Jim Jordan Says ‘Schiff Can’t Keep His Story Straight’ on Latest Whistleblower Allegations

We reported yesterday that US House Rep. Adam Schiff and Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence announced a brand new whistleblower complaint against President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security.

Today, The Blaze reported that five weeks earlier he had accused the whistleblower, Brian Murphy, of lying to Congress. US House Rep. Jim Jordan wasted no time criticizing Schiff for changing his tune.

Jordan said “Schiff’s got a new whistleblower” and then brought up Trump’s impeachment, saying “like the impeachment whistleblower, Schiff can’t keep his story straight.”

Schiff’s got a new “whistleblower.”

Here’s the kicker:

Five weeks ago, Schiff told the New York Times that the same “whistleblower” already lied to his congressional committee.

Like the #impeachment “whistleblower,” Schiff can’t keep his story straight.https://t.co/ywGPBUBWAV

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) September 10, 2020

Fox News political correspondent Byron York referenced the impeachment to Laura Ingraham last night on her show, saying, “if you remember early on in the Ukraine matter, the Democrats said they wanted the whistleblower to testify, and then they changed their mind and they didn’t want the whistleblower to testify and they began to shut off any Republican attempts to find out who the whistleblower was.”

York said that while Retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman wasn’t the whistleblower, “It didn’t take a real rocket scientist that the source of this, the original source of this, was Lt. Col. Vindman.”

From The Blaze:

According to a New York Times report in August, Schiff said that his committee had been conducting “rigorous oversight” of Murphy’s actions as acting under secretary in the department’s Intelligence and Analysis branch and were “concerned that Murphy may have provided incomplete and potentially misleading information to Committee staff during our recent oversight engagement.” (emphases added)

At the time, Murphy had just been reassigned from his position after it was discovered his unit was compiling intelligence on journalists in Portland, Oregon.

The Times report noted that it wasn’t only Schiff who had complaints about Murphy’s questionable workplace conduct:

In 2015, Mr. Murphy joined F.B.I. headquarters to work on an effort known as Countering Violent Extremism, or C.V.E., after serving as an assistant special agent in charge of counterterrorism in Chicago. Mr. Murphy was known as an ambitious investigator who was once profiled in a self-aggrandizing article about a terrorism case he had worked on. But some former agents and Justice Department officials familiar with Mr. Murphy’s work at the time, who requested anonymity to discuss internal discussions at the agencies, expressed concern about some C.V.E. proposals, his tendency to ignore the rules and failure to coordinate his activities. (emphases added)

Furthermore, in the news release, Schiff acknowledged that his committee’s investigation into the I&A — and thus Murphy — is ongoing, which makes the timing of Murphy’s complaint all the more peculiar.

At the least, it might appear to some that Schiff’s opinion of Murphy as a reliable source shifted considerably at the precise moment that Murphy’s stance toward the Trump administration turned hostile.

DHS spokesman Alexei Woltornist flatly denied Murphy’s allegations Wednesday, saying the department “looks forward to the results of any resulting investigation and we expect it will conclude that no retaliatory action was taken against Mr. Murphy.”