Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) have falsely claimed that Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy made a “corrupt bargain” with fellow Republicans during the speaker race to remove them from certain committees.
In a letter to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) on Tuesday, McCarthy rejected the top Democrat’s appointment of Schiff and Swalwell to the House Intelligence Committee. Jeffries had attempted to appoint the two disgraced Democrats to the committee even though McCarthy had already made his decision to remove them.
I have rejected the appointments of Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell for the House Intelligence Committee.
I am committed to returning the @HouseIntel Committee to one of genuine honesty and credibility that regains the trust of the American people. pic.twitter.com/ePxlbanxta
— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) January 25, 2023
Despite McCarthy already expressing his exact reasoning for removing them on multiple occasions, Schiff and Swalwell released a joint statement alongside Omar — who McCarthy wants to remove from the Foreign Affairs Committee — making false accusations about the motive behind the Speaker’s decision.
The three Democrats falsely claimed that McCarthy had “struck a corrupt bargain in his desperate, and nearly failed, attempt to win the Speakership, a bargain that required political vengeance against the three of us.”
Meanwhile, the claim is easily disproven, as McCarthy has made multiple statements about his intention to remove Schiff, Swalwell, and Omar from their committees — some of which date back long before the Republicans had even regained the majority in the 2022 midterms.
Notably, McCarthy spoke about his intentions during a long-form interview with Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle in December 2021.
“The Democrats have created a new thing where they’re picking and choosing who can be on committees,” the California Republican told Boyle. “Never in the history [of Congress] have you had the majority tell the minority who can be on [a] 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.”
McCarthy argued that “Ilhan Omar should not be serving on Foreign Affairs” — then went on to discuss Schiff, who served as the chairman of the Intelligence Committee in the last Congress.
“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,” he stated. “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,” McCarthy added. “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.”
McCarthy’s comments in the interview were even aired on CNN, where host Dana Bash actually admitted that the GOP congressman was “right” when he stated that Democrats had set the precedent of the majority party dictating who the minority party can appoint to committees.
