McCarthy Gets Revenge on Dems for Kicking Gosar, MTG Off Committees; Omar, Schiff, Swalwell Will Pay
Newly-minted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy plans to make good on his vow to kick Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, both of California, off the powerful House Intelligence Committee and Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota off the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
After House Democrats stripped GOP Reps. Paul Gosar of Arizona and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia of their committee memberships in 2021, Republicans warned they would live to regret it.
McCarthy told Punchbowl News, “Swalwell can’t get a security clearance in the private sector. I’m not going to give him a government security clearance.” He added that “Schiff has lied too many times to the American public. He should not be on Intel.”
Although McCarthy stopped short of calling the move revenge, in a Monday interview with Punchbowl News, he said, “I made all [three] cases before. It’s not like it’s anything new … Remember, this is what Nancy Pelosi, this is the type of Congress she wanted to have.”
.@PunchbowlNews AM:
Out: Schiff, Swalwell and Omar.
In: Gosar, Santos and MTG.
With passage of the House rules package, the next big fight for the chamber will be “populating” its committees. And that’s going to lead to a big partisan brawl on the floor. https://t.co/fPDfqh0StL— Punchbowl News (@PunchbowlNews) January 10, 2023
According to Punchbowl, McCarthy “can unilaterally block Schiff and Swalwell from serving” on the House Intelligence Committee, but a House vote would be required to remove Omar from the Foreign Affairs panel.
Typically, a minority leader submits the names of individuals they would prefer for a particular committee to the speaker for their approval. In this case, McCarthy will exercise his authority to block them.
In February 2021, Greene was stripped of her assignments on the Budget panel and the Education and Labor Committee over what NPR called “her past incendiary comments and apparent support of violence against Democrats.” Eleven House Republicans joined the Democrats in a 230-199 vote to remove her, the report said.
In November 2021, Gosar was censured and relieved of his committee assignments after posting a “bizarre animated video depicting violent acts toward progressive Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and President Joe Biden” on social media, according to the U.K. Daily Mail.
Adam Schiff’s name has almost become synonymous with “liar” since 2016. He may be one of the most unethical lawmakers ever to serve in the House. Despite the fact that evidence of former President Donald Trump’s collusion with the Kremlin to win the 2016 election never materialized, this repellent lawmaker claimed for three years that it was in “plain sight.” Shortly after the Mueller investigation ended in the spring of 2019, Schiff seized upon a July 2019 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and used it as the basis for Trump’s first impeachment. He then served as the lead House manager for the Senate trial which ended in Trump’s acquittal.
Eric Swalwell was romantically involved with a Chinese woman in the early 2010s named Christine Fang or “Fang Fang” who turned out to be a spy. Axios broke the story in December 2020 that Swalwell had been targeted by what “U.S. officials believe was a political intelligence operation run by China’s main civilian spy agency between 2011 and 2015.” The report says she “took part in fundraising activity” for Swalwell’s 2014 campaign and even “helped place at least one intern in Swalwell’s office.”
He also has the dubious distinction of having farted on national television.
Anti-Semitic, contemptuous remarks have become the calling card for Ilhan Omar, a disrespectful, ungrateful, far-left Squad member. She has been rebuked even by members of her own party for her bigotry.
But the moment she truly took my breath away came just one month after she’d arrived in D.C. She was questioning then-U.S. Special Envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams during a House hearing. Addressing him with a look that was a mixture of utter disdain and amusement, she asked, “Do you think that massacre [a bloody conflict in San Salvador] was a fabulous achievement that happened under our watch?” (The relevant portion comes at 2:15.)
For her part, Omar claimed that Republicans have “made it their mission to use fear, xenophobia, Islamophobia and racism to target me on the House Floor and through millions of dollars of campaign ads,” in a November statement.
Stripping these three Democrats from the committee memberships is a wonderful thing. Good on McCarthy for doing this. Let’s hope he continues down this path.
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