Adam Schiff slammed by GOP for returning to ‘collusion’ narrative

A grotesque spectacle, indeed.

That’s the way that one member of the republican party described Congressman Adam Schiff’s latest lurch backward in regard to the RussiaGate conspiracy theory.

…the sharpest remarks came from Ranking Republican Devin Nunes, R-Calif., who said that Democrats’ claims of collusion had been “exposed as a hoax.”

“One would think the Democrats would simply apologize and get back to lawmaking and oversight but it’s clear they couldn’t stop this grotesque spectacle even if they wanted to,” he said.

Schiff has broken with many of his fellow democrats in focusing again on Volume I of the Mueller report, in which Robert Mueller and his team detailed efforts by the Russian government to inference in the 2016 election at the behest of Donald Trump’s campaign.  Mueller himself found no circumstances in which the Trump team committed any larger conspiracy, essentially telling the world that there was “no collusion”.

The word “collusion” has been a sticky one for pundits attempting to speak legalese, so here’s the gist:  Trump and Co. didn’t work with the Russians, but may have been aware that Russian work could be occurring.  There was insufficient evidence to charge any further crimes in the case of “collusion”…a fact that is widely accepted.

But not by Adam Schiff, apparently.

“Volume one of the report outlines a sweeping and systemic effort by Russia to interfere in the 2016 election for the benefit of Donald Trump,” Schiff declared. “It establishes that the Trump campaign welcomed the Russian interference because it expected to benefit electorally from the information stolen and released through the Russian effort.”

While he said that most Americans would consider the actions of the campaign and Russian officials to “constitute plain evidence of collusion,” he noted that the report did not find evidence sufficient to support criminal conspiracy charges.

“Nevertheless and contrary to the president’s often-repeated mantra and many misrepresentations of the attorney general, the special counsel reached no conclusion as to whether the Trump campaign’s many Russian contacts constituted collusion since that term is not defined in criminal law.”

The GOP has been hoping to return to the business of legislating the nation this week, but efforts by Schiff and other stubborn democrats has put political progress on hold.