by Joe Callen | Washington Editor
A bombshell new report is derailing the Democrats’ momentum against President Trump on Day One of the Senate impeachment trial.
The article — in the left-leaning Politico of all places — on Tuesday night alleges that House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff appears to have “mischaracterized” evidence that was used in House Democrats’ impeachment investigation.
But Republicans are ridiculing the report as an attempt to “soft-pedal” his actions, insisting that Schiff “fabricated evidence” in a naked attempt to “frame” Trump.
Either way, the shocking late-night report has thrown the Democrats’ Senate plan into complete chaos.
The stunning report focuses on a letter that Schiff sent to House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) last week that summarizes “a trove of evidence from Lev Parnas, an indicted former associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani,” Politico reported. “In one section of the letter, Schiff claims that Parnas ‘continued to try to arrange a meeting with President Zelensky,’ citing a specific text message exchange where Parnas tells Giuliani: ‘trying to get us mr Z.’ The remainder of the exchange — which was attached to Schiff’s letter — was redacted.”
Politico added, “But an unredacted version of the exchange shows that several days later, Parnas sent Giuliani a word document that appears to show notes from an interview with Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma, followed by a text message to Giuliani that states: ‘mr Z answers my brother.’ That suggests Parnas was referring to Zlochevsky not Zelensky.”
Democrat officials did not dispute the suggestion that Schiff’s claim was false.
A Republican aide told Politico that the false claim was at best the result of sloppy work, and at worst a deliberate attempt to falsify evidence to try and frame the President of the United States.
“The most charitable view of the situation is that [Schiff’s] staff committed the equivalent of Congressional malpractice by not looking more than an inch deep to determine the facts before foisting this erroneous information on his colleagues and the American public,” one senior GOP aide told Politico. “But given the selective redactions and contextual clues, it seems as though Chairman Schiff sought to deliberately portray an innocuous meeting with Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky as an insidious one with the President of Ukraine simply because both of their surnames start with the letter Z.”
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) immediately responded to Schiff’s outrageous false statement:
And she wasn’t alone:
And this wasn’t the only lies Schiff was accused of peddling in the Senate today.
Schiff, who is Democrat impeachment manager for the Senate trial, was accused by GOP National Spokesperson Elizabeth Harrington of fabricating quotes while delivering remarks today.
During the Intelligence Committee’s impeachment investigation, Schiff fabricated quotes from President Donald Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and was later forced to apologize for his dishonest characterization of Trump’s remarks.
Reps. Lee Zeldin and Jim Jordan responded at the time by writing:
President Trump nailed Schiff as a liar months ago, but Pelosi allowed him complete control over the impeachment process, that is now on the verge of complete disaster for her party’s control of the House:
