Adam Schiff sheepishly claims his blatant fabrication of Trump quotes was merely 'parody'

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Thu, 26 Sep 2019 11:40 UTC

© Joseph Maguire Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff

Moments after an anonymous whistleblower complaint against President Trump was released, acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire sat for public testimony with the House Intelligence Committee - where he was grilled by Congressional Democrats over his handling of the complaint.

Kicking off the session, Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) rattled off completely fabricated account of a July 25 call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in order to analogize the interaction to a scene from a mafia drama.

Schiff was later forced to apologize, calling it a "parody."

During his testimony, Maguire insisted he is "not partisan" and "not political," saying "I have served and led through turbulent times ... My integrity has never been questioned until now."

From Fox News:

The rare open hearing of the intelligence committee commanded Washington's political attention Thursday given the implications for the newly launched impeachment inquiry against Trump, related to the whistleblower complaint.

But at one point in the hearing, during a tense exchange with Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., about allegations in the complaint of a potential "cover-up" regarding the Ukraine call, Maguire pushed back by reminding the committee that the complaint was not based on direct knowledge.

"This is second-hand information from a whistleblower. I have no knowledge if that is a true and accurate statement," Maguire said regarding the "cover-up" claim. The complaint said White House officials tried to "lock down" records of the call. In the same document, the whistleblower also acknowledged not being a "direct witness" to most of the events described, instead citing other U.S. officials who are not named.

Last year, Biden openly bragged about threatening to hurl Ukraine into bankruptcy as Vice President if they didn't fire their top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin - who was leading a wide-ranging corruption investigation into a natural gas firm whose board Hunter Biden sat on, collecting $50,000 per month. From The Hill:

In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn't immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

"I said, 'You're not getting the billion.' I'm going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: 'I'm leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money,'" bragged Biden, recalling the conversation with Poroshenko.

"Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time," Biden said at the Council on Foreign Relations event - while insisting that former president Obama was complicit in the threat.

Comment: From RT, 26/9/2019: Schiff's 're-telling' of Trump phone call with Ukraine head gets mocked as 'unhinged Orange-Man-Bad fan fiction'

With impeachment efforts against President Donald Trump resting on the content of a single phone call, who could blame Congressman Adam Schiff for embellishing the truth a little, all to sell his "Orange Man Bad" narrative.

His thunder stolen by the release of the transcript - Schiff added some dramatic flourishes to his summary of the call as Maguire's hearing opened, describing "the essence of what the president communicates."

"We've been very good to your country. Very good. No other country has done as much as we have. But you know what? I don't see much reciprocity here. I hear what you want. I have a favor I want from you, though. And I'm gonna say this only seven times, so you better listen good."

"I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand, lots of it. On this and on that. I'm going to put you in touch with people...and by the way don't call me again. I'll call you when you've done what I asked."

Sounds dramatic, but the only problem? Trump didn't say any of this. Not a word. Schiff was mocked by Republican lawmakers and pundits for being so "desperate" that he resorted to rewriting the call into "unhinged 'Orange Man Bad' fan fiction."

"It's a shame that we started off this hearing with fictional remarks," Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) said. "Unfortunately today, many innocent Americans are going to turn on their TV and the media is only going to show that section of what the chairman had to say."

From his wooden delivery to his poor imitation of Trump, Schiff will unlikely be leaving Washington DC for Hollywood any time soon. However, the California Democrat is well versed in grandiose storytelling. Schiff branded the idea of probing Joe Biden's son Hunter over his role at a Ukrainian gas holding as "making up dirt."

The actual Trump quote on Biden in the conversation with Zelensky goes as follows:

"The other thing, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution [of the Burisma Holding where Hunter Biden was on board of directors] and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general [William Barr] would be great."

Doubling down, Schiff has this response to his actions: