Latest
2 hours agoLifelong Democrat Sheriff Quits the Party After Locals Told Him to Leave for Backing Rogers and James2 hours agoTaco Bell Coworker’s Tip Stopped a Self-Described Neo-Nazi’s Alleged Plot Against an Aurora Hindu Temple4 hours agoParalympian Veteran Waited 5 Years for a Wheelchair Lift. She Says Canada Offered Her Assisted Death.4 hours agoGlenview Teen Shot Dead at Home: Sheriff Says Evidence Is There, Cook County Still Won’t Charge5 hours agoRhode Island Ruled Him Incompetent for 23 Years and Let Him Walk. Now a Toddler Was Stabbed in Her Stroller.5 hours agoHistorian Recounts Digging Through a Building Floor on Tarawa to Bring 11 Missing Americans Home5 hours agoHe Says He Refused a DNR for His Wife Five Times. The Hospital Put It on Her Chart Anyway.10 hours agoIDF Kills Hamas Weapons Commander Who Infiltrated Israel on October 711 hours agoTrump Calls Zelensky ‘P.T. Barnum,’ Says Biden-Era Missiles Were ‘Sold on the Open Market’11 hours agoNew Jersey Deputy Attorney General Charged With Using AI to Create and Share Child Sexual Abuse Material12 hours agoPowder-Filled Letters Hit Election Offices in at Least 15 States and Senate Offices Weeks Before the Midterms16 hours agoArmed Community Member Stopped Oregon School Gunman Within Minutes. Even CNN Said ‘Thank God for That Person.’2 hours agoLifelong Democrat Sheriff Quits the Party After Locals Told Him to Leave for Backing Rogers and James2 hours agoTaco Bell Coworker’s Tip Stopped a Self-Described Neo-Nazi’s Alleged Plot Against an Aurora Hindu Temple4 hours agoParalympian Veteran Waited 5 Years for a Wheelchair Lift. She Says Canada Offered Her Assisted Death.4 hours agoGlenview Teen Shot Dead at Home: Sheriff Says Evidence Is There, Cook County Still Won’t Charge5 hours agoRhode Island Ruled Him Incompetent for 23 Years and Let Him Walk. Now a Toddler Was Stabbed in Her Stroller.5 hours agoHistorian Recounts Digging Through a Building Floor on Tarawa to Bring 11 Missing Americans Home5 hours agoHe Says He Refused a DNR for His Wife Five Times. The Hospital Put It on Her Chart Anyway.10 hours agoIDF Kills Hamas Weapons Commander Who Infiltrated Israel on October 711 hours agoTrump Calls Zelensky ‘P.T. Barnum,’ Says Biden-Era Missiles Were ‘Sold on the Open Market’11 hours agoNew Jersey Deputy Attorney General Charged With Using AI to Create and Share Child Sexual Abuse Material12 hours agoPowder-Filled Letters Hit Election Offices in at Least 15 States and Senate Offices Weeks Before the Midterms16 hours agoArmed Community Member Stopped Oregon School Gunman Within Minutes. Even CNN Said ‘Thank God for That Person.’
Schiff tried to trap Kash Patel. Patel asked him: did you ever find Russia collusion?

Photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation / Public domain (source)

Schiff Tried to Trap Kash Patel on the Media. Patel Asked Him Where the Russia Collusion Went.

by
M.A. Rothman

By M.A. RothmanSeptember 16, 2026 · 4 min read
𝕏f

Sen. Adam Schiff tried to corner FBI Director Kash Patel with his own words at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s annual FBI oversight hearing on Sept. 15, 2026. It didn’t go the way Schiff planned. Patel stood by his criticism of the press, aimed it squarely at Schiff, and then asked the California Democrat the question he has been dodging for years: did he ever find the Russia collusion he promised?

The exchange lasted only a few minutes in a hearing that, according to CNN, ran for several hours and covered everything from FBI personnel decisions to the Epstein files. But it captured something larger: the two men have been on opposite sides of the Russia investigation since 2017, and neither has forgotten it.

