Weeks, not months: That’s how long the Justice Department says it will take it to hand over a second redacted, incomplete, and massaged-by-the-White-House “summary” of what Robert Mueller discovered. In the meantime, Trump and company are using the letter carefully prepared for them as a battering ram by Attorney General William Barr to attack the media and Democratic politicians for the sin of informing the public.
A particular focus of the attacks has been Rep. Adam Schiff. In his position as chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff has reinvigorated and expanded investigations that the previous chair, Republican Devin Nunes, deliberately cut off. That makes Schiff a threat—and it’s why Kellyanne Conway has been on Fox & Friends demanding that Schiff resign. It’s why Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has appeared to say that Schiff should step down as committee chair. And it’s why Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel has also been on Fox demanding that Schiff step down as head of the committee and apologize to Donald Trump.
But Schiff has made it absolutely clear: He’s not stepping down, apologizing, or going away. And neither are the investigations into Trump.
As the Washington Post reports, far from backing away following the release of the letter from Barr that purports to be a summary of Mueller’s findings, Schiff is doubling down. In an interview, he stated that “Undoubtedly there is collusion,” and insisted that the House “will continue to investigate the counterintelligence issues.” None of the counterintelligence aspects of the investigation into Russia’s ability to compromise Trump or members of his staff have been shared with the public. No mention of this investigation was made in the letter from Barr.
However, even as Democrats continue to insist that the investigations being carried out by Intelligence as well as other House committees will continue, Schiff has put the investigation by his committee on a temporary hold to concentrate on one thing: making the actual Mueller report public.
Republicans are throwing every obstacle they can into the path to the public seeing the actual Mueller report. The Justice Department is preparing yet another Barr letter, one that Barr gets to author and the White House gets to edit, and even that won’t be available for weeks.
Schiff isn’t ending his investigation. Because he’s already seen evidence of collusion. The same evidence that everyone has seen: the open, irrefutable, and obvious evidence that Russia reached out to the Trump campaign, that the campaign welcomed its assistance, and that together they subverted both the process and the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. And Schiff will continue the counterintelligence investigation, as well as work with the House Financial Services Committee to look into how allegations of money laundering are connected to Trump’s far-above-market-price sales to mysterious LLCs and his miraculous loans from Deutsche Bank that continued even after it knew Trump was lying about his net worth and had stiffed it on paying back his first big loan.
But at the moment, after two years in which Republicans have continually tried to push away all investigations under the umbrella that everyone should avoid duplicating the work that Mueller was doing—while simultaneously working to undermine, demean, or simply end that investigation—Republicans are now fixed on keeping both Congress and the public from seeing the results of that investigation.
Adam Schiff isn’t backing down. Instead, he’s focused on breaking through the barriers Republicans are erecting between the public and the report. And when that’s over, he’ll get back to work—continuing the investigation.