<p>The role of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff in these impeachment proceedings can be characterized not only by the amount of inaccurate information he disseminates, but how many times he gets caught.</p>
<p>During the investigation being conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Schiff used his participation in secret closed-door meetings to leak, hint-at and outright reveal what he claimed to have learned. In his most spectacular example, he made the rounds of the friendly news studios to claim that he had seen conclusive evidence that Trump had criminally conspired with Russian operatives during the 2016 campaign.</p>
<p>Schiff did this apparently assuming that Mueller would deliver that opinion –even though Schiff had not seen a scintilla of evidence to support his public claim. He was playing the odds – and he got burned when Mueller drew the opposite conclusion. In his report, Mueller was unequitable that no one – not Trump, not any members of his family, no campaign staffers and no America at all –had criminally colluded with any Russians.</p>
<p>In view of the two years of baseless accusations carried across the anti-Trump media as fact, Mueller’s conclusion was the big – really BIG – take away. It was also what Democrats and the media chose to ignore or refute. Schiff was the point man in that effort.</p>
<p>At the opening of the so-called impeachment inquiry, Schiff – as chairman of the committee – read into the Congressional Record a false version of the phone conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky &#8212; an alleged conversation that Schiff, himself, had fabricated.</p>
<p>We can all recall how Schiff feigned surprise when a whistleblower had contacted authorities to report his allegation against Trump with regard to that phone call. It was later discovered that the whistleblower had first contacted Schiff’s office – and it was there that the scheme was concocted to run the allegation through a secretive whistleblower process. This was a Schiff set-up by any stretch of the definition.</p>
<p>Where testimony is hearsay or when facts are inconclusive, Schiff offers up his opinions with absolute certainty &#8212; as if they were fact-based. Even as his committee was supposedly “searching” for the facts and the truth, Schiff was offering up judgmental conclusions.</p>
<p>It is one thing to be a partisan – even a strident partisan – but quite another to be an obsessed partisan. That is a level at which facts, honesty, integrity and fairness all go out the window. We have seen this in the rules for the unprecedented impeachment “inquiry” hearings by several House committees – of which Intelligence was only the most prominent. The fault for that bit of political mischief rests on the shoulders of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But, the highly biased rules of the Intelligence Committee were the work of Schiff.</p>
<p>From the selection of witnesses, holding testimony in secret and the out-of-context leaks of testimony to the mendacious interpretations offered by Schiff, the entire process was designed – not to find the facts – but to make the best possible case against Trump. If this were a judicial process, Schiff would be convincingly accused of prosecutorial misconduct.</p>
<p>The Pelosi/Schiff decision to not wait on the courts’ decision over the jurisdictional dispute between the President and the Congress &#8212; which would decide whether the most critical witnesses would have to testify or not – means that politics was driving the entire impeachment process.</p>
<p>Whether they could not wait for the truth or did not trust the truth is moot. They are moving to impeach before having completed the necessary work. In fact, Democrats had decided to impeach even before they could claim ANY evidence of wrongdoing – specious as it may be. They simply wanted the 2016 election to be undone – and a weaponized impeachment was their only opportunity.</p>
<p>The #NeverTrump Resistance Movement began the moment he was elected. It gained a foothold in Congress through the elections of a number a radical leftist – personified by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – and the pre-existing obsessed partisans already in the House – personified by Schiff.</p>
<p>While we only have had three examples of an impeachment process, the current one is by far the most partisan, the most politicized and the least justified. The fact that this nation is now in the midst of a divisive and destructive impeachment process is due to a crazed element within Congress that has gained dominance – of which Adam Schiff is one of the master manipulators, who has put partisan politics above the good of the nation. We can only hope that the hypocrisy, the dishonesty and the damage done in the House will be mitigated as the process moves on to the Senate.</p>
<p>So, there ‘tis.</p>