OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
A leading Republican senator says that Rep. Adam Schiff should be imprisoned for a very long time since former President Donald Trump was convicted on allegations of election interference in Georgia.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is using, in part, some of Trump’s tweets as ‘evidence’ that he is guilty of racketeering.
“I spoke to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday about Fulton County and voter fraud in Georgia,” read one of the tweets, posted on Jan. 3, 2021. “He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out-of-state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”
In another, Trump asked his followers and supporters to watch televised hearings.
“Some of the tweets were less aggressive. The indictment pointed to a Dec. 3, 2020, tweet in which Trump wrote ‘Georgia hearings now on @OANN. Amazing!’ which was described as ‘an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy,’” the Post reported.
South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham hinted on Twitter that if watching ‘conspiratorial’ television is now a crime, then Schiff could be in big trouble.
“Remember the Russian hoax and the Mueller investigation? Donald Trump is being charged with a criminal act for telling people to watch a network show about the election,” Graham said. “If that becomes a crime Adam Schiff will be in jail for 1,000 years!”
“How many times did Schiff go on MSNBC and CNN and tell us Donald Trump was a Russian agent? This is very dangerous what they are doing to our country,” the senator added. “It’s a terrible double standard.”
Graham, in another tweet, noted that there is another “election denier” in Georgia who has gotten away with saying as much – two-time Democratic gubernatorial loser Stacey Abrams.
“President Trump is being prosecuted in a way to make challenging an election a crime. Democrat Stacey Abrams said it best – it’s hard to concede an election when you think you were cheated,” Graham wrote. “Well, here’s the current standard: If you are a Democrat and you claim you were cheated, nothing happens. If a Republican does it, they try to put you in jail!”
Shortly after Republicans took control of the House following the 2022 midterms, Schiff was removed from his position on the House Intelligence Committee and accused of illegally leaking classified information.
Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who served in that post for a year before then-President Donald Trump named him secretary of state, made the accusation and claims in a Fox News interview earlier this year.
“During my time as CIA director and secretary of state, I know that he leaked classified information that had been provided to him,” Pompeo, who was rumored at the time to be considering a run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said.
“Outnumbered” co-host Emily Compagno, after emphasizing what a huge problem that is, asked Pompeo why there hadn’t been any accountability if leaking that kind of information is “a felony at a minimum, up to treason.”
“It’s a complicated process, right? It’s difficult to pin down precisely what happened,” Pompeo said. “But I could tell you that when we provided information to him and to his staff, it ended up in places it shouldn’t have been with alarming regularity. We could see it. In the end, I decided I held back their information as a result.”
Schiff also faced an ethics complaint over a campaign video he put together as he launched his bid to retire Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat.
The video features a clip of Schiff presenting his case for Trump’s second impeachment on the floor of the Senate, which, according to the watchdog group Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, is a violation of congressional rules.
“Federal law states that ‘appropriations shall be applied only to the objects for which the appropriations were made except as otherwise provided by law,’” FACT wrote in a letter to the House Ethics Committee. “To enforce this law, the ethics rules prohibit Members from using any official resource for campaign or political purposes.”
