For a guy who has a law degree, Ben Cline doesn’t betray that he knows a lot about the law – and to be sure, he couldn’t argue his way out of wet paper bag.
“Jack Smith is a political hack,” Cline said Wednesday, in a rare appearance on something other than Newsmax or My Pillow TV – actual sorta, kinda, big time, CNN, which, for some reason, had Cline on today to talk about the Vanity Fair interview with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, the next steps on the Affordable Care Act premiums, and the appearance of former Special Counsel Jack Smith before a House committee to testify about his investigation into the failed effort by Donald Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Seriously, CNN: Ben Cline?
I’m trying to think of a MAGA congressman with a lower Q rating to make a joke about, what, that guy wasn’t available, but reality is, Ben Cline is the guy in the joke.
Seriously, CNN having Ben Cline on to defend the president is clear proof of the network’s liberal bias.
Anyway.
So, the news with Jack Smith today was, Smith told Congress that his investigators had proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Trump “criminally” conspired to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Bombshell, right?
From the AFP archives
Cline, again, the guy is supposedly a lawyer, offered as the MAGA defense the proven-false claim that Smith’s office, in the course of its investigation, monitored conversations of MAGA Members of Congress, which Cline went on to claim “was a violation, not only of Speech and Debate Clause, but also of the separation of powers.”
Not to mention the theory of relativity and the pleasure principle, amirite?
“And so,” Cline continued, “we do have issues with the methods in which Jack Smith underwent his investigation. We believe that he violated the norms and procedures of the Department of Justice, as well as potentially the laws in the Constitution of the United States.”
Fact check: the Jack Smith team obtained search warrants to access phone record metadata of eight Republican senators, which showed only the time, duration and the numbers called, not the content of the calls.
Which is the kind of thing prosecutors do every day, all hours of the day.
You know, for example, when they’re investigating mob bosses, drug kingpins.
Guys convicted on 34 felony fraud charges.
Big-time criminals.
ICYMI
CNN host Boris Sanchez pushed back at Cline:
“But if days before that, you had the President of the United States, at the time, on tape suggesting to the Georgia Secretary of State that he should find him some 11,000 votes, you don’t think there’s sufficient cause for someone to investigate whether the President was doing that with sitting members of Congress?” Sanchez asked Cline.
This is where Cline called Jack Smith “a political hack,” not realizing the irony that he would ever try to insult literally anybody else with those words.
“He was involved in the weaponization of the Department of Justice against the President and against Members of Congress, and, you know, for him to sit in this deposition and arrogantly put forward that he had probable cause, well, he’s only being arrogant because he’s surrounded by Democrats who are tossing him softball questions, when in reality, his history of going after Republican officials, just look to Virginia, where he claims to have had probable cause to go after my former governor, Bob McDonnell, and yet that conviction was overturned 9-0 by the Supreme Court. So, he has a history of failure and a history of politicization of his job.”
From the AFP archives
- Supreme Court overturns Bob McDonnell corruption convictions
- Guilty! Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, wife convicted on multiple charges
- Convicted: Why did the jury convict Bob McDonnell, Maureen McDonnell?
The Bob McDonnell case involved corruption charges lodged in 2014 against the Republican governor involving $135,000 in gifts that McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, had received from a political donor that led to a jury conviction, an appeals court upholding that conviction, and then the Supreme Court deciding in 2016 that the trial court’s construction of the statutory term “official act” was too broad, while leaving open the possibility of bringing charges against the McDonnells under a narrower reading of the law.
Most of us read that as the conviction was overturned on a technicality, not as, you know, vindication.
But, bless his heart, our Ben Cline, he tried.
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Chris Graham
