Federalist Senior Editor Mollie Hemingway slammed Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday, after the Democrat House speaker made the unprecedented decision to reject Republican Reps. Jim Jordan and Jim Banks from her Jan. 6 commission.
“Pelosi really made it clear that she doesn’t even intend to have this commission … taken seriously,” Hemingway said on Fox News’ “Special Report.”
Jordan is the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, while Banks is “widely regarded as a very thoughtful member,” Hemingway said. For Pelosi, that’s somehow not enough to secure a spot on her commission.
Yet, as Hemingway pointed out, Pelosi gladly kept Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff on the commission, despite the fact that he’s “the man who perpetrated the Russia collusion hoax, the lie that Donald Trump had won the 2016 election only by being a traitor who had colluded with Russia.” Schiff “kept [this lie] going for years and claimed that he had personal knowledge of [it], which was not true,” she said.
Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat whom Pelosi also put on the commission, similarly “objected to the 2016 election on the grounds of Russia and Trump being ‘illegitimate.’”
According to Hemingway, the idea that Schiff and Raskin are more qualified than Jordan and Banks to serve on the commission is absurd. Rather than reward integrity, Hemingway said, Pelosi is motivated by her own partisan interests.
But according to Hemingway, there might be a silver lining for Republicans. “What’s really interesting is that Republicans are fighting back so hard,” Hemingway reflected. “They’re showing why they gained seats in the House in the 2020 election when they were predicted to lose some seats, and why they’ll win a lot of seats in the midterms, as well.”
Case in point: Rep. Elise Stefanik, who replaced Rep. Liz Cheney in GOP House leadership, responded to Pelosi’s stunt by saying she’s behaving “like a radical authoritarian” and that she “will make history as the most despised Speaker of the House.”
“The American people have always known the truth — that the Pelosi partisan January 6th commission was never about investigating the facts, it was only ever about Pelosi’s radical politics and the Left’s endless obsession with crushing any discussion or debate,” Stefanik said. “This commission is an absolute sham.”
Hemingway said she hopes it will motivate Republicans to keep fighting back.