According to the Western Journal opinion writer, Schiff’s most consequential performance was not his turn in the Senate impeachment trial but his earlier work “inciting and fueling the Russiagate hoax,” a role that “cast him as the initial carrier, Patient Zero, of the political epidemic now known as Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
The author argues that Schiff, “as a smugly self-righteous critic of Trump,” did more than any other elected official to “relentlessly” advance the claim that Trump had conspired with Moscow to steal the 2016 election.
On that “anti-Trump crusade,” the Western Journal piece contends, Schiff’s animus and certainty eclipsed any concern for facts, as he “pursued that fiction, whatever the damage and whatever the truth.” Almost daily, Schiff asserted that the evidence of Russian interference was “more than circumstantial,” that he had “seen the evidence,” and that Russian efforts to help Trump “had been borne out in the public record.”
Those repeated declarations, as reported by the Western Journal, “undoubtedly fueled public belief in a conspiracy that was never proven.” Ever the political performer, Schiff delivered his claims “so often and with such conviction that millions believed them, never realizing that no irrefutable evidence of collusion was ever presented to the public or to Congress.”
JAKE TAPPER HURLS MAJOR INSULT AT TRUMP—WATCH!
The op-ed maintains that because of what it calls Schiff’s “fabrications,” Trump’s first term was “undermined from the start in the fertile soil that sowed the Trump Derangement Syndrome.” The writer insists it is “beyond doubt” that Schiff “repeatedly lied — or at least grotesquely overstated — a Russian conspiracy to elect Trump in 2016,” pointing to both the 2019 Mueller probe and the 2023 Durham Report, which “reached the same exonerating conclusion that there was no direct evidence of criminality and indeed not any proof, as Schiff had asserted, that was ‘in plain sight.’”
IS RASHIDA TLAIB A DIRECT THREAT TO THE “INTEGRITY" OF THE ENTIRE U.S. GOVERNMENT?
Moreover, the Western Journal author notes that after interviewing numerous senior Obama-era Justice Department officials, the House Intelligence Committee itself “arrived at the same exculpatory conclusion.” Equally damaging, in the author’s view, was Schiff’s insistence that the infamous “Steele Dossier,” which “played an essential role in obtaining warrants to spy on Trump’s 2016 campaign,” was “all too true,” despite it “indisputably containing false and unverified oppositional research paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC.”
Even after it was “proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Trump campaign did not engage in criminal collusion with Russia,” the op-ed charges, Schiff “shamelessly refused to admit his deceit or his defeat.” Instead, according to the Western Journal, “he doubled down on his mountain of lies and prejudicial opinions,” branding Trump a “danger to the Republic” and “the worst President we have ever had,” rhetoric the writer says is “not exactly the words of a thoughtfully unbiased public servant.”
GREG GUTFELD TORCHES DEMS OVER VOTER ID HYPOCRISY AS CNN’S OWN NUMBERS BLOW UP THEIR NARRATIVE
Accordingly, after the Mueller Report “failed to establish that members of the Trump campaign criminally conspired with the Russian government during the 2016 election,” Schiff still maintained that such coordination existed. And after the Durham probe “again debunked his conspiracy claims,” the House moved to censure Schiff for misleading the public by misrepresenting his supposed “ample evidence in plain sight” of collusion, “even after investigations found otherwise.”
True to form, Schiff publicly dismissed that rebuke, describing his censure as a “badge of honor.” The Western Journal piece also highlights more recent, though “still unverified,” claims that in 2017 Schiff allegedly instructed a staffer to leak classified information about Russia and Trump to the media “aiming to smear the president,” a request the longtime Democratic staff member reportedly refused because it would be “illegal, unethical, and treasonous.”
FROZEN IN THEIR OWN HOMES: FURIOUS NEW YORKERS SAY PROGRESSIVE MAYOR HAS LEFT CITY TO FREEZE AND ROT
The op-ed underscores former Attorney General William Barr’s retrospective assessment that “Our nation was turned on its head for three years based on a completely bogus narrative.” To say that Schiff “single-mindedly led that divisive narrative resonating yet today as Trump Derangement Syndrome’s Patient Zero is an understatement,” the Western Journal writer concludes.
FLORIDA TEEN LINKED TO NEO-NAZI SATANIC CULT ACCUSED OF PLOTTING CHURCH MASSACRE
Yet the author notes that Schiff himself once articulated the standard by which his own conduct should be judged, recalling his declaration as lead impeachment manager in 2020: “If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost.” From the conservative perspective advanced in the Western Journal, that admonition now boomerangs back on Schiff, who is urged to “heed that advice and resist again losing his way as the gaslighting lawmaker staring back in the mirror.”
