Congressman Cline has emailed his supporters asking them to donate to the reelection campaign of Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York.

Cline wrote:

Did you see Adam Schiff’s attempts last week to silence Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik during his impeachment hearing in the Intelligence Committee? The Democrats are completely throwing out the rule book in order to tip the scales in their impeachment circus.

In fact, as Monica Hesse of The Washington Post explained:

Early in the afternoon, Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), the Republican ranking member of the intelligence committee, attempted to yield some of his time to Stefanik. This attempt, however, violated a House resolution: Only ranking members and their staff counsel were allowed to speak at that moment. So when Stefanik began a question, Schiff gaveled over her.

“What is the interruption for this time?” Stefanik asked witheringly. Schiff explained, and then, when Stefanik again spoke, he again cut her off.

Nunes got involved: “You’re gagging the young lady from New York?” he fumed, in an interesting turn of phrase. Stefanik is 35 — hardly elderly, but well beyond the age to which “young lady” is reasonably applied.

In other words, Schiff wasn’t “throwing out the rule book”; he was following the rules.

Cline continued:

Not only was Elise mistreated by Adam Schiff, but Democrats used the opportunity to spread a vulgar, photo-shopped picture of her to raise money for her opponent.

Now, in this past week over $1.5 million dollars has been raised to replace Elise with a pro-impeachment Democrat — we can’t let this happen!

I stand with Elise, and I am coming to her aid! I’m asking you to help. Can you rush in $15, $35, or $45 today to help Congresswoman Elise Stefanik counter the smear campaign of the radical Left?

The reference is to a faked photo of Stefanik making a rude hand gesture. Although it was shared on social media, I can find no evidence that any prominent Democrats disseminated it. Among those who did share it on Twitter it was George Conway, an anti-Trump Republican who is not a member of the radical Left. He deleted the tweet when the photo was revealed as phony.

George Conway is the husband of President Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway.

Stefanik has opposed Trump on a number of issues, including immigration, the border wall, tariffs and taxes. But since the impeachment inquiry began, she has become a fierce defender of Trump, pledging to help “save America from socialism!” This has made her a favorite of Trumpist Republicans like Cline and she has drawn praise from Trump himself.

Stefanik’s Democratic opponent in the 2020 election is Tedra Cobb.

Last week Congressman Cline cast three votes in the House of Representatives which– in the rush of other news– most of his constituents missed, but which deserve attention and follow-up inquiries from residents of the Sixth District.

Cline voted “no” on three measures approved by the House majority. They are:

• HR 4344: The Investor Protection and Capital Markets Fairness Act. This bill would “help the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) hold criminals accountable and help Main Street investors who are victims of fraud recover their financial losses.”

Republican Congressman Bill Huizenga, one of the bill’s sponsors, said it “strikes a delicate balance to solve this by ensuring the SEC has the necessary tools to go after bad actors and prevent these sophisticated fraudsters from keeping the money they have stolen from our teachers, military service personnel, seniors, and religious-affiliated groups.”

• HR 737: The Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act. This bill would “prohibit the sale, purchase, and possession of shark fins in the United States, helping to curb an inhumane global trade that claims the lives of 73 million sharks each year.”

Shark finning is a cruel practice that entails cutting off a shark’s fins—often while the shark is still alive—and throwing the mutilated body in the ocean, where the helplessly immobile shark will suffocate, bleed to death, or succumb to an attack by a predator.

Combined with Cline’s vote against a measure aimed at eliminating the cruel practice of soring horses, this raises serious doubts about his commitment to animal welfare.

• HR 1309: The Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act. This bill would “provide employers one year to develop a provisional plan for protecting health care workers, and 42 months to develop and implement a final plan for investigating incidents of violence, educating staff on risk management, meeting specific recording requirements, and creating a safe space for health care workers to report acts of violence or threats.”

The measure followed rising attention to the dangers many health professionals face just by showing up at work. Over 75 percent of the 25,000 workplace assaults reported annually in the United States took place in hospitals and other health care and social services settings, according to data from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The average health care worker was 20 percent more likely to experience violence at work than the average employee, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey, while the American Nurses Association reported that 1 in 4 nurses had been physically assaulted by a patient or a patient’s family member.

I have written to Congressman Cline asking why he voted against these important protections. I will report any response I receive.

WSET TV in Lynchburg recently featured the heart-wrenching story of Randy Harlow, a 68-year-old man trying to find suitable care and accommodations for his 90-year-old mother.

