Last year Rep. Adam Schiff told Americans he had "more than circumstantial evidence" the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia during the 2016 race.
Today during an appearance on ABC's "The View," Meghan McCain asked him to put up or shut up.
"You have said on more than one occasion that you have seen ample evidence of the Trump campaign’s Russia collusion," McCain said. "What specifically were you referring to? And please be specific because if it’s true I do believe Americans have the right to know a year later what that is."
Schiff at first appeared unprepared to answer, pausing for a moment, but then said, "If you look at the facts that are already in the public domain, they’re pretty damning starting with what we know about George Papadopoulos, one of the few foreign policy advisers to the campaign. We now know that Papadopoulos was approached by the Russians and told back in April of the election year, even before the Clinton campaign knew, that the Russians had stolen Clinton and DNC e-mails and we also know that they previewed their anonymous dissemination of those e-mails with Papadopoulos back in April."
First, a Trump adviser being told Russia possessed Clinton emails is not evidence of collusion. At the time, Clinton's secret (but minimally secured) email server was dominating the news, and most assumed that hostile actors had already hacked her. Collusion -- which incidentally is not even technically a crime -- would mean the Russians wanted to trade damaging information on Clinton in exchange for some favor later on. To this date, there's no evidence such a thing occurred.
Schiff is also embellishing. Papadopolous, according to Schiff's own FISA memo, was told at a meeting in Australia that Russia had thousands of Clinton's emails, not that they had "stolen" them. Schiff's memo only states that a Russian told Papadopolous the Kremlin possessed Clinton emails; there was never any actual proof cited that they did, nor that any such emails were provided to Papadopoulos, as Schiff claimed today.
Schiff went on: "Now, it was only weeks later that the Russians made a second approach to the Trump campaign, this time at the highest levels at Trump Tower in a meeting that they previewed by saying that they wanted to offer incriminating information about Hillary.”
Here Schiff is presuming most people haven't followed this story close enough to understand his sleight of hand. Schiff's memo provided no evidence that these meetings were in any way connected, and there's been no evidence that Clinton's emails came up during what by all reports was a brief encounter at the Trump Tower.
And, once more, even if Russia were to have boasted of having embarrassing information on Clinton, that hardly amounts to the "ample evidence of collusion" Schiff keeps promising.
It's possible a Russian was simply playing Papadopolous, just as Trump Jr. was tricked into meeting with a Russian lawyer -- ostensibly to receive embarrassing intel on Clinton -- only to instead be badgered about the Magnitsky Act and Russian adoptions.
If this is all the California congressman can muster after spending the last year telling Americans he has "more than circumstantial evidence of collusion," perhaps it's time to ask if he's just full of Schiff.