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On Tuesday, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) lashed out at reporters who questioned his decision to remove Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) from the House Intelligence Committee, of which Schiff was the ranking Democrat.
McCarthy, who has been repeating these talking points for nearly a year, sounds convincing when he says that Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) made lies that should disqualify them from serving on the intelligence committee. But his comments don’t hold water.
In 2019 and 2020, Schiff was the lead manager in the impeachment proceedings against former President Trump. The investigation was sparked by a whistleblower complaint suggesting that Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into investigating Joe and Hunter Biden. McCarthy suggested that Schiff had information about the whistleblower that he was not sharing with the public.
“When a whistleblower came forward, [Schiff] said he did not know the individual,” McCarthy told reporters yesterday, “even though his staff had met with him and set it up.” That’s partially true. A member of Schiff’s staff did meet with the whistleblower—a fact Schiff denied when speaking to the media. But there’s no evidence that Schiff knew who the whistleblower was, as Glenn Kessler explains in the Washington Post.
McCarthy also accused Swalwell of lying...
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