House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said in an interview that was published on Monday that if Republicans win control of the House in 2022 that he is kicking at least three Democrats off of certain committees.
McCarthy made the remarks in an interview with Breitbart News and said that the move comes in light of to Democrats kicking two Republicans — Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) — off their committees.
“The Democrats have created a new thing where they’re picking and choosing who can be on committees,” McCarthy said. “Never in the history [of Congress] have you had the majority tell the minority who can be on committee. But this new standard which these Democrats have voted for—if Eric Swalwell cannot get a security clearance in the private sector, there is no reason why he should be given one to be on Intel or Homeland Security. He will not be serving there.”
“Ilhan Omar should not be serving on Foreign Affairs,” McCarthy said. “This is a new level of what the Democrats have done.”
McCarthy also said that Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff would be kicked off of that committee as well.
“You look at Adam Schiff—he should not be serving on Intel when he has openly, knowingly now used a fake dossier, lied to the American public in the process and doesn’t have any ill will [and] says he wants to continue to do it,” McCarthy said. “We’re going to reshape—think about what happened in Afghanistan. Why did Afghanistan collapse so fast? Was the Intel Committee under Adam Schiff focused on impeachment and not on the safety of America? Why are people coming across the border that are on a terrorist watch list? What are they doing about it? Their own members on that committee say it’s not happening when it’s true. We need to have an Intel Committee that looks at what’s happening around the world and keeps America safe. It should do exactly what it was created [to do]—overseeing of our agencies and others. We’re going to hold people to a higher standard in the process if they want to be on the Intel Committee and the training to be a part of it. Take the politics out of it.”
Opponents have called for Swalwell to be removed from committees ever since an Axios report from December 2020 said that Swalwell became so close to an alleged Chinese spy that federal investigators had to intervene and provide him with a defensive briefing.
The alleged spy, Chinese national Christine Fang, “targeted up-and-coming local politicians in the Bay Area and across the country who had the potential to make it big on the national stage” through “campaign fundraising, extensive networking, personal charisma, and romantic or sexual relationships,” Axios reported. “Even though U.S. officials do not believe Fang received or passed on classified information, the case ‘was a big deal, because there were some really, really sensitive people that were caught up’ in the intelligence network, a current senior U.S. intelligence official said.”
