Late last week, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) chose to bring back a specific piece of legislation named the “PENCIL Act” which would sound the call to ban Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) from being near or handling any sort of classified information.
Gaetz was able to create the acronym for the resolution, “Preventing Extreme Negligence with Classified Information Licenses,” from former President Donald trump, who was the first to label Schiff as “little pencil neck” while speaking at a rally in 2019.
“Congressman Adam Schiff led the effort for years to weaponize lies from the Clinton campaign and a corrupt Department of Justice to smear President Trump while destroying any trust the country had left in America’s intelligence agencies,” explained Gaetz to The Daily Caller, which was able to quickly gain the text of the legislation.
Gaetz bringing this bill back up took place just two days after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) officially announced his intent to boot a pair of high-profile Democrats from the House Intelligence Committee — Schiff and fellow California Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell.
“Speaker McCarthy kept his promise to remove Rep. Schiff from the Intelligence Committee, and with the PENCIL Resolution, we will express the sense of Congress that he should be barred from accessing any classified information at all,” stated Gaetz. “He can no longer be trusted by his colleagues in Congress or the American people.”
McCarthy sports the unilateral authority as the speaker to be able to block members from the House Intelligence Committee.
McCarthy promised to kick both Schiff and Swalwell from the seats which they previously held for a number of years. McCarthy has also brought forth the idea of unseating Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the Foreign Affairs Committee, but that is an action that would require a vote to be carried out on the House floor.
Schiff made a post on the Chinese-owned TikTok app in the wake of McCarthy taking him off of the House Intelligence Committee, stating that the speaker pulled him “for doing my job, for holding Trump accountable and standing up to the extreme MAGA Republicans.”
Schiff openly denied the allegations that he took classified documents while he was speaking with Andrea Mitchell from MSNBC who asked if he had taken any confidential documents home while he worked for the committee.
“This is what’s so astounding, I think, for all of us on the Intelligence Committee,” stated Schiff. “I never take classified documents to my house.”
“I don’t know any reason why people would,” concluded Schiff
