04-21-2017 (Photo: Rep. Adam Schiff settles his bet with Brooklyn Congressman Steve Israel by singing 'Meet) http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules Twitter: @BatchelorShow

“Trump-Russia Surveillance” and Adam Schiff’s circumstantial “idiot,” Carter Page. @ThadMcCotter

Unfortunately for the conspiracy theorists, it was Carter Page, the Walter Mitty of Trump world. Far be it from me to suggest the FBI was just looking for an easy way to fob off Obama administration pressure to validate its Trump-Russia talking points. Mr. Page had been the target four years earlier of a sad little recruitment effort by Russian spies in New York, who eventually were prosecuted and whose monitored communications referred to Mr. Page as an “idiot.” He later gave an incoherent speech in Moscow in the middle of the campaign decrying U.S. sanctions. Most of all, he was singularly devoid of influence with either Donald Trump or the Russians, though perhaps not the least likely contender to say something foolish on a “wiretap.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/behold-the-master-conspirator-1492555014

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/329693-schiff-dems-failed-to-explain-why-people-should-care-about-russian

The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee hammered his party for failing to adequately warn voters last year about the threat posed by Russian election meddling. In an interview with former Obama administration adviser David Axelrod on "The Axe Files" podcast, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) warned that the Kremlin is likely to try to interfere future U.S. elections and that America must be prepared to deal with another Russian influence campaign. "Where I think Democrats really fell down on the job is, we failed to persuade the country why they should care," Schiff said.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/20/politics/adam-schiff-axe-files/

"How do we inoculate ourselves from this in the future? Because one of the key conclusions of the intelligence community is that the Russians will do this again," Schiff said. "This was not a one-off." He added that a key reason he's advocated for public hearings is so the American public has a clear understanding of how Russia successfully interfered in the election, in order to effectively prevent it from happening again. Moreover, he said the Russians could easily intensify their subterfuge in the future by taking authentic documents and altering them to create the impression of illegality on the part of their target. Schiff said the notion of injecting that kind of false information into an election "terrifies" him. "You could imagine how difficult if not impossible that would be to disprove in the final weeks of a campaign and just how enormous that impact could be," he said. "The only way we fight that is not just by cyber defense alone, which is never going to be enough. It has to be by informing the public and inoculating the public so they care more about the fact that this is the product of a foreign intervention than they do what is said in a stolen document," Schiff added.