If you have been watching, reading or listening to the mainstream media coverage of American politics for the past few years, California Congressman Adam Schiff, current chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has been a regularly featured “authority” on all things important to the “we-hate-President Trump-but-we’re-not-biased media.”

Lest we forget the history here, Rep. Schiff has for several years been touting his assertions that he has seen, or possesses, evidence that President Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. Don’t hold your breath; he has never produced a molecule of it because it never existed. Notwithstanding the egregious waste of taxpayer funding on the two-plus years to produce the report of Special Counsel Robert J. Mueller and his prosecutorial team, having found no evidence at all that Schiff’s claims were true, the media acolytes have nonetheless continued to spin the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s role in this corruption of the American justice system.

Now the nation has been given the so-called “Horowitz Report” from the Office of the Inspector General, Department of Justice. This report of 480 pages outlines the investigation into the origins of the FBI’s operation called “Crossfire Hurricane,” the four consecutive secret warrants (FISA applications) used to spy on peripheral members of the Trump campaign, and what the basis was for this supposed counter-intelligence operation.

Unsurprisingly, mainstream media — now caught red-handed by the facts outlined in the report — are again trying to spin this as a vindication of the FBI under James Comey. Nothing could be further from the truth, and if they still want to assert that canard perhaps they can explain why the same inspector general referred Mr. Comey to the DOJ for criminal prosecution for leaking classified material to the media. Far from being any sort of vindication, even at best this report is an utter condemnation of senior FBI/DOJ leadership.

Mr. Horowitz has made it very clear his report exonerates no one. In fact, he makes it clear that his purview did not include the power to subpoena people, or investigate areas outside of the specifics of Crossfire Hurricane or the FISA warrants. That vast area of deep-state corruption is currently being examined by a federal prosecutor, John Durham, appointed by Attorney General William Barr. Mr. Durham’s report may be arriving after the new year, but what is publicly known of who he has interviewed, both in America and Europe, all participants in the Russia-collusion hoax and the continuation through today, ought to have the media acolytes taking Prozac to calm their anxiety.

To really appreciate the depth of FBI malfeasance and corruption one has only to read the executive summary of the Horowitz Report — it is horrifying if you believed the stories in the news for the past few years, because the narrative the media put out is virtually a total lie to cover this up. So where are the examples of media malfeasance and Rep. Schiff’s disingenuous rhetoric? Here are a few notable tidbits from his memo disputing the veracity of the memo issued by prior chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, which outlined the then-known high-level FBI malfeasance.

Schiff claimed that FBI and DOJ officials did not omit material information from the FISA warrant(s).  Wrong. Not only did the FBI omit things, they doctored evidence directly to reverse the meaning of information pertaining to Carter Page.

The DOJ “made only narrow use of information from Steele’s sources about Page’s specific activities in 2016.” In subsequent FISA renewals, the DOJ provided additional information that corroborated Steele’s reporting. The Page FISA warrant allowed the FBI to collect “valuable intelligence.”

“Far from ‘omitting’ material facts about Steele, as the Majority (Devin Nunes) claims, the DOJ repeatedly informed the Court about Steele’s background, credibility, and potential bias,” according to the memo.  That the FBI conducted a “rigorous process” to vet Steele’s allegations, and the Page FISA application explained the FBI’s reasonable basis for finding Steele credible. Asserting that Steele’s prior reporting was used in “criminal proceedings.”  Every one of these claims by Rep. Adam Schiff was determined by the Horowitz report to be false. As a consequence the report verified as accurate the assertions made by Rep. Nunes in his memo on this subject.

The media echo-chamber went to great lengths to repeat this drumbeat of dishonesty. In 2018, the Washington Post’s  intelligence and national security maven, Shane Harris, berated Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal for her analysis of the use of the Steele dossier as the FBI’s  justification for domestic spying. “I’m telling you the dossier was not used as the basis for a FISA warrant on Carter Page,” Harris wrote. This has now been proven absolutely false.

Always willing to go further over the edge beyond truth, CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz stated, “Now Republicans were trying to claim that the dossier was key to getting the FISA, the surveillance warrant for Carter Page. But the Democrat’s memo clearly shows it wasn’t key.” Again, Horowitz shows this to be false. We can guess who was feeding talking points to the media on all this, and it certainly has the stylistic ring of one Rep. Adam Schiff.

Honorable mention to Schiff for shredding the Fourth Amendment and violating multiple individual’s civil rights by accessing and publishing their phone records data. Recall when the media went ballistic when the Bush administration was found to be collecting metadata on calls to try and track terrorists? Schiff targets journalists and congressmen — including ranking member Devin Nunes — to expose their supposed phone call logs in his latest report, and the media acolytes are humming “Silent Night.”

The new year will bring us the long-awaited report from the special prosecutor, John Durham, who has been investigating the origins of, and activities peripheral to, the Russia-collusion hoax which spawned the expansive deep-state sabotaging of the Trump administration.  If there is any justice, along with it will come a list of grand jury indictments. I am hopeful Mr. Schiff will be among them.

Another View is a weekly column written collaboratively by Dale Landrith of Camden, Ken Frederic of Bristol, Paul Ackerman of Martinsville, Jan Dolcater of Rockport and Ralph “Doc” Wallace of Rockport.

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