Senator Rand Paul appeared on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday morning and slammed Rep. Adam Schiff, pointing out what a “hypocrite” he is regarding his political flip-flop on the subject of executive privilege.
Adam Schiff preceded Rand Paul on the program. Such a shame they were not face-to-face … that could have made for some prime viewing. The California Democrat and House Intelligence Committee chairman, told host George Stephanopoulos that President Trump’s use of executive privilege over the Mueller report was wrong.
Host Stephanopoulos asked him what the differences are between President Obama’s use of executive privilege, which Rep. Schiff enthusiastically defended, and President Trump’s which he opposes.
“There are categorical differences. So first, the Obama administration made dozens of witnesses available to the Congress, provided numerous thousands of documents. … But here, the Trump administration has decided to say a blanket no; no to any kind of oversight whatsoever, no witnesses, no documents, no nothing, claiming executive privilege over things that it knows there is no basis for,” Schiff said.
During Senator Paul’s at-bat, a clip of Schiff’s remarks were played and he was asked to respond.
“I think the clip you played of Adam Schiff showed it accurately,” said Paul. “He’s a hypocrite, you know, he was against – he was all for President Obama using executive privilege and now he’s against this president.”
“The bottom line is we spent $35 million investigating the president. Their conclusion was there was no underlying crime. This whole kibitzing about … ‘oh well, maybe he obstructed justice to try to hide an investigation about something he didn’t do.’”
“This is absurd and the American people know it, people have gone to their corners on it, but it’s important to remember that this was politically motivated from the very beginning, from a political document from the Hillary Clinton campaign.” he added.
“And that should be investigated because we cannot allow the incumbent parties to weaponize the intelligence communities to spy on Americans or on political candidates or potentially their donors. So there is a real danger to this and it is a constitutional one, but the Democrats have it completely upside down.”
Paul also made comments on the malarkey being tossed about the Dems that is nothing more than political sour grapes. “One of the things that Adam Schiff and the other partisans don’t understand is that if you’re accused of a crime by a grand jury and they don’t indict you, the prosecutor doesn’t go all over town saying we thought he did this, we thought he did this, this is all the evidence,” he claimed.
As for prosecuting the President on obstruction: “People are horrified by the idea that you could put someone in jail for obstructing justice on something where you didn’t commit the crime,” he said.
During Adam Schiff’s interview, he said that he was confident Mueller would testify before Congress.
“The American people have a right to hear what the man who did the investigation has to say and we now know we certainly can’t rely on the attorney general who misrepresented his conclusions,” said Schiff. “So he is going to testify.”
