At law, fraud is a very specific act requiring that the person charged with fraud knowingly makes a false statement intending that people rely on it.  The fraud becomes actionable if people do rely on it to their detriment.  The falsehood can be from commission (telling an affirmative lie) or omission (suppressing a critical fact).  From the moment Trump entered the White House, chipmunk-cheeked Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Hollyweird) has been defrauding the American people with one lie after another.

Schiff's latest fraudulent act as part of his role on the Soviet-style show trial that is the January 6 committee was to doctor a text message from Rep. Jim Jordan to Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff.  Schiff made it appear that Jordan was ordering Pence to refuse to certify the election.

However, on Wednesday, Sean Davis, at The Federalist, broke the news about Schiff's intentional fraud against the American people.  Here's how the fraud worked:

Schiff read aloud from a purported text from Jordan to Meadows.  Additionally, he showed an image on the screen that made it appear as if the following message is the entire communication between Jordan and Meadows:

Here's a still frame of the text message Schiff claimed came from a "lawmaker":

Image: Schiff’s doctored text.  YouTube screen grab.

Reading that text shows clearly that Jordan was instructing Meadows to force Pence to refuse to certify the election — something that could be construed as a conspiracy or collusion in connection with the claimed "insurrection" (which, of course, never actually happened).

However, The Federalist's investigation discovered that Schiff committed a giant fraud by omission.  To understand what he did, think of a sleazy movie ad that includes a quote saying, "This movie is an exceptional ... comedy," when the real quote was "This movie is an exceptional example of how a bad director and a bad cast can destroy a comedy."  Schiff did the same with Jordan's text message, leaving out a whole bunch of important stuff.

What really happened was that Jordan received a draft legal brief from a Washington attorney and former Department of Defense inspector general named Joseph Schmitz.  The four-page document was replete with citations to legal authority, including the Founders themselves, explaining why there was a relevant case to be made that Pence had constitutional authority to refuse to accept certification from those states that had manifestly questionable practices before, during, and after the election.  As Davis writes at The Federalist, by the next day, Schmitz's memo was available online.

Image: Schiff lying about a text message (edited in befunky).  YouTube screen grab.

Schmitz sent Jordan the memo, along with a three-paragraph text message summarizing the memo's contents:

On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all — in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence.

'No legislative act,' wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78, 'contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.' The court in Hubbard v. Lowe reinforced this truth: 'That an unconstitutional statute is not a law at all is a proposition no longer open to discussion.' 226 F. 135, 137 (SDNY 1915), appeal dismissed, 242 U.S. 654 (1916).

Following this rationale, an unconstitutionally appointed elector, like an unconstitutionally enacted statute, is no elector at all.

Jordan, in turn, forwarded Schmitz's text message and memo to Meadows.  What Schiff did was to take the first paragraph from the summary, insert a period after the word "all," and delete everything after the em dash:

On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all. — in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence.

Schiff also omitted telling the commission and the American people that the sentence he'd so dishonestly edited wasn't an order that Jordan was issuing to Meadows or Pence but was, in fact, part of a longer, thoughtful legal analysis from Schmitz.  If you're looking for a perfect example of a fraudulent lie by omission, Schiff's purported "lawmaker text to Meadows" is it.

Committing fraud in pursuit of political goals is Schiff's modus operandi.  He lied about having seen evidence of Russian collusion, he lied about what Trump said to Ukraine President Zelensky, and now he's lying about Jim Jordan's texts. The only people who could ever be deceived at this point by anything Schiff says are willing victims — and that perfectly describes the members of the January 6 committee, each of whom is desperate to destroy President Trump by making the ludicrous claim that a protest that got out of hand (almost certainly with help from Deep State provocateurs) was an "insurrection" that struck at the heart of American democracy.

Schiff, as his name somehow always reminds us, is a piece of human detritus, and those on the committee who willingly accept his blatantly fraudulent representations are, too.

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