(RepublicanInformer.com)- Another Republican member of Congress has been slapped with a silly fine for violating screening protocols for the House of Representatives.
Recently, Pennsylvania Representative Lloyd Smucker was fined $5,000 for violating the House’s rules on metal detector screening. William Walker, the House sergeant-at-arms, sent Smucker a letter recently advising him of the $5,000 fine he was being issued.
Apparently, he violated the House’s security screening rules on May 19. Capitol Police said that on that day, the representative walked on the East Lobby entrance of the House floor without going through the proper screening. That subjected him to a fine of $5,000.
An official police report was actually filed in the case. One witness in that report said:
“Representative Smucker entered into the lobby and continued on to the House floor for a vote. The congressman was informed before entering the floor that he did not complete screening and continued on to the floor regardless.
“He voted, left the floor and was reminded that the security screening had to be completed prior to entering onto the House floor. He then completed the screening at the moment and then went back on to the floor.”
Smucker makes the sixth person who has been fined under House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s non-sensical metal detector screening rules. Following the attack at the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, Pelosi ordered that all people had to go through a security check prior to entering the lower chamber of Congress, no matter what entrance they were going through.
A first offense of the rule calls for a fine of $5,000. That increases to $10,000 for a second offense.
Others who have been fined for violating the rule include Republicans Virginia Foxx (North Carolina), Andrew Clyde (Georgia), Hal Rogers (Kentucky) and Louie Gohmert (Texas). The only Democrat fined for violating the rules is Representative Jim Clyburn (South Carolina), who is also the House majority whip.
Clyburn and Rogers both appealed the fines successfully, but Gohmert and Clyde had their appeals rejected. Thus far, Clyde faces fines of up to $15,000 for multiple violations of the rule. He said he is planning to file lawsuits to fight them.
The biggest absurdity of Pelosi’s rule is laid out in the witness statement for the police report in this latest instance.
If security were such a huge concern for the House, why was Smucker only “informed” that he must go through a metal detector screening before going to the House floor? Why was he allowed to proceed to the House floor to vote without going through a screening?
In theory, if Smucker had actually had a weapon, the metal detector wouldn’t have done anything to prevent violence, since he was allowed to walk onto the House floor without being stopped and forced to be screened.
Imagine if someone at an airport, by comparison, tried to go around a metal detector and said they would be screened later, once they went and did something beyond security?
The rule is pure insanity, and the police report statement makes that plain and clear.
