House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Sunday he is not going to stop insisting there is evidence of collusion between President Trump and Russia.
“What I have been saying all along is that the evidence that I’m concerned about is in plain sight. And I have used those words probably 100 times,” the California Democrat said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“If the fact that the president called on the Russians to hack Hillary [Clinton]’s emails, if the fact that Don [Trump] Jr. said he would love to get the Russians’ help — all of this is in plain sight — if the Republicans think that’s perfectly fine because it doesn’t amount to the crime of conspiracy, then we are going to part company,” he added. “And I’m not going to stop making the point that we should hold our president, our campaigns, our elected officials to a higher standard than mere criminality.”
Schiff’s insistence on there being collusion has become a flash point 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. “The Republicans seem to think that, as long as you can’t prove it’s a crime, then all is fair love and war, that it’s all OK, what the Trump administration, the Trump campaign does.”
Schiff has called for Mueller’s roughly 400-page report to be released to Congress with no redactions.
