Nolte: Andrew Napolitano’s Defense of Adam Schiff’s Star Chamber Is Fake News on Steroids

Andrew Napolitano, the embittered Never Trumper who got absolutely everything wrong for three years about the Russia Collusion Hoax, is now deliberately deceiving Fox News viewers with the dishonest claim Republicans wrote the rules that allow for Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-CA) unprecedented and un-American secret impeachment hearings.

Napolitano said on Fox & Friends Thursday, “I read the House rules, and as frustrating as it may be to have these hearings going on behind closed doors, the hearings for which Congressman Schiff is presiding, they are consistent with the rules.”

He continued:

When were the rules written last? In January of 2015. And who signed them? John Boehner. And who enacted them? A Republican majority. These are not the impeachment hearings. The impeachment hearings have to be held in public by the House Judiciary Committee. This is the initial interview of witnesses to see what they have to say.

This is not just a lie coming from Napolitano. It is an audacious lie spewed by a man who knows his network will never hold him accountable for yet another spray of fake news.

First off, the idea that these are not secret impeachment hearings, but rather the “initial interview of witnesses” is just false. Schiff is not conducting a process where witnesses are giving depositions and statements in private, which is proper when you are doing oversight. Instead, these are full-blown hearings — secret hearings — involving testimony and cross examination while denying the accused — President Trump — due process.

Secondly, Napolitano can try to compare this to a grand jury all he wants, but grand juries exist in complete secrecy, where leaks are illegal and vigorously prosecuted, and Schiff has been leaking selectively and shamelessly since this process began.

So what we have here is Schiff abusing the rules by running secret hearings that allow him to overturn a presidential election by trying his case in public with selective leaks, defying the rules wholesale with these selective leaks, and we all know why Schiff is running an impeachment trial in secret…

So that he will not have to call for a public hearing.

You can bet the farm that as soon as he completes his Star Chamber, Schiff will move directly to a partisan vote on impeachment without holding any of the hearings Napolitano says should be public. And Schiff will justify his illegitimate kangaroo court by saying Republicans have already had a chance to cross-examine his witnesses.

And Schiff is doing this because he knows that without a legitimate impeachment hearing, the most important thing that is supposed to happen in an impeachment hearing will not: neither Trump nor his legal team will have been given access to witnesses or their testimony. Moreover, Republicans have not been allowed to call rebuttal witnesses.

In other words, and this is what Napolitano does not have the moral courage to say out loud, Schiff is deliberately twisting and perverting the rules to hold secret hearings so that he does not have to hold public hearings. This way he can go straight to an impeachment vote without giving Republicans and the accused president their due process rights.

Worse still, this way he can keep everything secret he wants secret, including all the mitigating testimony and cross examinations. He also keeps all of the House out of the hearings when the Constitution makes clear that impeachment requires the full involvement of the full House.

And so, what we have with Napolitano is just another Never Trump troll who so enjoys sticking it to Trump, he is willing to toss out the First Principles of both his professions: He is a judge opposed to due process and a member of the media opposed to transparency. 

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