Schiff’s setup

Schiff opened by reading back a statement he said Patel made in 2024. “I want to read you a statement that you made about the press. This was in 2024. When you said that the mainstream media was, quote, the most powerful enemy that the United States has ever seen. Do you stand by that?”

Patel first pointed at the hearing itself, saying Schiff’s colleagues had put that on full display that day by repeating the same lies and personal attacks. Schiff pressed for a yes or no. Patel gave him one: “I always do.”

Schiff tried to widen the trap. “So is it your view then that the media is a greater enemy than Iran?”

Patel narrowed the target instead. “That’s not what I said. I said the media that participates in lying like you do and the baseless attacks on me and my personnel, my loved ones, is the most harmful institution to the United States of America because you don’t want to tell the truth.”

The turn

Schiff then asked whether the New York Times was part of the media Patel considered the enemy. Patel turned the question around. “Aren’t you and them the ones still looking for Russia collusion?” he asked. “Did you find Russia collusion? Is it in that envelope that you held up?”

As the exchange ran over time, Patel added one more: “Or what about those illegal FISA warrants” from the period when both men were working on the House Intelligence Committee.

Schiff did not answer either question in the exchange. “I’ll stipulate for the record all the insults he wants to make,” he said, “but I don’t want to have to go over my time.”

Why the questions sting

The history behind Patel’s jab is not a matter of opinion. In March 2017, Schiff, then the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on MSNBC that there was “more than circumstantial evidence” of a relationship between Russia and Trump’s associates. Two years later, NBC News reported, the special counsel’s investigation ended, and according to Attorney General William Barr’s summary of Robert Mueller’s findings, there was no coordination or conspiracy between Trump, his campaign and the Russian government. Schiff told the Associated Press at the time that he accepted Mueller’s conclusion that a criminal conspiracy could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, while insisting there was evidence of collusion “in plain sight.” He did not back away from his earlier words.

Patel was on the other side of that fight. CNN reported in 2019 that he was a senior aide to then-Chairman Devin Nunes on the House Intelligence Committee and one of the aides behind the 2018 Nunes memo, which alleged that the FBI and Justice Department abused surveillance powers in obtaining a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Schiff answered with his own memo. In February 2018, Democrats on the committee released a rebuttal that Schiff said showed the FBI had acted appropriately in surveilling Page.

Then came the referee. In December 2019, the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, released his review of the Page warrants. He found “at least 17 significant errors or omissions” in the first application and three renewals. The report said the FBI omitted that Page had previously provided information to another government agency about his Russian contacts, that renewal applications left out that dossier author Christopher Steele “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected,” and that an FBI lawyer altered an email to support the claim that Page was never a source. Horowitz did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias drove the decision to open the investigation, but the FISA findings were damning.

In other words, on the central dispute between these two men, the Nunes memo’s core complaint about the Page warrants was largely borne out by the Justice Department’s own watchdog, and Schiff’s defense of the FBI’s handling of those warrants was not.

The bigger picture

Democrats on the committee came to the hearing to put Patel on defense. CNN reported that senators pressed him on FBI resources, subpoenas of journalists, firings and the Epstein files. Those are legitimate subjects for oversight. But when Schiff chose to make the hearing about who lies to the American people, he picked the one topic on which his own record is weakest.

Schiff told Americans in 2017 that there was more than circumstantial evidence of collusion. Mueller’s investigation did not establish one. The surveillance warrants he defended were riddled with errors. A senator with that record asking anyone else about honesty is not oversight. It is an invitation, and Patel accepted it.

Schiff came for a sound bite about the media and left having his own Russia record read back to him.

Sources

More from The Rothman Report

Pro-life Democrat sheriff backs Rogers and James, says his own party told him to leaveLifelong Democrat Sheriff Quits the Party After Locals Told Him to Leave for Backing Rogers and JamesA Taco Bell coworker's call stopped an alleged neo-Nazi plot against a Hindu temple.Taco Bell Coworker’s Tip Stopped a Self-Described Neo-Nazi’s Alleged Plot Against an Aurora Hindu TempleShe waited five years for a wheelchair lift. She says Veterans Affairs offered assisted dying.Paralympian Veteran Waited 5 Years for a Wheelchair Lift. She Says Canada Offered Her Assisted Death.