Rep. Adam Schiff refused to admit any remorse when grilled again about his promotion of British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s now-discredited dossier, which helped drive years of public discourse about Russia possibly having excessive influence and blackmail material to lord over the Trump administration.
Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd asked Schiff on Sunday if he has any regrets days after former State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus made headlines for confronting the House Intelligence Committee chairman on The View about him talking up the dossier over the years.
“I don’t regret saying that we should investigate claims of someone who, frankly, was a well-respected British intelligence officer,” Schiff responded during the NBC interview after being shown clips of him in the past talking up the dossier, which was full of salacious allegations of connections between former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.
“And we couldn’t have known, of course, years ago, that we would learn years later that someone who was a primary source lied to him,” the California Democrat continued. “But what I just said, in the clip you just played, ends up being exactly right, which is Steele did reveal that the Russians were trying to help elect Donald Trump. That turned out to be all too true.”
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The original dossier, a 35-page collection of reports about Trump’s ties to Russia written between June and December 2016, contained allegations of the Trump team coordinating with the Kremlin and a salacious claim that the Russians had a video of Trump with prostitutes urinating on a bed in a Moscow hotel room in 2013.
The research was compiled for Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm, and Steele was paid with money from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The reports were shared with government officials as well as media outlets, and, in January 2017, BuzzFeed published the dossier. Trump called it “bogus” while claiming the FBI was “tainted.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, released in April 2019, undercut elements of Steele’s reporting. And a report released by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz in December of that year criticized the FBI for its reliance on the dossier to obtain warrants for wiretapping onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. It revealed that the FBI interviewed Steele’s primary Moscow-based source, beginning in January 2017, who “raised significant questions about the reliability of the Steele election reporting.”
After Mueller was unable to establish criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, Trump and his allies used this to argue there was “no collusion,” but some, including Schiff, have argued there is evidence to the contrary.
For instance, he points to Konstantin Kilimnik, an associate of 2016 Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, whom the Treasury Department assessed was a Russian intelligence services agent who provided Kremlin spies with “sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy” during the 2016 presidential race.
“The Trump campaign chairman was giving internal campaign polling data to Russian intelligence while Russian intelligence was trying to help elect Donald Trump. So, the top line there of Russian help and Trump’s willingness to accept it and make use of it proved all too accurate,” Schiff said Sunday.
Schiff is facing renewed scrutiny after the third indictment in special counsel John Durham’s inquiry into the conduct and origins of the Russia investigation. Igor Danchenko, a U.S.-based, Russian-born analyst who was the main source for Steele’s anti-Trump dossier, was charged with making false statements to the FBI. He has pleaded not guilty.
Shortly before that indictment, Steele defended his dossier during an interview. “I stand by the work we did, the sources that we had, and the professionalism which we applied to it,” Steele told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos.
Although Schiff has been quick to say Steele was “well-respected” intelligence officer, the FBI dumped Steele as a confidential source in November 2016 after he admitted to the bureau he was consulted for an Oct. 31 Mother Jones article, “A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump,” but it has long been documented he remained in contact with the bureau through former DOJ official Bruce Ohr, who acted as a backchannel for the former MI6 agent.
And in response to Schiff saying there was no way to know years ago whether a top source for Steele was lying to him, Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee told Newsmax in an interview that aired Sunday evening: “The FBI had to have known this. All the Democrats had to have known this too.”
During their viral exchange last week, Ortagus told Schiff he “helped spread disinformation for years by promoting this” and noted that people had “entrusted” him as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Schiff, unrepentant, said he disagreed with her “premise,” talking about a need for investigating the allegations, such as they were, and turned the issue back to Trump’s behavior.
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There has been some shift in Schiff, however. The congressman has long been critical of Durham’s investigation, condemning the inquiry as being “tainted” by politics, but has come around to endorse its prosecutions.
“Okay, the summary was accurate, but the details were incorrect. That does undermine the credibility, does it not?” Todd said Sunday.
“Well, certainly,” Schiff replied. “You know, this Danchenko lied to Christopher Steele and then lied to the FBI. He should be prosecuted. He is being prosecuted. And I’ll tell you this, if he’s convicted, he should not be pardoned the way Donald Trump pardoned people who lied to FBI agents, like Roger Stone and Mike Flynn. So there ought to be the same standard in terms of prosecuting the liars, but I don’t think there ought to be any pardon no matter which way the lies cut.”
