Adam Schiff casts doubt on new report about Donald Trump Jr’s phone calls
Earlier this evening, CNN and ABC News reported that someone had given the Senate Intel Committee evidence which showed that Donald Trump Jr actually called two random business associates, and not his father, just before the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians. Palmer Report laid out several reasons why we were skeptical of this report. Now Adam Schiff, the new Chairman of the House Intel Committee, is casting doubt on it as well.
One of Palmer Report’s key concerns was that the phone records were supposedly only given to the Republican-controlled Senate Intel Committee, and apparently not to the Democratic-controlled House Intel Committee. If the evidence were legitimate, it would have made sense to give it to both committees. Adam Schiff appeared on the Rachel Maddow show on MSBC on Thursday evening, roughly four hours after the initial CNN report.
Schiff said that he has no idea whom the phone calls were with, and he intends to investigate it. In other words, he didn’t seem to have any interest in subscribing to the notion that his Republican counterparts in the Senate had just been magically handed the answer. He also stressed that the Trump-friendly Republicans who controlled his committee for the past two years went out of their way to prevent Donald Trump Jr’s pre-meeting phone calls from being investigated.
You don’t go to this extent to cover something up if there’s nothing to cover up. If Donald Trump Jr’s phone calls were harmless and exonerated his father, he would have put them out there a year and a half ago. Instead he and his family’s allies in Congress bent over backward to try to keep his phone records secret. Now someone has supposedly given Junior’s phone records to the Republican-controlled Senate Intel Committee but not the Democratic-controlled House Intel Committee. Something doesn’t add up here.
