Rule of thumb – it’s cool if a Democrat does it. It’s bad for Republicans even if they didn’t do it.
Fox News host Sean Hannity said on Monday he has a “dossier” on Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the embattled House Intelligence Committee chairman who is facing calls from Republicans to step down from the leadership role for his insistence that there is evidence of collusion between President Trump and Russia.
During an interview on Hannity’s evening program, House Intelligence ranking member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., talked up his new $150 million lawsuit against the McClatchy Company and others for allegedly conspiring with a political operative to hinder his investigative work into Hillary Clinton and Russian interference. To all the people who “lied” and “defamed,” Nunes said, “We are going to come after you.”
Hannity suggested “cowardly” Schiff be added to the list, before saying, “I have a dossier on Schiff.”
As Nunes explained he can’t sue Schiff, Hannity divulged how he has offered Schiff a chance to appear on his shows and be confronted by his own words.
“I have him in his own words documented. I offered him three hours on radio and one hour here,” Hannity said. “I got a tape of him colluding with a Russia, or somebody believed to be a Russian that had compromising materials of naked pictures of Trump. He was hyperventilating on the phone call and didn’t know it was a hoax.”
He appeared to be referencing Schiff being pranked by Russian comedians who offered nude photos of Trump during an April 2017 phone call. Although a spokesman for Schiff claimed the congressman knew it was “bogus” and informed law enforcement, the Daily Mail reported that a member of Schiff’s staff continued correspondence with the pranksters via email, seeking the damaging material on Trump. Last year Hannity played a clip of Russian pranksters Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov, better known as Vovan and Lexus, claiming to Schiff that they had compromising images of a “naked” Trump.