House Republicans have certainly shown a flair for naming bills. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on Tuesday introduced the delightful PELOSI Act, that is, the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments Act, which would prohibit members of Congress from trading stocks when they have so much access to insider knowledge. And now Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has introduced the Preventing Extreme Negligence with Classified Information Licenses Resolution, that is, the PENCIL Resolution, which aims to bar one of the hard Left’s primary attack dogs, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Get Trump, Must Get Trump, Must GET TRUMP) from access to classified information.
Gaetz’s bill, of course, likely takes its name from Donald Trump’s acid nickname for Schiff, “Little Pencil Neck.” This jab shows that Gaetz and the other Republicans are certainly showing that they’re ready for a fight and aren’t willing to play the Washington Generals to the Democrats’ Harlem Globetrotters anymore. That’s good in itself, but even more importantly, the very fact of the resolution is a clear signal that the patriots in the House aren’t going to continue to accept the Democrats’ fantastic and fact-free scenarios as if they corresponded to reality. Instead of playing along with the Left’s Russian collusion fantasies, Gaetz is challenging Schiff’s fitness to have access to classified data precisely on the basis of the fact that he so energetically pushed the Russian collusion hoax.
Gaetz made this clear in a statement: “Congressman Adam Schiff led the effort for years to weaponize lies from the Clinton campaign and a corrupt Department of Justice to smear President Trump while destroying any trust the country had left in America’s intelligence agencies.” The resolution declares that Schiff has “proven himself untrustworthy by advancing falsities about former President of the United States Donald J. Trump, as relating to unfounded allegations of collusion with the Russian Federation and attempting to cover his abuse of discretions with legislation.” It adds that Schiff “can no longer be trusted by his colleagues in Congress or the American people.” That is certainly true. In fact, he never could be trusted.
Accordingly, not only should Schiff “not have access to classified information,” but he also “should be investigated by the Committee on Ethics for potential collusion with rogue elements of the Department of Defense in an attempt to tarnish the reputation of former President Donald J. Trump; and any comments made by Representative Adam Schiff during any proceeding of Congress regarding Russian collusion and the Trump campaign be officially struck from the record.”
This is the kind of fighting back that Republicans should always have been doing. Will Kevin McCarthy get behind this resolution and make sure it passes? We can only hope. A good sign is that McCarthy just removed Schiff from the House Intelligence Committee in light of the fact that Schiff “lied to the American public” about the Russian collusion hoax and more.
Whether or not the resolution passes, it’s certainly true. This is, after all, the man who was still insisting as late as April 2019 that there was “ample evidence of collusion” between Trump and Russia “in plain sight,” and that “the obstruction of justice in particular in this case is far worse than anything that Richard Nixon did. I would say in every way this is more significant than Watergate.” Despite the fact that the Democratic Congressional leadership had its knives out for Trump from the moment he declared his candidacy, no such evidence of collusion or obstruction of justice ever appeared, and now the whole world knows that the whole thing was a hoax.
But Schiff has never given an inch. As late as October 2021, he was still clinging to the Russia hoax fantasy, and said: “I do think, as time goes by and it will become increasingly more clear as we gain perspective on the last four years Americans will realize what a disastrous presidency Donald Trump’s was.”
It’s a telling indication of the advanced state of degeneration of the Democrat Party that a man so manifestly dishonest as Adam Schiff, who plays fast and loose with the facts repeatedly and unrepentantly in pursuit of his political objectives, would now be considering a run for the Senate. If the Democrats had any integrity, Adam Schiff should have been censured as soon as it had been definitively proven that when he boasted about having evidence of Trump’s Russian collusion, he was lying. But talking about integrity and Democrats in the same sentence is naïve and silly. That ship sailed a long, long time ago.
