Yesterday, we reported on a Tuesday Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and FBI Director Kash Patel came to verbal blows.
Unlike during his confirmation hearing months ago, Patel did not hold back and finally threw all the dirt he had on Schiff right back in his face while the lawmaker was grandstanding.
Now, Schiff is trying to save face, blasting Patel in the media, but he is only proving to us all that he is neck-deep in the swamp, and for Schiff, that is a pretty damning place to be.
To understand the beef between Schiff and Patel, we have to go back to the FISA memo that was initially issued by then-Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), calling out all of the problems stemming from the Russian collusion investigation.
Schiff issued a response memo, claiming that Nunes was lying on every point made in his memo, but it was Schiff who was subsequently proven wrong.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the matter showed that the seven points made in Schiff’s memo were all lies. Yet, nothing ever happened to Schiff, and the lawmaker even made many of the same claims during Donald Trump’s first impeachment hearing.
For instance, the summary of the IG report stated, “We found that the FBI did not have information corroborating the specific allegations against Carter Page in Steele’s reporting when it relied upon his reports in the first FISA application or subsequent renewal applications.” Schiff had claimed the DOJ “made only narrow use of information from Steele’s sources about Page’s specific activities in 2016.” He had also claimed the DOJ provided additional intelligence, and that the FISA warrant enabled the FBI to collect “valuable intelligence,” all of which was false.
When Patel was before the committee during the confirmation process, I was expecting fireworks when Schiff got his time on the microphone, but Patel sat on his hands, playing it safe.
That was not the case when Schiff went after Patel during this week's go-around on the Epstein files.
After taking a barrage of hits, Patel let loose, stating, “We have countlessly proven you to be a liar in Russiagate, in Jan. 6. You are the biggest fraud to ever sit in the United States Senate, you are a disgrace to this institution and an utter coward.”
He continued to talk over Schiff to make his point, adding, “I’m not surprised that you continue to lie from your perch and put on a show so you can go raise money for your charade. You are a political buffoon at best.”
Schiff was railing in his safe space on MSNBC in the wake of the exchange, hitting out at Patel’s qualifications for his job, stating, “One is not only is Patel incompetent, but he is firing all the competent people. A lot of the questioning today, including my own, was focused on his firing senior leaders at the FBI for no other reason than the fact they were assigned cases investigating Donald Trump. Now, he, I think, lied about that clearly today.”
The senator kept ranting, “He’s being sued by three senior FBI agents who will take him to court and depose him. I think that will reveal those lies. But he’s firing the experienced people. And more than that, he’s taking agents off of these important investigations like sex trafficking, like counterterrorism, like malicious foreign interference. And what is he doing with them? He’s putting them on immigration raids.”
Schiff then added, “So it’s the diversion of resources, the incompetence at the very top, and the getting rid of people who are the true professionals. I have to imagine morale at the bureau is just at a all-time low, because how can you respect someone like Patel? My concluding comments to him after our back and forth is you can take an internet troll and make him FBI director, but he’s still not going to be anything more than an internet troll and that just makes us a lot less safe.”
Here is the thing… We know there were rogue actors in the FBI, and now they are gone. The FBI has been doing an amazing job of working with local authorities in various states to reduce crime, and the agency has had some major sting operations to remove the criminal element, including rapists, human traffickers, pedophiles, gang members, and drug traffickers from our streets. So, sorry, Adam, but I think you are the one who is a danger to this country, not Mr. Patel.
