One of the chief Russiagate conspiracy theorists, Congressman Adam Schiff, is at it again, warning that the Kremlin will try to “influence” the 2020 presidential election in new and nefarious ways.
Schiff (D-California), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, spent years claiming to have proof of President Donald Trump’s “collusion” with Moscow – though special counsel Robert Mueller never found any.
He is still beating the Russia drum, though, telling the Council on Foreign Relations on Tuesday that the Russian government will dig its claws into the American democratic process next year using doctored videos known as “deep fakes,” which could be “hugely disruptive and hugely influential.”
Bringing up the recent example of a viral video that made House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appear to be drunk, Schiff called it a "cheap fake” and warned that deep fakes would be much worse.
“The public will be left to doubt,” Schiff said, adding that having viewed such a video, "you will never completely shed the negative lingering impression you have.”
The so-called deep fakes are videos that are so carefully edited that it is nearly impossible to figure out that they have been doctored. Schiff’s committee is planning to hold a hearing on deep fake content later this month.
“I cannot imagine anything more corrosive to a democracy than an environment where no one can tell what is true anymore,” Schiff said, without a smidgen of self-awareness. “You simply retreat to your tribe and view everything as true or false depending on what party you belong to or what group you belong to.”
While the problem of deep fakes is a serious one, Schiff offered zero evidence for his claim that Russia will try to fool impressionable Americans with doctored videos – just as he did in his ongoing advocacy of ‘Russiagate’.
The Russia-obsessed congressman has been a permanent fixture on cable channels since 2016, tirelessly appearing on news programs at any given opportunity to accuse Trump of having colluded with the Kremlin — at one point even claiming he had personally seen the evidence of collusion himself.
This collusion narrative was rather conclusively debunked by the recently released Mueller report, which found no evidence of a conspiracy after a two-year-long investigation. Yet Schiff, who rode ‘Russiagate’ to committee chairmanship, obviously hasn’t given up.
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