whether or not criminals Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were complicit in bringing such nefarious activities and other crimes on behalf of Russia into the Trump campaign. Indeed, to do so Pathfinder Schiff will subpoena every relevant bank record not belonging to Fusion GPS.
True, some may argue that Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team have been assigned with investigating all possible avenues of whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to hack the 2016 presidential election and any other crimes they might come across in the course of their investigation. Russian financial leverage over (now) President Trump would surely have to be investigated by Mueller, for it is inconceivable to them that the Kremlin and candidate Trump would have not colluded to reach their common 2016 goal, namely his election as president.
Moreover, as Pathfinder Schiff himself acknowledged on CNN in the course of smearing the president as a corrupt traitor: Putin “could hold over the head” of Trump such financial dealings and “that might be influencing U.S. policy in a way that is against our national interest.” Does Pathfinder Schiff actually think that in the course of the Special Counsel’s investigation Mueller didn’t consider treason a crime to be investigated?
The question may not be rhetorical. Consider Pathfinder Schiff’s confusion regarding the special counsel and Russian money laundering allegations: “The question, though, that I don’t know whether Mueller has been able to answer—because I don’t know whether he’s been given the license to look into it—is were the Russians laundering money through the Trump Organization?”
This statement is risible coming from a former prosecutor who only has to read Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s publicly released instructions to the special counsel. Or, the Pathfinder could ask Mueller, who by all accounts would be kind enough to let him know, perhaps in a closed hearing, if he checked Trump’s financials and double checked his team’s work on the Manafort and Gates cases to see if, in fact, these criminals engaged in Russian collusion?
Perhaps Pathfinder Schiff will be too busy probing Russian pranksters or peering into a camera on MSNBC to find the time to ask. Since Pathfinder Schiff encourages and supports his fellow Democrats in launching their own Trump investigations, he’ll have to spend more time scrambling for a camera.
So, too, there’s this, which the Pathfinder tacks on as a fig leaf at the end of a lengthy, nakedly partisan op-ed: “Make no mistake, our first task will be to put forward a positive agenda for the American people—one that focuses on raising incomes and lowering health-care costs.”
That is a load of work, as this purported Democratic agenda would necessarily need to fix their failed Obamacare and make this economy even more robust than it is right now with President Trump and the Republican Congress. Perhaps that’s why the Democrats haven’t deigned to devise such an agenda, though they urge and expect you to vote for it in a few days.
In the end, by ironically averring that “our democracy is broken,” if the Pathfinder becomes the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he would be no different from any of his similarly situated Democratic peers or his party as a whole. They will do everything in their power to undo the 2016 election. Of course, they blame Trump and the Republican Congress. The Democrats must do so. Why? It was the American people who voted these Republicans into power. Progressives more accustomed to calumnies than introspection, the Democrats have tried defamation, deflection, distraction, obstruction—you name it—to deny they were rejected by you.
In yet another politically turbulent time, Shakespeare’s Cassius admitted, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.” If Adam Schiff were truly a pathfinder, he’d examine and rectify his and his party’s propagating the lie that “Trump is a traitor/treasonous;” he would explore why being the minority is the Democrats’ current political status between the two parties; and he might constructively map out a positive route for his party to regain a majority. Now that would be “to boldly go where no [insert gender pronoun preference] has gone before.”
Instead, Pathfinder Schiff will be just another Democratic congressional chairman wielding a gavel to do a hatchet job on Trump and Republicans for partisan purposes—and in this he will not be so different from the Obama Administration and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign colluding to abuse governmental powers for political ends. In these dangerous times for American security, the House Intelligence Committee will be left twisting in an idiot wind.
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The Hon. Thaddeus McCotter is the former chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee, current itinerant guitarist, American Greatness contributor, and Monday co-host of the John Batchelor Show.
Photo “Morning Fog os Los Angeles” by Rod Ramsey.
