Adam Schiff, a Democratic Representative from California on the House 6 January select committee panel, apparently changed a text message sent by Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on the eve of the Capitol breach.
During the House select committee's hearing on 13 December, Rep. Schiff claimed to have evidence that a US lawmaker urged Meadows to instruct former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 presidential election results by "simply throw[ing] out votes that he unilaterally deems unconstitutional". The California Democrat showed a graphic containing the following text: "On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all."
The Federalist was the first to obtain the original message which was actually written by Washington attorney and former Department of Defense Inspector General Joseph Schmitz to Jordan and forwarded by the latter to Meadows. The original message included an important final clause saying "in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence," nullifying Schiff's assumption that GOP politicians sought to nix electoral votes of their own volition.
The House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack acknowledged the error in an official statement, stressing that it is "responsible for and regrets the error".
'Desperate Dems' Try to Divert Public from Biden's Unpopularity
"There is truly no low the Democrats are unwilling to sink to in crafting their overblown insurrection narrative as Schiff clearly manipulated the contents of the text message to support the Dems misleading and hyperbolic claims about 1/6," says US independent journalist Max Parry.
Parry notes that in this particular case, he is not sure that what the California Congressman did necessarily amounts to 'doctoring evidence' per se. However, "it is at the very least equivocation, if not lying by omission," the journalist stresses.
"On the other hand, he did misattribute the message sent to Meadows as authored by Jim Jordan, when it was actually written by DoD inspector general Schimitz and merely forwarded by the Ohio representative. So it was certainly prevarication," deems Parry.
According to the independent journalist, "Schiff's willingness to stretch the truth speaks to the hyperpartisan political environment in Washington" and how the Capitol riot has become a "political football for the Democrats."
At the same time, it looks like desperate attempts by the Dems to divert the public from Biden's unpopularity and steadily falling approval ratings, Parry believes. However, "in the long run, this attempt… could boomerang on the Democrats in the mid-terms next year," he adds.
For his part, Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist Charles Ortel expresses scepticism about the House Select Committee's conduct:
"As Law Professor John Eastman, Mark Meadows and others have argued, the January 6th Committee was not organised in accordance with House Rules and, therefore, it and its overly broad subpoenas and actions are not legitimate," Ortel remarks. "Moreover, Representative Schiff is a proven liar who continues to damage his remaining 'reputation' by presenting doctored text messages as 'evidence.'"
The Wall Street analyst believes that "Democrats and RINOS on this Committee are certain to pay steep prices in the 2022 elections," adding that Schiff and his allies "eventually may find themselves targets of actual and lawful investigations themselves".
House Democrats' Record of Blunders
According to Just the News, it is not the first time the House select committee on the Capitol breach has been caught red-handed: in November, the panel admitted that it made false accusations against witness Bernard Kerik, a former New York Police Commissioner.
The Democratic-led committee alleged in its subpoena that Kerik attended a secret meeting on 5 January in Washington supposedly to discuss overturning the results of the 2020 election on behalf of then-President Trump. However, Just the News carried out an investigation which indicated that Kerik could not have attended any such meeting since he was in New York City for a family emergency. Hours after the Just the News report about the false accusation, the panel wrote to Kerik's lawyer, admitting that it had made an error.
Earlier, during Trump's impeachment hearings over the 6 January protests in February 2021, the former president's attorneys David Schoen and Michael van der Veen accused House Democrat impeachment managers of "manipulate[ing] evidence and selectively edit[ing] footage".
In particular, the attorneys found out that the impeachment managers put the wrong date in a tweet, selectively edited videos and added a blue checkmark on a Twitter account submitted as evidence. A senior impeachment aide later claimed that the inclusion of a fake blue check verification mark on tweets that were presented at the Senate trial was an accident, according to Fox News.
In addition to this, impeachment manager, Rep. Eric Swalwell, (D-Calif.), apparently disgraced himself by misinterpreting one of the tweets used as evidence. He mispronounced "cavalry" as "Calvary" and proceeded to claim on 10 February 2021: "This was not just any old protest. President Trump was inciting something historic. The Calvary was coming, and he was organised." In reality, "Calvary," or Golgotha, is a site immediately outside Jerusalem's walls where Jesus was crucified, according to the Bible's New Testament.