“WHEN YOU ACCUSE A MAN OF TREASON AND HE’S FOUND ‘NOT GUILTY,’ THAT SHOULD BE THE END OF IT”
by Sharon Rondeau
(Apr. 22, 2019) — Former Congressman Darrell Issa (R) on Sunday told “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo that the “continued investigations” to which leaders in the House of Representatives have committed are a “cover-up of the initial crime” perpetrated against the 2016 Trump campaign alleging “collusion” with Russian operatives to affect the outcome of the election.
Issa’s appearance begins at 29:26 in an after-broadcast YouTube video.
On March 22, Special Counsel Robert Mueller handed in a 448-page report to Attorney General William Barr stating that his team did not establish that any coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia took place to affect the election, as was alleged by an initial FBI counterintelligence probe.
Many Democrats have responded stridently, stating that investigations into the president possibly culminating in “impeachment” will be launched.
In the 2018 midterms elections, Democrats swept many districts which had been Republican strongholds, including Issa’s, taking the majority in the House of Representatives and setting the stage for a highly-contentious two years between Congress and the White House Amid Mueller’s ongoing Russia “collusion” investigation.
From the outset, Trump claimed Mueller was conflicted and that the investigation was nothing more than “a witch hunt.”
The 2016 actions of FBI and Justice Department officials have been and remain under investigation by the DOJ’s inspector general’s office, with two reports expected within approximately the next eight weeks.
Issa, who announced his retirement from Congress in early 2018 while completing his ninth term representing the 49th district of California, was nominated in September by President Trump to lead the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, a position requiring confirmation by the U.S. Senate.
Issa’s previous background includes military service and business, including co-founding and serving as CEO of Directed Electronics, which manufactures vehicle-safety and remote-start devices. Prior to that, he invested in Quantum Enterprises and developed a product, Steal Stopper, which became highly profitable as car theft increased in the U.S. in the 1980s.
The USTDA’s mission statement says it “is unique among federal agencies in that it is mandated to engage the U.S. private sector in development projects at the critical early stages when a project’s technology options and requirements are being defined. By highlighting opportunities for the use of U.S. expertise and technologies when they can effectively be incorporated into project design, the Agency increases opportunities for the use of quality U.S. solutions in project implementation.”
The agency currently has an acting director and acting deputy director, along with several other staff positions and regional global directorships.
During his congressional career, Issa chaired the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee, where he conducted aggressive hearings on the 2012 Benghazi, Libya attack which killed four Americans, wounded approximately ten others, and was first said by then-United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice to have been instigated by Muslims’ anger over an obscure Internet video, a claim the Obama regime was forced to admit within weeks was inaccurate.
Following her false statements on five Sunday news programs following the attack, Rice was promoted to national security advisor.
In particular, former CIA Director John Brennan has claimed Trump committed treason and “stands by” that claim.
Some congressional Democrats insist that the Mueller report’s “Volume II” left open the possibility that the president obstructed justice in a variety of ways. Mueller’s finding in that regard was inconclusive and suggested that Congress might examine the issue further. Speaking for the Justice Department, Barr wrote in a letter following receipt of the report and said during a press conference Thursday that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein determined there was insufficient evidence presented in the report to conclude that Trump obstructed justice during the investigation or at any other time.
In speaking with Bartiromo on Sunday, Issa cited recent statements by House Oversight & Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings; House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler; and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of planned investigations into various matters, which include Trump’s finances when he was a businessman; a subpoena to Attorney General William Barr for all of the underlying documentation used to assemble the Mueller report; and a demand to the IRS by the House Ways & Means Committee for Trump’s income-tax returns from the last six years.
Issa claimed that in contrast to other presidents under investigation, the Trump White House was highly transparent and “claimed no privilege.”
He also said that while Trump was accused of the very serious crime of “treason,” the Mueller report exonerated him and in his view, the accusations should cease. “When you accuse a man of treason and he’s found ‘not guilty,’ that should be the end of it,” Issa said 30 seconds into the segment.
Despite the Mueller findings that no American conspired with Russia to affect the outcome of the election, Schiff, in particular, has said he sees “ample evidence of collusion in plain sight” and that “In fact, every act that I’ve pointed to as evidence of collusion has now been borne out by the report.”
Covering Schiff’s interview Sunday with ABC’s “This Week,” Politico reported, “Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has been the subject of frequent attacks by President Donald Trump and his supporters for insisting that the Trump campaign acted inappropriately during the 2016 election season by working with Russians who wished to see Trump elected.”
Some have argued that Schiff has never presented the evidence he has claimed to have for more than 18 months of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russians. On March 28, Rolling Stone Ryan Bort presented what he considered to be Schiff’s “evidence” of Trump’s wrongdoing when Schiff responded to House Intel Committee Republicans’ demand that he resign his chairmanship.
Continued Bort, in his own words, “In other words, Special Counsel Mueller’s inability to prove a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government in no way ‘exonerates’ the president of any wrongdoing. The president’s wrongdoing has already been proven. A four-page letter to Congress written by an attorney general Trump appointed because his first attorney general wouldn’t do enough to undercut the investigation doesn’t nullify any of the examples Schiff listed on Thursday.”
“Why did they launch this investigation into Donald Trump in the first place…?” Bartiromo asked Issa.
In response, Issa said, “The continued investigations by Congress are, in fact, a cover-up of the initial wrongdoing, and that’s what Jerry Nadler’s doing; that’s what Elijah Cummings is doing; and certainly, that’s what Adam Schiff — who if you remember, he claimed he had the goods for this criminal activity, but now that the special prosecutor has said it isn’t there, suddenly he’s not willing to show us or talk any longer about how he knew the president was guilty of treason…now the accusers, including Adam Schiff, want to go on to, ‘Well, if he’s not guilty of this, he must be guilty of something.'”
“But that’s not right,” Bartiromo responded. “How do you go parading around with your title, former head of the CIA, like John Brenan did; Clapper, NSA, like James Clapper did; Adam Schiff, head of the Intel Committee and say all those things when you don’t have anything to base it on?”
“Well, I think they play the odds. Most special prosecutors get something, and I think they thought there was a 90% chance that he’d have something, and so they said it was there, and when it came up short, completely zero, they were caught flat-footed, and that’s the reason, having tried the president for treason and found him not guilty, they now want to get him for shoplifting and execute him anyway.”