Rep. Mark Meadows fired back at Rep. Adam Schiff for claiming that President Trump’s “misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box.”
Schiff said on the Senate floor Wednesday that the voters deciding Trump’s guilt or innocence in November was not enough.
“If not remedied by his conviction in the Senate and removal from office, President Trump’s abuse of his office and obstruction of Congress will permanently alter the balance of power among the branches of government,” the California Democrat said. “For precisely this reason, the president’s misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won.”
Meadows responded hours later on Twitter, calling Schiff’s comments “an absurd statement from the twilight zone.”
“But while we’re here: I was told questioning American elections was fundamentally damaging to democracy,” he added. “Any of those folks care to weigh in now?”
[Also read: ‘Good job’: Lindsey Graham congratulates Adam Schiff on impeachment trial performance]
An absurd statement from the twilight zone.
But while we’re here: I was told questioning American elections was fundamentally damaging to democracy. Any of those folks care to weigh in now? https://t.co/2HAM61x62U
— Mark Meadows (@RepMarkMeadows) January 23, 2020
During a 2016 presidential debate, Trump would not definitively say if he would accept the result of the general election, which was consistent with his campaign trail comments that he was unsure about the integrity of the American voting process.
“I will look at it at the time. I’m not looking at anything now,” he said when asked if he would accept the election outcome in November. “I’ll keep you in suspense.”
Trump was strongly condemned by the media as well as his political opponents, which included his then-rival Hillary Clinton, who called his remark “horrifying.”
“It was horrifying what he said,” Clinton said at the time. “We are a country based on laws. And we’ve had hot, contested elections going back to the very beginning, but one of our hallmarks has always been that we accept the outcomes of our elections.”
Donald Trump refused to say that he’d respect the results of this election. By doing that, he’s threatening our democracy.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 21, 2016
On Tuesday, Meadows also criticized Schiff’s claim that Republicans are preventing the Senate from conducting a fair trial.
“If you only get to see part of the evidence — if you only allow one side or the other a chance to present their full case, your verdict will be predetermined by the bias in the proceeding. If the House cannot call witnesses or introduce documents and evidence, it is not a fair trial,” Schiff said.
The North Carolina Republican responded by suggesting Schiff was suffering from amnesia.
“Adam Schiff has amnesia. He’s forgotten about the 71 days that we denied the president legal counsel to be in there when it was in the House,” Meadows told Fox News. “Yet here he is talking about what’s fair? The headline should be today really, ‘Corrupt investigators demand fair trial.’ How do you do that? It is just unbelievable.”
