Adam Schiff is accustomed to having things his way. But now, he’s in real trouble.
It all stems from Schiff’s use and abuse of his power as Intelligence Committee chairman to subpoena phone records. Schiff used this power to snoop on fellow Intelligence committee member Devin Nunes.
Schiff is in the middle of an impeachment movement that is seeking to unseat President Trump for allegedly using the power of government to hurt a political opponent. Despite hours of public testimony, Democrats haven’t been able to present non-hearsay evidence of this.
But there is evidence that Schiff himself is using the power of government to hurt a political opponent: Devin Nunes. And it’s much worse – spying on phone calls, rather than requesting an investigation of a corrupt company.
Now House Republicans are striking back at Schiff’s abuse of power. GOP Rep. Bradley Byrne gave a hint at their plan of attack on Friday during a radio interview.
Breitbart reports him as saying:
This is like something you would see out of some autocratic dictatorship,” Byrne said. “For Adam Schiff to use his power to get the phone records of another member, including someone like Devin Nunes, who is the ranking member on that committee just shows these Democrats don’t have any limit to what they think they should be able to do. It’s frightening. I’ve got to tell you, we were having a meeting of the House Republican Conference, and I got to tell you about it. Devin came up and explained everything from start to finish with us. And it is just frightening to think that one member of Congress, Adam Schiff — just one member — can get phone records or any other personal information of any other member of Congress. That has never happened before and should never happen again.
He continued:
We don’t know yet if it is a true violation of the rules,” he continued. “We have people in our conference I know that are taking a hard look at it. I think whether it is a violation of rules or not, he ought to be censured. I think we ought to put that out there. I know there are some Democrats who are concerned about it because they say if you guys get in control again, that gives y’all the power to do that to us. And I said, ‘Yeah, neither party should do it to the other, or any circumstance. It is going to be interesting to see how that unfolds. But, I know it is exploding in the House. It is a very big issue. And I just got to say every citizen in the United States ought to be concerned about somebody like Adam Schiff trying to go out and get their personal information just because he has a whim to do it.
Byrne is right – this is a truely concerning development. Stay tuned for the Republican response.
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