“Mom is totally dependent at this point for everything, her clothing her bathing her eating,” says Harlow.

Harlow’s mother depends on Medicare, and her condition has made it extremely difficult for Harlow to find affordable options to meet her special needs.

“We know there are tons of gaps were are seeing, or cracks in the system and a lot of people are falling through that,” says Denise Scruggs, the director of the Beard Center on Aging at the University of Lynchburg. “We’re seeing either you have the money to pay or you have nothing, or most of us, which I think is going to be the bulk of us, are going to be right in between where we don’t make enough to provide the care that I need or that our loved one needs, but we don’t qualify in either way to be able to handle that,” says Scruggs.

When WSET asked local members of Congress for their reactions to the report, Congressman Cline responded:

“When we have limited dollars being spread to able-bodied working adults like Medicaid expansion it’s a problem so we do need to reform health care, the Republicans do have a plan that we are unveiling through the republican study committee.”

What is Cline trying to say? That Medicaid expansion– by making it possible for hundreds of thousands of low-income working Virginians without health insurance to finally obtain it– is the reason that people like Randy Harlow struggle to find decent care for elderly parents?

As for the Republican plan, it has already been released and is basically a repackaged version of the GOP’s 2017 health care bill to replace the Affordable Care Act which Congress failed to pass– a bill which would have reduced the number of insured by 24 million.

Fortune magazine reports:

House Democrats held their first public hearing in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump Wednesday, with acting ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor telling a live television audience that Trump asked about Ukraine’s “investigations” into the Bidens during a phone call with Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union.

Taylor further testified that Trump cared more about “the investigations” that the diplomat said were pushed by the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, than Ukraine. Taylor said that he was told about the call by a member of his staff.

…..

Meanwhile, several Republicans dismissed the revelation without answering to the substance of Taylor’s revelation. “In court that would be called hearsay, and that’s pretty much what most of the testimony in intelligence has been, is second-and third-degree hearsay,” Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) told Fortune, referring to the House Intelligence Committee. 

For Republicans, however, the “hearsay” defense will likely only last for so long. Sondland is scheduled to testify on November 20. And during the hearing Wednesday, House investigators called the aide who overheard the call, David Holmes, to testify behind closed doors on Friday. Both witnesses will almost certainly be asked about the call and what they heard Trump say, should they testify as scheduled.

As Cline surely knows, the rules for a Congressional hearing are not the same as for a criminal trial.

And if Cline is so concerned about “second-and third-degree hearsay,” shouldn’t he be demanding testimony from some of the people with first-hand information– including Mick Mulvaney, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Trump himself?

But OK, Congressman. Let’s imagine for a moment that the phone call occurred as Ambassador Taylor described, and that future witnesses confirm it.

Will you then finally address the substance of what Taylor and the other witnesses have testified to?

The House Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday to remove the previous time limit for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. Now that– following the November election– Democrats control the General Assembly as well as the Governor’s Mansion, this would allow Virginia to become the 38th and deciding state to ratify the ERA.

Our Congressman Ben Cline joined the other Republicans on the committee to vote “No.” The vote in favor was 21 to 11.

In a video posted on his Facebook page, Cline complained about having to attend a Judiciary Committee hearing instead of attending the House impeachment inquiry on President Trump. He didn’t mention that the hearing was on the ERA, or that he had voted against the time extension.

Of course if Cline wants to catch up on the impeachment-related testimony he missed, he can easily obtain video or transcripts.

To no one’s surprise, Congressman Cline– who has railed against closed depositions in the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry– joined every other Republican Thursday to vote against a resolution setting out procedures for open hearings he said he wanted.

In a statement trying to justify his vote, Cline continued to complain about the process of the impeachment inquiry while remaining mum on President Trump’s efforts to coerce a foreign leader to dig up dirt on a domestic political opponent. Cline still hasn’t answered a simple question: Does he think what Trump did was right or wrong?

Cline says the impeachment resolution was approved “over the objections of Members from both political parties,” when in fact only two of 234 Democrats opposed it. Former Republican turned independent Congressman Justin Amash– who said correctly that “history will not look kindly” on Trump’s defenders– voted for it.

Most breathtaking of all, Cline wrote:

An impeachment process based on incomplete testimony heard in secret by only a privileged few is reminiscent of the phony trials of the Soviet era …

The testimony has been open to the 47 Republican members of Congress who sit on committees involved in the inquiry so far. The House Judiciary Committee, of which Cline is a member, will have an opportunity to hear evidence, debate and vote on whether to recommend impeachment to the full House.

