For all his hyper-secret hearings in the Capitol basement, SCIF securitization from eavesdroppers in tow, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has remarkably little interest in hearing from the CIA whistleblower, the person whose ignorant secondhand accusations were the very basis for his impeachment inquiry against President Trump.

Mollie Hemingway at the Federalist has an excellent piece exploring Schiff's strange turnaround:

House Democrats’ top impeachment inquisitor abruptly changed from repeatedly insisting on the testimony of a whistleblower against President Donald Trump to working to prevent it. The change occurred as soon as it was revealed the complainant had secretly worked with Rep. Adam Schiff’s Democratic staff prior to filing his formal complaint on Aug. 12. At first, Schiff insisted an anti-Trump bureaucrat sharing allegations against the president must share his story with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. But after news broke that Schiff’s staff had secretly worked with the whistleblower prior to the complaint being lodged, discussions that the whistleblower failed to mention when specifically asked about them as part of the official whistleblower process, Schiff moved to prevent the testimony. The move appears designed to prevent Republican lawmakers from asking the individual under oath about his discussions with House Democrats, media, and others involved in the impeachment effort.

...and all the sneaky-pete the two of them had been doing together and didn't want anyone to know about.

Sounds like any questions that could be asked of the whistleblower might just reveal the scam that the entire inquiry amounts to. It's one thing to hold the whole thing in secret and then feed the press leaks to shape public opinion. It's quite another to give the entire game away by letting the public learn that the whole thing was planned and plotted in the dark, and the public presentation differed wildly from the private one. And heck, maybe Schiff could be in some kind of legal jeopardy, too, if not a good case for getting thrown out by the voters. In short, it sounds like the impeachment may decisively fall apart if the whistleblower is ever brought forward.

Now Schiff would have you forget how intensely he wanted that whistleblower' claims out there earlier until word got out about the both of them coordinating, and how now he's so loudly against the idea.

Is this an honest impeachment process? A fair one? Doesn't sound like it. Actually, it's the sleaziest thing ever done in Congress. Read the whole thing from Mollie Hemingway here.

Image credit: Caricature by DonkeyHotey, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0