In an obvious attempt to rig the impeachment process, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) hid exculpatory testimony from Mark Sandy, an official at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Mark Sandy is as close to the horse’s mouth as you are going to get, and ten days ago — ten whole days ago — he testified in one of Schiff’s secret basement hearings, and said in no uncertain terms President Trump paused the aid package to Ukraine for one reason and one reason only: “I recall in early September an email that attributed the hold to the President’s concern about other countries not contributing more to Ukraine.”

To back up this claim, Sandy said the OMB had been asked to provide data “on what other countries were contributing to Ukraine.”

Sandy’s current role at OMB is Deputy Associate Director for National Security Program and he is not a Trump appointee. Sandy has held this position since … 2013. He is not even a political appointee. He does not serve at the pleasure of any president or politician, he is a career civil servant.

Sandy’s opening statement to Schiff’s kangaroo court was a simple and straight-forward one:

I am here today as a fact witness and as a nonpartisan civil servant and military veteran who proudly serves the Executive Office of the President across administrations. I am not here to advocate for any outcome but simply to honor the oath we all share. Thank you.

From there, he testified under oath that every explanation he received — going all the way back to “early September” — was based on Trump’s concerns about what other countries were contributing to the Ukraine effort, which is perfectly in keeping with Trump’s long-standing (going back decades) disgust with the idea that America is the world’s piggy bank.

I have two questions…

1) Why was this deposition taken in secret? If you read it, it says right there, “This deposition will be conducted entirely at the unclassified level,” and other than some names, almost nothing is redacted.

There is no legitimate reason Sandy could not have been called to testify at the public impeachment hearings that were going on at the time.

2) Why was this deposition not released to the public until Tuesday? Why was it hidden for ten goddamned days?

Well, I think we all know why…

The coup plotters, led by Schiff, were deliberately rigging the game.

Here you have, not only a career civil servant providing exculpatory testimony, but he can back it up with receipts, meaning the official requests looking for the data on what other countries are contributing to Ukraine.

Obviously, the coup plotters did not want the public to know about Sandy’s testimony, until…

The impeachment hearings were already over, until the hearings had cemented public opinion against Trump.

What Schiff is guilty of here is an obscenity to anyone who cares about the rule of law and democracy.

Does anyone doubt he chose to hide this hugely important testimony from the public until after a time he hoped would be too late, until what actually is a “bombshell” would no longer matter because the public hearings would have already cooked Trump’s goose?

In his sinister little mind, the decision was to hold on to Sandy’s exculpatory testimony until after public hearings were over, and after the post-weekend polls had come in showing the hoax hearings had worked, that 60 to 65 percent of the public backed impeachment.

At that point, Schiff likely assumed Sandy’s testimony would change nothing. It would be too late, and then, after the die had been cast, Schiff would quietly release this exculpatory information on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, knowing the fake news media would either dismiss it as unimportant, ignore it altogether, or just flat-out lie about it — as far-left CNN of course has — as still more bad news for the Bad Orange Man.

As my colleague Joel Pollak pointed out, Schiff released Sandy’s transcript with a dishonest statement ready-made for his confederates in the establishment. Schiff claims that…

…Sandy’s reason [for the aid hold] “was concocted as an after-the-fact rationalization to justify the hold” on Ukraine aid. As proof, it cited OMB Director Mick Mulvaney’s statement that the aid was withheld to encourage Ukraine to investigate possible interference in the 2016 presidential election. However, Mulvaney did not make his statement until October 17, long after Sandy was told about the reason for the holdup in September. Sandy added that no one in OMB tried to stop him from testifying, and many were supportive.

The weakness of that spin, just how pathetic and grasping it is, proves how big of a blow Sandy’s testimony is to the case against Trump.

An honest media, a credible media, a media with even a shred of integrity, a shred of concern for democracy and the precious “norms” they always talk about protecting (even as they serially-violate them), should be outraged over Schiff’s duplicity. Here, once again, just like he did with the Russia Hoax, is Adam Schiff lying to them through the dark art of omission, manipulating them…

But that’s why the media love Schiff. The media love his lies, his manipulation, his willingness to say anything that will damage Trump, even though it always blows up in his ferret face.

What we have here is a sitting congressman, the sitting chairman of the Intelligence Committee, playing games like this when we are talking about removing a sitting president, about overturning a presidential election, the only national referendum we have, and the media are co-conspirators in rigging democracy.

If that is not how the “enemy of the people” behave…

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