Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., contends Donald Trump must be removed from office for seeking the investigation of a political rival.
But last April, Schiff argued in a Washington Post column that a president has a duty -- as a matter of national security -- to investigate a candidate from the rival party if he is suspected of foreign corruption, noted Joel Pollak, senior editor-at-large at Breitbart News.
Schiff was justifying the Barack Obama administration's counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign, which relied on a bogus "dossier" based on Russian propaganda that was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
"Counterintelligence investigations differ from criminal investigations in their means, scope and ultimate disposition," Schiff wrote in his Post op-ed. "Their goal is not successful prosecutions, but to identify and mitigate threats to national security.
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"If a foreign power possessed compromising information on a U.S. government official in a position of influence, that is a counterintelligence risk. If a foreign power possessed leverage, or the perception of it, over the president, that is a counterintelligence nightmare," he said.
Significantly, Schiff insisted the public must see the material that the FBI obtained regarding the Trump campaign.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's investigation of FISA abuse concluded the dossier "played a central and essential role" in the bureau's decision to seek warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. And among 17 "significant inaccuracies and omissions," it cited the FBI's altering of evidence favorable to then-Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
On Thursday, the nation's top-secret court court released a newly declassified summary of a Justice Department assessment finding that at least two of the FBI's surveillance applications lacked probable cause.