Federalist Nails Adam Schiff For High Crimes Against Jim Jordan And Alexander Hamilton

Adam Schiff going to punctuation jail AGAIN.

OMG everybody, just drop the contempt of Congress case against Mark Meadows right now, because The Federalist has completely blown the lid off the conspiracy to railroad Meadows, or at least an extremely tiny thing that House January 6 Select Committee member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California) did while making the case for Meadows to be held in contempt. Truly, this is the most egregious case of congressional dishonesty in history, at least since that time Schiff did a treason paraphrase of Trump's call to the president of Ukraine.

Why yes, that. This is every bit as scandalous as that non-issue , the worst crime in which was Schiff's calling his words a "parody" when they were clearly a "pastiche."

So, uh, what's the Federalist on about exactly? Federalist co-founder Sean Davis goes into exhaustive detail to show that in one slide during his speech calling for Meadows to be held in contempt of Congress, Schiff used a brief excerpt of a longer text sent to Meadows the night before the January 6 insurrection, but didn't say that it had been edited.

Worse, Davis contends, the excerpt made it seem like the member of Congress who sent the message was telling Meadows to order Pence to throw out electors that he unilaterally decided weren't constitutional and to replace them with cosplay doofus electors instead. It was kind of a theme prior to the election certification. 

But in fact, the message in the excerpt had been written by a smart DC lawyer and then forwarded to Meadows by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), whom Schiff hadn't named during his speech. It wasn't a directive, it was brilliant (and bullshit) legal advice!

Yes, let us splainer this.

Here's the text message excerpt in question, which is not a screenshot but a slide made up by Schiff's staff. Here you see, ladies and gentlemen, the smoking gub .

Schiff said of the graphic,

You can see why this is so critical to ask Mr. Meadows about. About a lawmaker suggesting that the former vice president simply throw out votes that he unilaterally deems unconstitutional in order to overturn a presidential election and subvert the will of the American people.

Fumes Davis, "Ceci n'est pas un texte," only he fumes that in English, insisting that Schiff had not only lied about "the substance of the text message and its source," but also criminally edited out a clause and replaced it and an em dash in the original with a period.

The full message was actually written by "Washington attorney and former Department of Defense Inspector General Joseph Schmitz" and was a three-paragraph summary of a four-page MS Word document he'd sent to Jordan. It summarized Schmitz's (specious) legal reasoning, which quoted Alexander Hamilton! Liberals are supposed to LOVE that guy!

Here's the full, very important legal argument Schmitz made. You can see the absolutely vital em dash and clause left out of Schiff's slide:

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).”

“Following this rationale, an unconstitutionally appointed elector, like an unconstitutionally enacted statute, is no elector at all."

So you see how Schiff crimed here, as Davis sums up:

In his graphic, Schiff erased the [first paragraph's] final clause and the em dash preceding it and added a period to the first clause without disclosing that he or his staff had chopped up the text and created a fake graphic misrepresenting the actual contents of the text message.

Good lord, we blush to think what the federal sentencing guidelines (no doubt part of Joe Biden's 1994 crime bill!) might demand for such offenses.

In short, Schiff absolutely lied to the American People: Instead of this being a message from Jim Jordan ordering Meadows to tell Pence to unilaterally declare some states' electors unconstitutional, it is instead a message forwarded by Jim Jordan advising Meadows to tell Pence to unilaterally declare some states' electors unconstitutional because of a shitty analogy to an Alexander Hamilton quote, which clearly made all the difference.

Yes, really, that's pretty much all there is to the Federalist's shocking exposé, which has nothing to do with Meadows's contempt of Congress case at all, and which at worst is a complaint about a bogus argument Schiff elided, plus of course that scurrilous fake punctuation.

But just to make absolutely clear that Schiff had done BESMIRCH STATEMENTS to Jordan without naming him, Davis also goes to some length to make clear that the full text message could not have possibly been composed by Jordan, because nobody in Congress could recall him ever communicating in anything but monosyllabic grunts and snarls in his texts.

Multiple sources who regularly communicate with Jordan also scoffed at the idea that Jordan, who’s known for writing only brief, one- or two-word texts, if at all, would sit down and type out a multi-paragraph narrative with precise, legal citations akin to a lengthy court brief.

Sure, they're extremely general references that presume the anti-fact of the states' votes being fraudulent or unconstitutional — in other words, we have found an example of begging the question in the wild — but they're citations all the same! It's really kind of impressive how many of Jordan's pals were happy to confirm he's too stupid to bother with even specious legal reasoning:

“The idea that Jordan would sit down and punch out a long-winded legal argument via text is absurd,” one individual who regularly talks to Jordan told The Federalist. “That’s just not how he works.”

One Republican colleague of Jordan laughed out loud when asked by The Federalist if Jordan was known for sending lengthy texts.

“If he texts at all, it’s usually something like ‘yes’ or ‘call me,’” that colleague said.

Another GOP lawmaker echoed those sentiments about Jordan’s tech habits.

“That’s just not Jim’s style,” one lawmaker close to Jordan told The Federalist. “Long, nerdy paragraphs might be my style, but that’s not Jim’s style at all.”

OK then: Jim Jordan is a nitwit and Adam Schiff is the nastiest liar who ever took a three paragraph message urging the lawless overthrow of a legitimate election and edited it down to one paragraph urging the lawless overthrow of a legitimate election.

Case Closed, bar open! OPEN THREAD!

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[ Federalist / Every Legal Vote ]

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