OPINION | This article contains commentary that reflects the author's opinion.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff is imposing a double standard when it comes to speaking to a foreign country to get dirt on a political opponent, Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz said in a tweet on Sunday evening.
The Florida Republican’s tweet was in repsonse to an interview Schiff had earlier in the day where he complained about Trump’s use of his presidency to solicit aid from foreign governments.
Schiff argued requesting or soliciting information on political opponents from foreign governments was wrong and potentially illegal.
“@RepAdamSchiff is a hypocrite,” Gaetz said in a tweet.
The tweet included audio of a call Schiff’s office had with two Russian radio hosts pranking the Democrat’s office in 2017. The radio hosts posed as Ukrainian politicians and claimed to have nude pictures of President Trump with a Russian prostitute. Schiff can be heard requesting the photos and any recordings of the alleged incident.
The Western Journal reports Schiff’s office repeatedly followed-up on the call, again echoing the desire for the politically damaging information.
From the report:
The recording Gaetz posted was made in April 2017, when Schiff took a call from radio personalities Vladimir “Vovan” Kuznetzov and Alexey “Lexus” Stolyarov. Kuznetzov was posing as Andriy Parubiy, a right-wing politician who was chairman of Ukraine’s Parliament at the time.
As first reported by The Atlantic in January 2018, the fake “Parubiy” told Schiff that the Ukraine government had obtained recordings of conversations showing that Russian agents had compromising information about the U.S. president.
“Parubiy” said that material included nude photographs of Trump with a female Russian reality television star, which Russian President Vladimir Putin was supposedly using to blackmail Trump, according to a Daily Mail report from February 2018.
“Well, obviously we would welcome a chance to get copies of those recordings,” Schiff told his caller.
Check it out:
.@RepAdamSchiff is a hypocrite. pic.twitter.com/LFbGFBUG6r
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) September 29, 2019
And, here’s the full call:
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