Yep, far-right-extremist Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA06) continues to be a disgrace to Congress, to the 6th Congressional District, to Virginia, to Congress, to America, and to humanity (did I miss anything? LOL). The latest example came earlier today, with Cline’s disgraceful, dishonest, disgusting questioning of former Special Counsel Jack Smith. As Raw Story describes it, “
So in Cline’s latest disgraceful performance, he spewed out a bunch of lies, idiocy, distortions, etc. For instance:
- Cline attempted, falsely, to discredit Smith’s track record and competence, in part by referencing Smith’s prosecution of Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell for corruption. Recall that on September 14, 2014, McDonnell and his wife “were found guilty of public corruption charges” – “He was convicted of honest services wire fraud, obtaining property under color of official right, and extortion under color of official right.” Then, on July 10, 2015, “the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals… affirmed McDonnell’s conviction.” Finally, on June 27, 2016, the US Supreme Court “unanimously vacated McDonnell’s conviction…holding that the trial court’s construction of the statutory term ‘official act’ was too broad, encompassing activities such as setting up meetings, hosting parties and calling Virginia officials to discuss Williams’s business.” So basically, Jack Smith – as Chief of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section – was very successful in this prosecution all the way to the US Supreme Court, which as we’ve seen in recent years, OFTEN gets things badly wrong, often at odds with the “lower courts.” In this case, as Jack Smith explained, “the Supreme Court changed the law on what constituted an official act.”
- Ben Cline also criticized Jack Smith for seeking a “gag order” against Donald Trump, because of Trump’s threats to witnesses in the election interference case against him. Cline dishonestly characterized this as violating the “principle that the government doesn’t silence political speech, in particular speech before it happens,” claiming (falsely) that there was no real world harm that you could articulate that justified giving the federal government the power to silence him as a presidential candidate.” As Jack Smith correctly explained, “The court granted those motions and found that the prosecutor did not have to wait until someone was harmed to make such a motion.” Smith also explained that the Court of Appeals agreed that there was a basis and that the threats to witnesses that came from the targeting by Donald Trump were real, and then we had a duty to protect them.” Cline basically blew that off, strongly implying that Trump’s statements about the cases against him had NOT “intimidated witnesses or prevented them from coming forward.” Again, Smith responded correctly – “I had evidence that he said ‘if you come after me, I’m coming after you’…he suggested a witness should be put to death.” And, Smith added, “The courts found that those sort of statements not only deter witnesses who’ve come forward; they deter witnesses who have yet to come forward.” Yet AGAIN, Cline blew this off, claiming Smith wasn’t “able to identify a single witness who didn’t come forward because they were intimidated by President Trump.” And yet again, Smith corrected Cline’s lying idiocy – “We had extremely thorough evidence that his statements were having an effect on the proceedings that is not permitted in any court of law in the United States.” And yet AGAIN, Cline acted as if these threats to witnesses were all a big joke or something (“I mean, if you can’t identify a single witness who’s intimidated…maybe you should reconsider the gag order.”). WTF? That’s really outrageous by Cline, and by that point most of us would have wanted to tell Clint to go f*** himself. Fortunately, Smith is a professional, kept his cool and responded, “Both courts upheld the orders and it is not incumbent on a prosecutor to wait until someone gets killed before they move for an order to protect the proceedings.” Smith added, again correctly, that “the First Amendment does not allow one to make statements that interfere with the administration of justice in a judicial proceeding” and recalled that, “in the days after Donald Trump made some of these statements, the district court in this case received vile threats, threats to the district court’s life in that environment,” so “I felt a duty as a prosecutor to make that motion, and I make no apologies.”
Bottom line: Jack Smith is a brilliant and highly successful attorney, correct on the law in the back-and-forth discussed above, while Ben Cline is a disgrace to the legal profession and to the University of Richmond School of Law, from which he (somehow) earned a J.D. in 2007. This November, hopefully, voters in whatever district Cline ends up in replace him with someone who won’t embarrass the district, the Commonwealth, and the country…
UPDATE: Check out what Rep. Joe Neguse has to say about what Ben Cline said after January 6, 2021 (“Congress stands united in our rejection of the violence that occurred this week, and I’ll continue to urge the swift prosecution of those involved to the fullest extent of the law”)
