(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) A confessed criminal who managed to avoid consequence by accepting an unprecedented preemptive pardon from former President Joe Biden attacked President Donald Trump’s choice for FBI director, Kash Patel, for exercising his civil right not to bear witness against himself during a secretive Star Chamber inquisition by disgraced ex-special prosecutor Jack Smith.
“Mr. Patel may be, I don’t know, but he may be the first nominee for FBI director in history who felt it necessary to plead the 5th,” Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., suggested during Thursday’s confirmation hearing.
Senator Adam Schiff torched Kash Patel:
"Mr. Patel may be, I don't know, but he may be the first nominee for FBI Director in history who felt it necessary to plead the 5th."
BOOM!
— Art Candee 🍿🥤 (@ArtCandee) January 30, 2025
Schiff—who forced black, female Sen. Laphonza Butler, D-Calif., to step aside and make way for him to fill the seat left open by the late Dianne Feinstein—kicked off his career in Congress’s upper chamber last week with the dubious distinction of becoming the first sitting U.S. senator ever to accept a criminal pardon.
Despite efforts by the Biden administration to gaslight the public, a 1915 Supreme Court ruling makes clear that pardon recipients must affirmatively accept them and, in doing so, thereby acknowledge the underlying guilt for which they are receiving clemency.
In the case of Schiff, the pardon is narrowly tailored to his work on then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s partisan Jan. 6 committee.
It absolves the committee members, who are unnamed, from “any offenses against the United States which they may have committed or taken part in arising from or in any manner related to the activities or subject matter of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.”
Schiff had repeatedly signaled that he would reject such a measure.
Adam Schiff criticizes Joe Biden’s use of blanket pardons and says they’re not a good idea.
Translation: Biden denied Schiff’s request for a preemptive pardon. pic.twitter.com/Fd2uySa25A
— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) December 6, 2024
However, he appeared to embrace the pardon after it was issued.
Shiff should immediately be expelled from the Senate the moment he accepts the pardon.
Accepting a pardon is recognized by the Supreme Court as an admission of guilt.
"Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79 (1915)""In the 1833 case of United States v. Wilson, the Supreme Court… pic.twitter.com/r8h52Bp9oM
— SeekingTruth (@envisionalt7) January 27, 2025
The J6 committee is believed to have illegally withheld exculpatory data, both from the public and from other House members, and possibly to have attempted the destruction of the data in violation of House rules.
Subsequent GOP-led oversight hearings also revealed that committee members had coached the star witness, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, into changing her testimony under duress and coercion from Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
Reports also suggested Hutchinson may have been propositioned by an unnamed committee member for sexual favors.
If confirmed as FBI director, Patel may opt to investigate the committee’s conduct regardless and force the testimony of all those who accepted pardons—thereby waiving their Fifth Amendment right to protect from self-incrimination.
Without the Constitution to hide behind, Schiff and his fellow lawmakers would have no choice but to speak candidly or to risk perjuring themselves—likely resulting in their expulsion from Congress, if not additional criminal penalties.
The current showdown between Schiff and Patel is not their first rodeo together, however.
During House Republicans’ investigation into the Russia-collusion hoax that undermined Trump’s first presidential term, Patel served as the chief investigator, working closely with then-Rep. Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
“Kash was instrumental in unraveling the Russia collusion hoax and finding evidence of government malfeasance despite constant attempts by the FBI and DOJ to stonewall our investigation,” Nunes recently told Fox News.
Attempting to sow confusion by actively pushing disinformation in the public hearings was Schiff, the committee’s ranking minority member, who at one point claimed to have smoking-gun evidence that linked Trump to Russia. It never materialized, although Schiff was ridiculed for trying to solicit nude photographs of Trump from what turned out to be a pair of Russian pranksters.
Schiff went on to lead both of the failed impeachment cases against Trump during his first presidential term, during which he may again have violated multiple laws as he leveraged the weaponized deep state to target his political enemies. That included illegally subpoenaing the phone records of other sitting members of Congress.
And here is,
another reason why Adam Schiff is so petrified about the next FBI Director @Kash_Patel
He had over 3,500 pages of phone records, showing he spied on people, the press—including members of Congress with whom he had disagreements with—and selectively leaked them for… pic.twitter.com/oNzqjn68UW
— 🇺🇸RealRobert🇺🇸 (@Real_RobN) January 30, 2025
Like Schiff, several other Democrats attempted to carp on Patel’s refusal to authorize the release of his grand-jury testimony in the lawfare case led by ex-special counsel Jack Smith that related to Trump’s handling of classified documents under the Presidential Records Act.
Patel confirmed having heard Trump issue an order to declassify documents but did not know which documents since Smith’s secretive investigation—in collusion with the law-enforcement organization Patel soon hopes to lead—had kept secret the specific details about the documents used in the case against Trump.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I. talked in circles while attempting to claim that Patel himself had the authority to let his testimony from Smith’s grand-jury investigation be released.
But as Schiff sought to resurrect the stunt, he was shut down by committee chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who pointed to a social-media post from former acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell confirming that witnesses had been threatened not to disclose the testimony.
I testified in front of Jack Smith’s Grand Jury.
The @TheJusticeDept and Jack Smith’s prosecutors told me directly that I could not talk about my testimony or risk legal action. @SenBlumenthal and @SenWhitehouse should as those lawyers why they instructed witnesses this way.
— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) January 30, 2025
Despite the rampant corruption that, with Schiff, now leads back to their own committee, Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Kennedy of Louisiana, seemed to urge Patel not to respond in kind to the years of lawfare abuse that Democrats had waged.
Nonetheless, Tillis observed that he had already filled his Kash Patel BINGO card covering the lies that Democrats were expected to tell during the hearing.
HILARIOUS! Senator Thom Tillis created a bingo card of all the lies Democrats will bring up about Kash Patel.
"I've already X'ed out four boxes in the opening statements alone." 😂 pic.twitter.com/FinPaQAdiI
— George (@BehizyTweets) January 30, 2025
Schiff, meanwhile, urged his low-info supporters to “think about where we are in this moment,” before launching into a rant about all the actions Trump had already taken to prevent seditious conspirators from once again weaponizing the deep state against him.
“We have a new president. He’s fired prosecutors who investigated him. He’s investigating other prosecutors, or his Department of Justice is. He’s fired inspector generals who might hold him accountable,” Schiff griped.
“How did we get here? Where we are defending a nominee like this, who makes songs with convicts who attack law enforcement? How did we get here? And where are we going?” Schiff’s rant continued. “History is littered with democracies that lost their freedoms and didn’t notice it while it was happening.”
🚨Adam Schiff — who just received an unprecedented, preemptive pardon from a lawless president as cover for his crimes —
— launches a self-righteous sermon on integrity, democracy and the rule of law:
“We need to think about where we are in this moment. We have a new… pic.twitter.com/s1AK7Y8EaQ
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) January 30, 2025
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
