A CNN anchor cited Biblical verses in an attempt to malign and belittle the faith of the Orthodox Jewish attorney who defended Trump at the failed attempt to ‘impeach’ the former president. But, ironically, the verses he cited actually highlighted the major sins, both political and Biblica, perpetrated by the Democrats.

Jake Tapper, CNN’s lead Washington anchor, tweeted a verse from Exodus that was read in synagogues as the weekly Torah portion last Shabbat, intending the Biblical quote to be a form of rebuke aimed at David Schoen, President Trump’s defense lawyer in the recent attempt to ‘impeach’ the out-of-office president.

Trump attorney David Schoen has left the Senate to observe the Sabbath.

At synagogue tomorrow, he will hear the reading from the Torah of:

Mishpatim
מִשְׁפָּטִים
Rules

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) February 12, 2021

Tapper, an award-winning journalist, is also Jewish, though he does not observe the Torah precepts. Schoen observes Shabbat and, as such, requested before the hearing not to be present on Saturday. His request was honored. Schoen’s religious observance became the focus of considerable social media buzz when, during his address to the Senate, he put his hand over his head when sipping from a bottle of water. Tapper was more accepting of Schoen’s lack of head-covering. 

My guess in all seriousness is that he normally wears a yarmulke and this was reflex. Schoen is modern Orthodox so that would make sense. But I defer to @jacobkornbluh https://t.co/MkKx6W03v2

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) February 9, 2021

Mark Zell,  chairman of Republicans Overseas Israel, was critical of Tapper’s presentation of the trial.

“The tweet was silly,” Zell stated emphatically. “Tapper is trying to peddle his version of reality. He is displaying a lack of understanding of both the current events and the Biblical text.”

Zell noted that the verse cited by Tapper warned against “spreading a false report”, “bearing false witness”, and “perverting justice.”

“These are all precisely the misdeeds carried out in the overzealousness to create an appearance of guilt where none existed,” Zell said. 

This tactic was revealed in Schoen’s presentation. Schoen showed how the House Managers doctored videos and images and manufactured quotes from the media in an attempt to make a case against Trump. Schoen noted that the House managers would have faced sanctions in a court for their actions. He also presented audio that proved the House managers had selectively presented a video of Trump claiming there were “very fine people” at the Charlottesville white supremacist rally. When viewed in its entirety, the video has Trump explicitly condemning white supremacists. 

“Tapper can disagree with the president but he absolutely cannot say that his acquittal was false,” Zell said. “There was a process and Trump was acquitted. By impugning the process and the results, Tapper is violating both journalistic standards and the Biblical precept. In doing so, Tapper reveals several things about himself, including the undeniable fact that he stopped being an objective journalist a long time ago.”’

In his report on the acquittal, Tapper dismissed the doctoring of evidence, which included producing a tweet from a non-existent Twitter account.

“Just to be clear, the criticisms they were making were not that the tweets were wrong or that Donald Trump didn’t retweet such and such or that so and so didn’t tweet such a thing,” Tapper sighed. “It was they mistakenly in their re-creation of the tweets put the wrong date initially and fixed it… just stupid!”

To be precise, the tweets were not a “re-creation” but were, in fact, either created by the House Managers or taken from an account that did not belong to the person the House Managers claimed created the tweets. The tweets were dated a full year earlier than the date the managers claimed.

“Tapper chose to cite the Bible but the Democrats have been fabricating false claims since before Trump took office,” Zell said. “They see him as an existential threat. As such, Trump has become a lightning rod, being struck by false charges and fake media.”

“It is not just this impeachment and the House Managers. It began with the false charges of Russian collusion. Conversely, they hide the truth about Democratic politicians.”

Zell predicted that the impeachment was not the end of these efforts.

“The Democrats will not be satisfied until his memory is entirely erased,” Zell said.

In his defense, Schoen asserted that the House had afforded Trump’s counsel no due process in the impeachment proceedings, straying far indeed from mandated legal procedures and norms. The impeachment was questionable at its inception as the process is expressly intended to remove an official from public office. At the time of the impeachment, Trump was a private citizen and the impeachment process violated his legal rights to due legal process.