If Cline knows anything about 20th century history, he should be aware that comparing the impeachment procedure to the Soviet show trials— including false confessions obtained under torture often followed by summary executions– is an insult to the victims of those trials.

He should be ashamed.

Congressman Cline has announced plans to hold a town hall meeting on Monday November 4 in Waynesboro  from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at Fishburne Military School in the library at 225 South Wayne Avenue.

According to the announcement:

Citizens of Waynesboro will be given priority regarding comments during the town hall.

Constituents may register for the town hall here.

Perhaps some of our Waynesboro readers can take the opportunity to ask Cline about some of the things he has said and done, as chronicled here and elsewhere, since he was sworn in as our representative in Washington.

Let’s hope that this time Cline allows for some actual dialogue between him and his constituents, unlike what happened at the “town hall” in Vinton last week.

 

Following is an account of Congressmen Ben Cline’s and Morgan Griffith’s highly-controlled and limited “town hall” meeting Friday evening in Vinton.

By allowing no actual dialogue between the congressmen and their constituents, it was no better than one of former congressman Bob Goodlatte’s infamous “Facebook Live” events.

Judging from his latest Facebook post, Congressman Cline is actually proud of participating in a pathetic, desperate stunt that disrupted a Congressional hearing Wednesday morning.

(Watch Cline enter at 0.11.)

And if Cline joined his colleagues in entering a secure facility with a cell phone or other electronic device, he may have put national security at risk.

Responding to the complaints of Cline and other Republicans about hearings “behind closed doors,” The Washington Post’s Amber Phillips makes the following points:

All Republicans on the three committees involved in this inquiry (Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight) are allowed into the hearings. Lawmakers from other committees are not allowed in, be they Republican or Democrat.

These hearings are taking place behind closed doors because lawmakers think things will be more productive that way. “The private ones always produce better results.” That is not a Democrat we are quoting. It is a Republican, former congressman Trey Gowdy, who conducted the Benghazi investigation into Hillary Clinton a few years ago and pushed back against criticism that most of the hearings were in private. A Democratic aide working on the impeachment inquiry emailed around Gowdy’s comments on Wednesday to underscore that when the shoe was on the other foot, Republicans were fine with having things behind closed doors.

…..

The Democrats may soon hold public hearings, reports CNN. Even when those hearings are public, lawmakers not on the key committees will not be able to ask questions.

This is not a court of law. Another talking point Republicans are using is to compare this impeachment proceeding to a criminal trial. In a criminal trial, the accused gets to sit through the prosecution, call his own witnesses, present his own defense.

But this is not a court of law, this is Congress. And the Constitution gives Congress broad latitude to decide how to conduct its impeachment inquiry. It can have a vote to formalize it, or not. It can hold closed-door hearings with witnesses, or it can open them to the public. How the House gets from considering impeaching a president to taking a vote to impeach the president is up to it. The president is not being charged with a crime, so the rules of a criminal trial do not apply.

Of course none of these Republican stunts will change the course of events or influence public opinion.

In a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday, 55 percent of voters voiced support for the impeachment inquiry, the highest level of support recorded in Quinnipiac surveys. Forty-three percent opposed the inquiry.

In the end, House Republicans’ disruption of Wednesday’s impeachment hearings also did little to derail the effort.

After the long delay, the planned impeachment testimony of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper resumed inside the secure facility.

If it’s part of an effort by Cline and others to display their unflagging loyalty to President Trump, the question increasingly becomes: Why?

Despite the efforts of Congressman Cline and other Republicans, the House of Representatives rejected a motion to censure Congressman Adam Schiff for his role in leading the impeachment inquiry against President Trump.

As Amber Phillips of The Washington Post explains:

[T]he move is emblematic of Republicans’ broader problem: They don’t have much to work with to defend Trump from allegations that he used foreign policy to benefit himself politically. So they’re trying to get mileage out of a perceived blunder by the person designated as a boogeyman on the other side. That’s the reason Republicans are pushing to censure Schiff.

Despite his opposition to impeachment, Cline has yet to address the overwhelming evidence that Trump tried to get the government of Ukraine to dig up dirt on his political opponent Joe Biden. Cline is more comfortable denouncing what he perceives as the unfairness of the process– anything to avoid dealing with the President’s egregious abuse of power.