The House Intelligence Committee: Evidence Not Required

A series of harsh accusations against Russia was voiced by members of the U.S. Congressional Intelligence committee during a widely-reported hearing a few days ago.   All of the accusations assumed – as proven fact  – that Russia had manipulated the U.S. presidential election to subvert American democracy.

Adam Schiff, the ranking Democratic party member of the committee, led off with statements such as “a foreign adversarial power intervened in an effort to weaken our democracy and to influence the outcome for one candidate and against the other.” He voiced no doubt as to whether this was true, but rather asked,“whether the Russians had the help of US citizens, including people associated with the Trump campaign.”

Remarkably, neither Schiff’s diatribe nor any of the other accusations was accompanied by evidence of any kind, accept for quotes from a previously discredited 25 page report.

It should not require legal training to note that serious allegations against the President of the United States, and against an important foreign leader, require evidence. Common sense should be sufficient.

However, Adam Schiff, the lead speaker in the anti-Russian diatribes in the hearing, is a trained lawyer and former government prosecutor. Presumably he, and other trained lawyers on the Congressional committee are especially able, due to their vocational backgrounds, and law school training, to detect gaps in evidence or the complete absence of evidence.

The fact that trained lawyers did not request evidence for exceedingly serious allegations against the U.S. President and a foreign leader, and did not note its absence, did not happen by chance; it did not slip their minds.  They consciously suppressed the issue of evidence – because none was available – out of a desire to deceive the American people into regarding Russia as their enemy.

With U.S.-led Nato military forces massed on Russia’s borders, the show in the Congressional intelligence committee had one purpose: To use a concocted story to bamboozle the American people into accepting that Russia is somehow their enemy, and that further aggressive moves which could easily lead to war or even nuclear war, are in order.

The committee members who put on this show are – and I emphasize – political criminal seeking to prepare the American people for yet another foreign war of aggression.  They are enemies of the American people and of the whole world.

Eric Sommer is an international journalist.