"Lawyer up," the leftists said. Prosecutor Adam Vishinsky, err, Schiff, has the goods on Rep. Devin Nunes.

So went the published reports, arguing that House ranking member, Rep. Devin Nunes, collaborated with President Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and one of Giuliani's clients, Lev Parnas, based on Schiff's highly questionable obtaining and publishing of his rivals' phone records. According to Bloomberg News:

WASHINGTON Call records released Tuesday in the House impeachment probe show President Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani had extensive contacts with the White House as well as interactions with Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee. Giuliani exchanged phone calls with the White House, Nunes and business associate Lev Parnas at the same time the former New York mayor was calling for Ukraine to investigate the son of the president's political rival, the records show

Much of the controversy, in fact, was about Schiff's unprecedented spying on his House counterpart, something that would draw gasps if it happened in 1998 and Newt Gingrich exposed Ted Kennedy's phone conversations during the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Schiff says he didn't do that, and he just used Giuliani's phone records and Nunes and his allies were the guys on the other ends of the lines. Nunes apparently knows otherwise and is confident enough to say he's suing.

But there's a far bigger problem than just Schiff's spy operation, complete with disgruntled deep-state CIA officers. Nunes says he's checked his own phone records and it looks like Schiff made them up.

Nunes on Fox News this morning: "I [went] through all my phone records, and I can tell you, my phone records do not match what Schiff and the Democrats put in [their] report." https://t.co/9Ligno6K2W — Sean Davis (@seanmdav) December 7, 2019

Twitchy has some Twitter observations about that here.

If what Nunes says is true, the implications of this are enormous. Schiff has a record of dishonesty, so the charge is perfectly believable. Nunes, by contrast, has a record of honesty, so his charges should be looked at seriously.

Up until now, the impeachment of President Trump has been derided as flimsy. Now we've entered new territory, it might just be phony.

Image credit: Twitter screen shot