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Pushback Against Nancy Mace’s Bombshell Allegations
Attorneys tell congresswoman to provide evidence, retract her remarks or prepare to face legal action.
8 comments
Stevie Wonder told me he saw this coming from way back.
Now I’m not weighing in on the merits of what Mace is saying, because I have no idea. But there are aspects of how she presented this storyline that seems highly unfair and prejudicial. This tactic of some members of a legislative body is starting to come more into the public’s attention – the fact that a congressman, Senator or state legislature member can say pretty much anything they want on the floor of the body or in a committee hearing without any legal repercussions if it is false or outright libelous. Legislative immunity is a real thing, and while it has some reasonable grounding in protecting free speech, I think it’s becoming apparent that the outer limits of this privilege need to be reigned in by the judiciary – because most of the law pertaining to the full contours of the privilege exists in caselaw and not in statute. Members of the legislative branches can create a storm of lies from their legally protected status by obfuscating issues, cherry picking or even falsifying or altering documents, presenting video montages of edited testimony, rampant use of hearsay (even double and triple hearsay) in official hearings, shutting down witnesses who hold first-hand knowledge or subject matter expertise, depriving officials who come before them from having the assistance of legal counsel, and directly lying out of their own mouths. All the while the private citizen standing on the outside – or executive branch member hauled before some committee hearing and placed under oath has very little legal tools at their disposal to bring consequences to those who abuse their privileges. But as it stands for now, legislative members can do these types of things with absolute impunity unless the body itself holds an ethics hearing and publicly reprimands the offending member or removes them from their committee assignments – but that is both unlikely and tepid even if it should happen. It appears that we may have seen some prime examples of such conduct in the news this week in some of our very own tempestuous state senate hearings – but I’ll leave that for the investigative journalists to figure out. Hopefully they will do their job.
They are using legislative privileges to witch hunt Treasurer Curtis Loftis. I watched that hearing as my Senator was there and I was appalled at the obvious lying, obstructing, malicious and deceitful actions of the Senators. My divorce was acrimonious as my X had no money and I did. Her low rent lawyers acted the same way that those Senators did and they were even mean to my 7 year odd twins. Cruel people with legislative immunity are a threat to anyone in their way.
It appears that Rep. Mace is now in a position to have to either ‘put up or shut up’. From where I sit, she took advantage of (1) the late hour – avoiding much of the potential flack she would’ve gotten from members, some of whom I think (or hope) would’ve called for a point of order to shut her up. And (2) the so-called ‘immunity of the well’ of the House chamber – I’ll leave that issue to Mssrs. Bland & Richter.
What she said was idiotic but a little known “privilege” of speaking from the house floor is that she is totally immune from arrest or lawsuit from anything she says. May be why theses attorneys haven’t attempted to file anything yet
And congaree catfish it’s in the constitution, otherwise known as the speech and debate clause, not In case law “and for ANY SPEECH or Debate in either house, they shall not be questioned in any other Place” Place includes any court or by any jackleg civil attorney. I would surmise that based on this clause Mace may be able to file a lawsuit against Bland et al for harassment
Wow. The comment section here is like the old thing about all the monkeys banging on a typewriter. I want my $8 a month back. Every time I read an article on this opinion blog my brain dies a little bit. Your ideas are definitely stupid but the writing is like kindergarten. Please stop.
Why can’t Allen Wilson use his General police force to investigate what she says happened? They help SLED investigate other things like the missing woman Alexis.