Classified Leaks Back in Focus in Russiagate Investigation

Senator Adam Schiff is the latest name to be dragged in to the ongoing Russiagate probe, but he likely won't be the last

John Solomon and Jerry Dunleavy at Just the News published what looks like an explosive piece, featuring notes from an FBI interview of a former Democratic House Intelligence Committee staffer turned whistleblower. The staffer was interviewed repeatedly over the years, most recently at the St. Louis Grand Hotel in May 2023, where he or she said this about onetime Intelligence Committee chair and current California Senator Adam Schiff:

When working in this capacity, [redacted] was called to an all-staff meeting by SCHIFF. In this meeting, SCHIFF stated the group would leak classified information which was derogatory to President of the United States DONALD J. TRUMP. SCHIFF stated the information would be used to indict President TRUMP.

“Schiff stated the group would leak classified information…”

The DOJ had these interviews for years, but they never surfaced, and FBI Director Kash Patel’s office only discovered them recently (“just last week” was a version I heard). It’s important to note that the existence of an official FBI “302” form summarizing an interview of a witness doesn’t mean the interviewee is correct, or that the information has been reviewed or investigated.

In this case, however, there’s good reason to look. The existence of a Schiff staffer who talked to federal investigators was referenced in a Justice Department Inspector General report released nine months ago, in December 2024. That was another investigation by Barack Obama appointee Michael Horowitz, into possible abuses by the Justice Department in Trump’s first term in searching for the origin of classified leaks to the Washington Post, CNN, and The New York Times in the “spring and summer of 2017.” The subject of those media reports? Russiagate.

There’s a complex story underlying that Horowitz report, as some sources believe that the DOJ 2017 leak investigation Horowitz examined was aimed not at news reporters but the Congressional investigators into Russiagate’s origins, who were also placed under surveillance at that time. (See “A True Bipartisan Scandal” in Racket last year.) Mainstream reporters contended the opposite, that the DOJ probe in 2017 was aimed at outlets like the Times, Post, and CNN that were publishing Trump-Russia bombshells.

For the moment, the key passage in last December’s report by Horowitz was about a “Committee Witness,” described as a “staffer from the Democratic staff” of a key committee, who claimed to have important information about “two Democratic members of Congress” leaking classified information: