Fox News host Sean Hannity said on Monday he has a “dossier” on Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the embattled House Intelligence Committee chairman who is facing calls from Republicans to step down from the leadership role for his insistence that there is evidence of collusion between President Trump and Russia.
During an interview on Hannity’s evening program, House Intelligence ranking member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., talked up his new $150 million lawsuit against the McClatchy Company and others for allegedly conspiring with a political operative to hinder his investigative work into Hillary Clinton and Russian interference. To all the people who “lied” and “defamed,” Nunes said, “We are going to come after you.”
Hannity suggested “cowardly” Schiff be added to the list, before saying, “I have a dossier on Schiff.”
In an interview with @DevinNunes, @seanhannity claimed he had a “dossier” and a tape of @RepAdamSchiff colluding with Russians.
“I have him in his own words, documented. I offered him three hours on radio and one hour here.” pic.twitter.com/BRcZeJdmwU
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 9, 2019
As Nunes explained he can’t sue Schiff, Hannity divulged how he has offered Schiff a chance to appear on his shows and be confronted by his own words.
“I have him in his own words documented. I offered him three hours on radio and one hour here,” Hannity said. “I got a tape of him colluding with a Russia, or somebody believed to be a Russian that had compromising materials of naked pictures of Trump. He was hyperventilating on the phone call and didn’t know it was a hoax.”
He appeared to be referencing Schiff being pranked by Russian comedians who offered nude photos of Trump during an April 2017 phone call. Although a spokesman for Schiff claimed the congressman knew it was “bogus” and informed law enforcement, the Daily Mail reported that a member of Schiff’s staff continued correspondence with the pranksters via email, seeking the damaging material on Trump. Last year Hannity played a clip of Russian pranksters Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov, better known as Vovan and Lexus, claiming to Schiff that they had compromising images of a “naked” Trump.
Schiff’s insistence on there being collusion has become a flashpoint between Democrats and Republicans, particularly after special counsel Robert Mueller submitted his final report last month. Mueller did not establish that there was conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, according to a summary from Attorney General William Barr.
In a tremendous move to display their frustration, all of the House Intelligence Committee Republicans called on Schiff to resign as chairman last month because they had “no faith” in his leadership given his repeated assertion there was “more than circumstantial evidence” that Trump colluded with Russia.
Schiff, who has the backing of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., attributed this partisan divide to blind loyalty to Trump. “Look, I think there is a different standard here between the Republicans and the Democrats,” Schiff said during an interview Sunday on CNN. “The Republicans seem to think that, as long as you can’t prove it’s a crime, then all is fair in love and war, that it’s all OK, what the Trump administration, the Trump campaign does.”
Later in the interview, Nunes spoke about the eight criminal referrals he plans to send to Attorney General William Barr this week related to the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.
Nunes has not disclosed any names of people ensnared in his referrals, but he did break down three categories in which they fall on Sunday, including conspiracy to lie to Congress and the FISA court.
Nunes told Hannity that his referrals will address a “bunch of people who wanted to be the next Watergate Deep Throat within the FBI and DOJ.”
