FoxNews.com reports that
Fox News learned in more detail how things went down Wednesday in the House Intelligence Committee when 25-30 House Republicans barged into a closed-door deposition of Pentagon official Laura Cooper.
Sources said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., summoned House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving to deal with the deluge of members who were not members of the Intelligence, Oversight or Foreign Affairs Committees.
“It was a violation of House rules and decorum,” said one source.
Fox News is told that the members led by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., actually entered not just the non-secure anteroom and hallways of the Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF), but the secure room where Cooper was to be deposed.
That’s where members are not supposed to have electronic devices. Members are asked to agree to an oath that they will not do so. The facility was swept for electronic devices after member gave up their devices.
It appeared one member didn’t surrender their device, prompting a deeper scrub that took around two hours.
The standoff occurred after lawmakers held a news conference accusing Democrats of lacking transparency and specifically calling out Schiff, who is leading the impeachment investigation into President Trump.
From there, the House Republicans stormed in the room where Cooper, who has overseen Ukraine policy at the Pentagon, was set to testify.
There was never any threat of arrest, but a source said some members asked to be arrested, citing the optics of being marched out of the SCIF in handcuffs in front of throngs of reporters and news cameras. That would have surely supported a running GOP narrative that Democrats have run amok with the impeachment process.
The Republicans in the room were not rowdy, though their presence in a secure facility, in the middle of House panel business of which they are not members, still ruffled some feathers.
However, there wasn’t much security officials could do, one congressional source told Fox News.
“They’re members. They’re expected to adhere to the rules. There’s no real punishment for breaking the rules,” said the source.
Schiff decided to wait the Republicans out, knowing there was a mid-afternoon vote on the House floor. The Republicans left and the deposition finished around 3:15 p.m.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., sent a letter to Irving, raising “serious concerns” about the security of SCIF’s. He asked Irving to “take action with respect to the Members involved in the breach.”
The members who violated the rules of the SCIF could be referred to the House Ethics Committee, one source told Fox News.
“We made our point,” said one Republican who asked not to be identified.
I am truly glad that some of the Republicans finally grew a spine.
It only took them almost 3 years.
Where have they been all of these months while President Trump has been literally put on daily public trial by the Democrats and the MSM and found guilty of everything from bigotry, and conspiring with Vladimir Putin to using the same word that Democrats themselves used when describing the Impeachment of President Bill Clinton.
There have been a few of them, like Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, and Mark Meadows, who have spoke out in defense of the President.
Even Lindsey Graham found his long-lost Conservative Voice…after John McCain passed away.
There is nothing Constitutional, or anywhere near being ethical, for the Democrats to be holding Soviet-style secret meetings every single day on Capitol Hill, in their attempt to overthrow the will of the American People in removing President Donald J. Trump from office.
By the way, don’t believe any of the polls which show that the majority of Americans want the Dems to impeach President Trump.
I could post a poll showing that the majority of Americans polled believe that Nancy Pelosi is a space alien.
Political Polls are only as accurate as their sample ratios.
The only “poll” that was accurate in the 2016 Presidential Election was the Electoral Map showing a whole lot of red (Trump Voters) and just a little bit of blue (Clinton Voters) after the election was over.
But, I digress.
I believe that the most telling thing about the Republicans’ walking into the Democrats’ Secret Tribunal was the fact that Chairman Adam Schiff ran out the back door when those Republicans came in the front door.
Bullies always act brave…until their bluff is called.
It is time for Republicans to stand up and be counted.
They need to continue to disrupt the Democrats’ Secret Meetings until Nancy Pelosi breaks down and calls for a vote on whether or not to formally impeach the 45th President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump.
Otherwise, the Democrats will keep running over the Republicans and attempting to circumvent the First Amendment Right of American Citizens to decide whom our President should be.
This is a Constitutional Republic. America is not a Socialist Country, governed in secret.
It is time for Republicans to remember who put them on Capitol Hill.
Until He Comes,
KJ