During an appearance on CNN’s The Lead, Adam Schiff stated that the Democrats did, in fact, find “evidence of collusion” during the Intelligence Committee’s investigation.
Partial transcript as follows:
TAPPER: I want to ask you, you’re the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. The Republicans on the committee put out a statement in a report, basically saying they found no evidence of collusion between the Trump team and the Russian government. Have Democrats found any evidence of collusion?
SCHIFF: Yes, we have. And, you know, you can see the flaws in the report and you will see them more graphically when it’s released, but just look at one piece of it, George Papadopoulos. This is someone the Russians approached in April 2016. They say they have stolen Clinton emails. They preview the dissemination, they want a relationship with the campaign. Who does Papadopoulos share this within the campaign? We don’t know because they wouldn’t bring Papadopoulos in. Then once the special prosecutor was involved with Papadopoulos, that made it more difficult.
We made a motion today to say let’s reach out to the special counsel, let’s find out when we can bring Papadopoulos in. He is under a cooperation agreement with the council that should extend to us as well. They voted us down. They are not interested in finding out. They are not interested in finding out who Don Jr. talked to about the meeting at Trump Tower. There are phone records that bear on whether the son talked to father, and witnesses that came in and refused to tell us about the creation of the false statement the president reportedly was involved in making about that meeting.
They would not insist on hearing from them. So there is evidence of collusion. There very well may be more evidence of collusion if the Republicans had been willing to try to find it, but their goal was different. Their goal was to protect the president, and that’s where we are.
