Conspiracy theorist Rep. Adam Schiff flailed in a segment on “The View” Tuesday when guest panelist Morgan Ortagus, former State Department spokeswoman in the Trump administration, demanded he answer why he promoted the bogus and debunked Steele dossier.
“You’ve been really prolific over the past few years being the head of the [House] Intel Committee. You defended, promoted, you even read into the Congressional Record the Steele dossier,” said Ortagus. “And we know last week the main source of the dossier was indicted by the FBI for lying about most of the key claims in that dossier. Do you have any reflections on your role in promoting this to the American people?”
Instead of taking responsibility for actively encouraging the spread of purposeful misinformation designed to hurt former President Donald Trump and other Republicans, Schiff claimed that all he wanted was for all collusion claims to be investigated but his track record targeting Republicans for partisanship’s sake shows otherwise.
“But at the beginning of the Russian investigation, I said that any allegations should be investigated,” the Democrat claimed. “We couldn’t have known, for example, people were lying to Christopher Steele. So it was proper to investigate them. And let’s not forget what we learned in that investigation. We learned that the Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was giving internal polling data, campaign polling data to Russian intelligence while Russian intelligence was helping the Trump campaign.”
As Ortagus notes, Schiff read portions of the Steele dossier into the congressional record during a House Intel hearing in March 2017. He hyped the dossier until he realized it was faulty, then he switched gears to focus on other "evidence" of collusion
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) November 9, 2021
Look at what an amoral sociopath Adam Schiff is. He spent years promoting the Steele Dossier. He read it into the Congressional Record. He lied about the "smoking gun" evidence he saw (that Mueller never found). Watch how he worms his way around to avoid even an iota of mea culpa https://t.co/3C1V6dYhnc
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 9, 2021
Ortagus, fed up with Schiff’s non-answer, noted that Manafort was fired halfway through the campaign but the Democrat conspiracy theorist didn’t care. The guest panelist also noted that Schiff, lauded and amplified by corporate media for giving them ammunition to fire at former President Donald Trump, was wrong but has since failed to acknowledge or apologize for any of his errors.
“You may have helped spread Russian disinformation yourself for years by promoting this. I think that’s what Republicans and what people who entrusted you as the Intel Committee chair are so confused about your culpability in all of this,” Ortagus said.
“Well, I completely disagree with your premise,” Schiff replied. “It’s one thing to say allegations should be investigated and they were. It’s another to say that we should have foreseen in advance that some people were lying to Christopher Steele which is impossible of course to do.”
Schiff is one of the country's most prominent conspiracy theorists. Yet instead of challenging him with basic questions, MSNBC-CNN-NYT-WP etc. parrot him. @MorganOrtagus is the first to challenge him in years, and look how much he squirms.
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) November 9, 2021
Schiff then accused Ortagus and Republicans of trying to use the Steele dossier’s lack of credibility “as a smokescreen to somehow shield Donald Trump’s culpability.”
“None of that is undercut. None of that serious misconduct is in any way diminished by the fact that people lied to Christopher Steele,” Schiff said.
“No. I think just your credibility is,” Ortagus said.
“I think the credibility of your question is in doubt,” Schiff said, getting defensive.
