House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) confirmed Monday that he plans to remove three high-profile Democrats from their committee positions if Republicans take back the chamber this November and he wins the Speaker’s gavel the following January.
In an interview with Breitbart, McCarthy vowed to kick Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) off the House Intelligence Committee, as well as remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“The Democrats have created a new thing where they’re picking and choosing who could be on committee,” McCarthy told the outlet. “Never in the history [of Congress] have you had the majority tell the minority who could 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’s no reason why he should be given one to be on Intel or Homeland Security.
“So that will not — he will not be serving there,” McCarthy continued, later adding: “Ilhan Omar should not be serving on Foreign Affairs. This is a new level of what the Democrats have done.”
Swalwell has come under scrutiny for his connections with an alleged Chinese spy, which led Republicans to unsuccessfully attempt to remove him from the intelligence committee last year.
Omar, meanwhile, has repeatedly been criticized — including by members of her own party — for remarks deemed anti-American and anti-semitic. Most recently, she was forced to take back a tweet in which she stated the US, Israel, Hamas, and the Taliban have all committed “unthinkable atrocities.”
GOP lawmakers have repeatedly taken aim at Schiff for his handling of the Russia investigation, particularly his push to investigate the now-infamous 2016 Steele dossier.
“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 told Breitbart.
“Think about what happened in Afghanistan,” the minority leader added. “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.”
If McCarthy follows through on his threat, it would be a tit-for-tat response to Democrats stripping Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) of their committee assignments over social media posts.
The House voted to remove Greene from the Education and Budget committees in February after tweets from before she was elected included support for the QAnon conspiracy theory, controversial remarks on the 9/11 truth movement, and questions about whether mass shootings were possible “false flag” operations. Eleven Republicans voted to support the move.
Gosar was censured and removed from his posts on the House Oversight Committee and House Committee on Natural Resources in November after posting an anime video depicting a character with his face stabbing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and attacking President Biden.
Democrats later weighed holding a vote to remove Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) from her committees after video emerged over the Thanksgiving holiday of her making Islamophobic comments about Omar, but ultimately decided against it.
McCarthy asserted in November that he would restore Greene and Gosar to their former committees if Republicans regain the House and potentially give them “better committee assignments.”
“It is always difficult to take Kevin McCarthy seriously,” Schiff spokeswoman Lauren French said in a statement Monday. “Nevertheless, allowing McCarthy to get anywhere near the Speaker’s gavel would be catastrophic — not just because of his propensity for falsehoods and smears, but because he will exist solely to do Donald Trump’s bidding — even potentially overturning the 2024 results.”