On Monday, writing for MSNBC, columnist Steve Benen tore into House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for his pretense for vowing to remove Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) from the House Intelligence Committee should Republicans take control of the House.
“Why is he still chair of the committee? And why is he even on the committee?” said McCarthy, according to the Washington Times. “In a new Congress, if it’s a new majority, he will not be. You cannot make this committee political.” He claimed that in particular, what made the committee "political" was he didn't investigate Hunter Biden's laptop.
"First, there’s little to suggest Schiff has done what McCarthy has accused him of doing. To hear the minority leader tell it, the California Democrat has both 'lied' and 'politicized' the intelligence committee. He’s actually done neither," wrote Benen. "Second, if McCarthy is concerned about the politicization of the House Intelligence panel, I’d love to introduce the minority leader to Devin Nunes — who, during his tenure as Schiff’s predecessor, literally held secret meetings at the Trump White House as part of a ham-fisted political scheme."
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It would actually be unprecedented for McCarthy to boot the other party's committee leader off of the congressional panel. In fact, Republicans have made clear they are itching to do this in part as revenge for Democrats taking the step of stripping Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) of their committee assignments for extremist behavior, something that was itself unprecedented because generally both parties have policed their own members and revoked assignments themselves when members are this embroiled in controversy.
"The problem, to the extent that reality matters, is that Gosar and Greene were punished for a specific reason: They’re members who were accused of espousing violence. Democrats didn’t change the rules so much as they set a standard: To talk of political violence is to cross an important line," wrote Benen. "What McCarthy described on Friday is something different: To reject conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden’s laptop is also to cross a line."
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