On Day One of the impeachment hearings, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone said this: “Not even Mr. Schiff’s Republican colleagues were allowed into the SCIF.”
Cue the left-wing media vapors.
Over at the far left-wing SecondNexus.com the left-wing outrage machine immediately cranked up. The headline:
Trump's White House Counsel Just Told the Most Blatant Lie on the Floor of the Senate in Trump's Defense, and People Are Calling Him Out
The body of the story at Second Nexus quickly cited other lefties joining in to say the same on Twitter.
Ahhhh. But there was one problem for secondnexus. Intending to brand GOP Congressman Matt Gaetz a liar for pounding on this theme that GOP members of Congress had been barred from hearings, secondnexus helpfully linked to this story - at Second Nexus. The headline?
Republicans Barged Into Classified Hearing With Their Cell Phones, Now They're Trying to Claim They Didn’t
The story said, in part, this, bold print supplied for emphasis.
“You may recall that Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL) recently tried to infiltrate the closed-door testimony of White House Deputy Assistant Fiona Hill as she answered questions regarding President Donald Trump as part of the impeachment inquiry against him.
Gaetz is not on the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, or Oversight Committees, which are overseeing the inquiry, but he nevertheless believed he was entitled to be there. The House Parliamentarian disagreed, and Gaetz was ejected.
…Despite numerous Republicans on the relevant committees overseeing the hearings along with their Democratic counterparts, Gaetz accused Democrats of obstruction for holding the hearing behind closed doors. He and other House Republicans proceeded to storm the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), which is reserved for classified hearings, brandishing their personal devices in an unequivocal violation of the rules protecting national security.
The scheduled hearing has finally commenced, after five hours of delay thanks to House Republicans.”
Got that? There is secondnexus saying that White House Counsel Cipollone lied by saying: “Not even Mr. Schiff’s Republican colleagues were allowed into the SCIF.” Yet they link to the story on Gaetz that freely admits “Gaetz was ejected.” Oops.
In fact Second Nexus also ran an account that said that other Republicans were ejected when they tried to enter the SCIF. The site even links to this Washington Examiner story that says:
“Dozens of House Republicans stormed a secure hearing room where lawmakers are conducting impeachment proceedings and demanded entry but were denied by ‘Democratic leadership,’ they said Wednesday.”
The Examiner story also says this:
“Republicans demanded House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who is running the proceedings, to allow them inside.
Schiff, a California Democrat, refused to speak to the GOP lawmakers seeking admission.
‘He left,’ Republican Rep. Roger Marshall of Kansas said. ‘He just got up and left. He doesn’t have the guts to tell us why we can’t be in the room, why he doesn’t want this to be transparent.’”
So it all depends on how you interpreted Cipollone. Schiff's colleagues on his own Intelligence Committee could enter the SCIF, but the mass of the House GOP majority could not. This was Gaetz's point, that impeachment was too important to exclude the broader House.
But the Left, in their Trump Derangement Syndrome, can only scream "blatant lie!"
There was VOX’s Aaron Rupar tweeting:
MSNBC’S Garrett Haake tweeted a clever twist:
In other words, because “Any member of the three investigating committees could attend”, Republicans who wanted to attend but who were NOT on those committees were not barred. Right.
Also at MSNBC, former Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill made bold to say of Cipollone’s statement that it was a “demonstrable lie.”
What was demonstrable here is that liberals want to discredit the president's lawyer, and ignore the outrage of Gaetz and other Republicans.
This is the left’s typical way of using the media.
Dramatically overstate "blatant lies," and just repeat it often enough, knowing there enough people out there who will not dig into all the details and presume the liberal line is the unvarnished truth.
Shameful - but totally predictable. Doubtless there will be more moments of this kind as impeachment days stretch ahead.
