The U.S. House Select Committee in charge of the kangaroo court January 6 Attack trial confessed on Wednesday that it purposefully doctored a text message that was cited by Democrat Representative Adam Schiff in his Monday speech to hold former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in contempt.
Sean Davis of The Federalist reported on Wednesday that Schiff manipulated the text message, removing context and adding punctuation, giving a completely false picture of the message authored by the Republican lawmaker.
Schiff claimed that a Republican lawmaker declared that: “On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.” However, the original message was actually a transmission from Joseph Schmitz, the former Inspector General from the Department of Defense, who drafted and summarized the legal arguments which Republican Representative Jim Jordan forwarded to Meadows.
The complete message read:
On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all — in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence.
‘No legislative act,’ wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78, ‘contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.’ The court in Hubbard v. Lowe reinforced this truth: ‘That an unconstitutional statute is not a law at all is a proposition no longer open to discussion.’ 226 F. 135, 137 (SDNY 1915), appeal dismissed, 242 U.S. 654 (1916).
Using this rationale, any unconstitutionally appointed elector, is not considered an elector at all.
Schiff purposefully omitted the lower part of the message, which explicitly outlines the legal basis for rejecting certain electors.
During Schiff’s testimony, he used an on-screen graphic that included only the doctored portion of the message, and was even done in such a way that it appeared to be the original message.
This is not Schiff’s first time faking evidence during investigations, in 2019, during the House Intelligence Committee investigation against President Trump, Schiff created a conversation between Trump and the Ukrainian President out of whole cloth.
Based on Schiff’s lies, the committee recommended that Meadows be held in contempt, with a House vote that rung out entirely on party lines.
Author: Bryant Schultz