Report: Schiff Engaged With Russian Prank Callers
Comedians were offering ranking Democrat on House Intelligence Committee naked photos of Trump
Audio of Russian radio comedians prank-calling Rep. Adam Schiff shows the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee asking for details about naked photos of President Donald Trump they were offering.
The audio from last year was posted by U.K. outlet The Daily Mail. The audio’s existence was first reported by the Atlantic.
On the recording, the comedians, nicknamed “Vovan” and “Lexus,” pretend to be Andriy Parubiy, speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament. The two have duped a number of celebrities and politicians, including U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, with their calls.
The two tell the California Democrat they have evidence that the Russian government has naked photos of Trump.
The photos stemmed from an affair Trump supposedly had with Russian model Olga Buzova, the two comedians say.
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Vovan and Lexus say the affair was set up in 2013 during a trip to Moscow and was arranged through Ksenia Sobchak, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s goddaughter, who passed the photos to Putin.
In the recording, Schiff can be heard repeatedly asking for specifics about the nature of the meetings.
“I’ll be in touch with the FBI about this. And we’ll make arrangements with your staff. I think it probably would be best to provide these materials both to our committee and to the FBI,” Schiff says.
The duo tell Schiff they have a recording of a conversation between a Russian singer who is a spy and Michael Flynn, formerly a Trump campaign adviser and national security adviser.
Flynn resigned less than a month into the Trump administration after failing to fully disclose the nature of phone calls to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Late last year, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and is now cooperating with Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
But a spokesperson for Schiff said the California Democrat had a feeling the call was possibly bogus.
“Obviously, it was bogus — which became even more evident during the call — but as with any investigation that is global in scale, we have to chase any number of leads, many of which turn out to be duds,” the spokesperson told The Daily Mail.
