Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, on Sunday called Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer after he was promised alleged damaging information on Hillary Clinton “about as clear evidence” as it is possible to find of intent to collude with Russia to aid his father’s campaign.
“This is about as clear evidence you could find of intent by the campaign to collude with the Russians, to get useful information from the Russians,” Schiff said on ABC News’ “This Week.”
He said Trump Jr.’s emails arranging the meeting, which the President’s eldest son published Tuesday shortly before the New York Times reported them, demonstrated “a willingness not only to accept” information from the lawyer “but to indicate to Russia what the best timing was.”
Schiff dismissed claims by Jay Sekulow, a member of President Donald Trump’s legal team, that Trump did not know about the meeting and that nothing illegal took place.
“To believe that, though, we have to rely on two things. We have to rely on Don Jr.’s representation of what happened at that meeting, and we have already seen, many times, we can’t rely on that,” Schiff said. “So we can’t accept anything Don Jr. says. And of course we can’t accept much the President says about this either, because he has a similar record of not being forthcoming when it comes to Russia.”
Rep. Adam Schiff to @ThisWeekABC: "This is about as clear evidence you could find of intent by the campaign to collude with the Russians." pic.twitter.com/Hs3v4qKZ0O
— ABC News (@ABC) July 16, 2017
Excellent. I want him on people’s TVs at every opportunity there is to get him on.
I like this guy.
Schiff was killer today on ABC. He also made a clever argument that Trump’s actions support the view that he did in fact did learn about the meeting contemporaneously (i.e., June '16). Trump announced he was going to do a big speech on HRC dirt and then canceled it. It would suggest that something changed his mind, which might’ve been the account of that meeting and the set of action items/next steps.
There was a time when the overwhelming majority of Americans would have been horrified by collusion with an enemy agent.
Now…so many people are willing to go on national tv without a circle covering their face and their voice distorted, like a mob informant, to support Trump’s version of events that it’s almost astonishing. But of course it isn’t.
I’ll second that.
He went right to the quid quo pro arrangement that this meeting strongly suggests happened, but not many have overtly discussed. It being you give us dirt on Hillary and we’ll look favorably on repealing sanctions.
And what do you know…?
Schiff has Maddow’s ability of simplifying complex issues in a very smart way.