Ron Sachs/CNP/Zuma
On Tuesday, Home Majority Chief Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) lashed out at reporters who questioned his resolution to take away Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) from the Home Intelligence Committee, of which Schiff was the rating Democrat.
McCarthy, who has been repeating these talking points for almost a yr, sounds convincing when he says that Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) made lies that ought to disqualify them from serving on the intelligence committee. However his feedback don’t maintain water.
In 2019 and 2020, Schiff was the lead supervisor within the impeachment proceedings in opposition to former President Trump. The investigation was sparked by a whistleblower grievance suggesting that Trump withheld navy help to Ukraine to stress Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into investigating Joe and Hunter Biden. McCarthy steered that Schiff had details about the whistleblower that he was not sharing with the general public.
“When a whistleblower got here ahead, [Schiff] mentioned he didn’t know the person,” McCarthy instructed reporters yesterday, “though his workers had met with him and set it up.” That’s partially true. A member of Schiff’s workers did meet with the whistleblower—a reality Schiff denied when chatting with the media. However there’s no proof that Schiff knew who the whistleblower was, as Glenn Kessler explains within the Washington Put up.
McCarthy additionally accused Swalwell of mendacity relating to his obvious relationship with a Chinese language spy, for which the FBI had cleared him of wrongdoing. It’s a complete factor, defined right here.
Each Schiff and Swalwell have made the form of spin and exaggeration frequent amongst politicians. However it’s clear that McCarthy is cherry-picking moments of dishonesty to take away probably the most outspoken Democratic politicians from one in every of Congress’ most necessary committees. What about Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-N.Y.) bad-faith issues concerning the integrity of the 2020 election—issues which have come to be often called the “Huge Lie”?
Kevin McCarthy booted Adam Schiff off the Home Intelligence Committee as a result of he “lied to the American public.” Maintain up. Keep in mind when McCarthy did precisely that? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/6gTd8iE7gG
— Mom Jones (@MotherJones) January 25, 2023
By no means thoughts that routine liar Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) was deemed match to serve on the Committee on Small Enterprise and the Committee on Science, Area, and Expertise. Or that McCarthy himself is serving as Speaker regardless of his blatant lie that he had by no means referred to as on Trump to resign. As we reported in April, McCarthy referred to as a New York Occasions report about his castigation of Trump following the January 6, 2021, rebel “completely false and fallacious.” Ah:
However then, in a unprecedented twist, the reporters went on the Rachel Maddow Present and performed an honest-to-God recording of McCarthy detailing a plan to stress Trump to resign from workplace.
The feedback happened throughout a Jan. 10 assembly with Republican lawmakers, in response to a query from Rep. Liz Cheney. Within the recording, McCarthy says that he deliberate to name Trump and suggest that he depart workplace voluntarily, utilizing the specter of impeachment as leverage.
“I can’t be like Democrats and play politics with these,” McCarthy instructed reporters yesterday. However it’s laborious to think about some other technique to describe what he’s doing.
