President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday reportedly declared that newly disclosed FBI documents offer “irrefutable proof” that Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, authorized the leaking of classified information to damage his presidency.
Posting early on Truth Social, Mr. Trump wrote:
“Just out, irrefutable proof that Adam Shifty Schiff ‘APPROVED PLAN TO LEAK CLASSIFIED INFORMATION TO DAMAGE DONALD TRUMP.’”
The language echoed reporting from Fox News, which detailed the allegations contained in FBI records obtained by the conservative news outlet Just The News.
The documents, recently provided to Congress by FBI Director Kash Patel, originated from a whistleblower who had served more than a decade as an intelligence staffer for House Democrats.
According to the whistleblower’s account, in 2017 he attended an all-staff meeting where Mr. Schiff allegedly told colleagues they would leak classified material “derogatory to President of the United States Donald J. Trump” and that the information “would be used to indict President Trump.” The staffer described the leaking as both “treasonous” and “illegal.”
FBI notes summarizing the allegations state that unnamed participants in the meeting reassured the whistleblower that “they would not be caught leaking classified information.”
The whistleblower reportedly first brought the allegations to the FBI in 2017 and was interviewed again in 2023, underscoring his persistence in raising the alarm over what he viewed as serious misconduct.
Mr. Schiff, a longtime Trump critic who led the first impeachment effort against the president while serving as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has not issued a public response to the new claims. In the past, he has dismissed similar accusations as partisan attacks.
Mr. Patel, the current FBI director, promoted the release of the documents on X. “Congress can now see how classified info was leaked to shape political narratives – and decide if our institutions were weaponized against the American people,” he wrote.
The whistleblower’s allegations cut directly to a central theme of Mr. Trump’s long-standing criticism of Washington’s political establishment — that powerful figures in Congress and the intelligence community sought to undermine his presidency through selective leaks and media manipulation.
Conservatives have frequently accused Mr. Schiff of using his position on the Intelligence Committee to drive narratives hostile to Mr. Trump, often citing his prominent role in advancing the now-discredited claims of Russian collusion.
While the documents do not detail whether the alleged leaks resulted in criminal referrals or formal charges, their arrival on Capitol Hill adds fuel to Republican efforts to portray Democratic leadership as willing to bend or break the law for political gain.
For Mr. Trump and his allies, the whistleblower’s account offers fresh validation of their belief that the investigations, media stories, and political turmoil that dogged his first term were not organic developments, but part of a coordinated campaign from within the government.
“Irrefutable proof,” the president wrote, framing the documents as confirmation of what he has argued for years: that the system was rigged against him from the inside.
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