Mike Pompeo, a former Trump administration official, has spoken up to accuse Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) of creating a leak that allowed classified information to go public.
These allegations were made in the wake of Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) sending out a statement that blocked Schiff’s appointment to remain on the House Intelligence Committee, where he worked as the group’s chairman for the previous four years.
“During my time as CIA director and secretary of state, I know that he leaked classified information that had been provided to him,” explained Pompeo in a statement issued this past Wednesday on Fox News.
Pompeo did not go into detail about the specifics, but he did insist that the issue was bad enough that it restricted what he was able to share with Congress.
Highlighting what a massive charge that is, “Outnumbered” co-host Emily Compagno questioned Pompeo about why there had not been any sort of accountability if leaks of that kind would normally be “a felony at minimum, up to treason.”
“It’s a complicated process, right? It’s difficult to pin down precisely what happened,” stated Pompeo. “But I could tell you that when we provided information to him and to his staff, it ended up in places it shouldn’t have been with alarming regularity. We could see it. In the end, I decided, I held back information from them as a result.”
MIKE POMPEO: "The fact that…Schiff was the Chairman of the…Intelligence Committee almost ruined that committee…Schiff should be nowhere near serving on the Intelligence Committee. I don't think he should be seeing classified information." pic.twitter.com/3A0iwMc3Dq
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 25, 2023
Schiff had openly denied the leaking of any classified information in the past. “I haven’t. My staff hasn’t,” he stated to CNN back in 2020 before putting out a small caveat: “I can’t speak for what all the members of the committee have done or not done, including a lot of the Republican members.”
Pompeo has not been the first intelligence leader in the Trump administration to accuse Schiff of leaking highly classified information. Back in January of 2021, former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell made the claim the Schiff, along with his team, “regularly” leaked bits of classified information.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) made the suggestion to Lisa Boothe, a conservative commentator, back in April 2021 that Schiff could be a primary source for several dubious reports about Russia giving out bounties to any Afghan militants that murdered U.S. Troops. Patrick Boland, a spokesman for Schiff, fired back against these claimed with a quick response, stating, “Yet another false and baseless claim by Tom Cotton — you would think he would know better by now.”
