Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, railed against Democratic congressman Adam Schiff on Wednesday for allegedly lying to the American people about President Donald Trump’s conduct in relation to the Ukraine scandal.
Schiff drew Republican ire after he offered an embellished account of Trump’s controversial July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a hearing last week. In his statement, the Democrat said the summary transcript of the call “reads like a criminal shakedown” and claimed that Trump asked his foreign counterpart to “make up dirt” on his political opponent former Vice President Joe Biden. Following backlash over his remarks, Schiff later explained that his summary “was meant to be, at least part, in parody.”
Despite the clarification, GOP members and impeachment critics quickly moved to accuse Schiff of mischaracterizing Trump’s actions. Trump Jr. went a step further during an appearance on Fox News’ Hannity on Wednesday by calling the congressman “basically the Jussie Smollett of Congress on steroids.”
“If I lied, even a little bit in front of those guys like Adam Schiff has lied to the American people, and in front of Congress the other day, they’d throw me in jail for perjury,” Trump Jr. said. “He’s done it over and over. He’s probably the person that magically leaked my emails and edited them, which was the big CNN bombshell which made it seem like I got the WikiLeaks stuff a week before as opposed to a week after.”
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The show’s host, Sean Hannity, then asked Trump Jr. to weigh in on a “rumor” that he had heard about Schiff leaving the room during the hearing and then “all of a sudden, seconds later, what was happening moments ago was being reported on fake news CNN.”
“I was in there for about nine hours and magically when I got done at about 7:30 in the night, I go look at my Twitter feed to catch up on the news of the day,” Trump Jr. said, “and starting at about the first bathroom break, CNN is live-tweeting essentially the contents of the hearing.”
“Adam Schiff has never been afraid of a microphone,” he added. “He’s never met a camera he didn’t love. And frankly, he’s never met a camera he didn’t lie to. Adam Schiff is basically the Jussie Smollett of Congress on steroids.”
Smollett, an actor known for his role on Empire, made headlines earlier this year for allegedly peddling a hate crime hoax. In January, the actor reported an incident to the Chicago police that involved him being attacked by two masked men at roughly 2 a.m. He claimed the individuals teased him with racial and homophobic slurs and told him, “This is MAGA country.”
Roughly two months later, authorities accused Smollett of staging the incident and charged him with filing a false police report. The charges were dropped weeks later. Smollett has unequivocally maintained his innocence and claims the attack happened to this day.
