McCarthy to Strip 3 Democrats of Plum Committee Assignments

Kevin McCarthy is about to get the payback he’s sought for so long.

McCarthy confirmed his intention to boot Reps. Swalwell, Schiff and Omar from the influential Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees.

The move is retaliation for Nancy Pelosi kicking Republican firebrands Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar from their panel assignments. Greene “liked” a Facebook comment before joining Congress suggesting that someone should shoot Nancy Pelosi. The congresswoman later apologized.

Gosar became the second lawmaker stripped from his committees in the 117th Congress after tweeting an animated video of him killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. McCarthy spoke to Gosar, leading the Arizona Republican to delete the tweet and issue a statement.

It should be noted that Eric Swalwell’s days on the Intelligence Committee are up. Ilhan Omar’s fate appears sealed. Her assignments are up for a full vote before the GOP-controlled House. But Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., was destined to remain on the Intel Committee after serving as its chair had McCarthy not acted.

And, as HotAir blogger Ed Morrisey astutely observes, Schiff was the most prominent member of the targeted group:

Essentially, then, McCarthy will only target Schiff for committee-stripping retribution. And that will likely be the most well-founded and politically significant move anyway. Schiff has repeatedly lied in his public statements about the evidence in the Russia-collusion probe, employing tactics of Joe McCarthy and hiding behind his access to classified material to toss unfounded accusations about his political opponents.

Even worse, and also completely substantiated in the Twitter Files, Schiff abused his position as committee chair to silence and censor his political opponents on line, including journalist Paul Sperry, who exposed Schiff’s lies. If Democrats attempt to claim that their action on Greene was a limited precedent based on gross misbehavior, that won’t do anything to argue against booting Schiff not just from his Intel assignment but all of his committee seats.

Let’s not forget too that this will likely be Schiff’s last term anyway. Dianne Feinstein is expected to stand down rather than run for re-election in 2024, and Schiff has made no secret of his ambition to replace her. With all of these black marks popping up on his record, Schiff might still change his mind, but it’s in the interest of the GOP to get these black marks on the record with as high a profile as possible before that cycle begins. Republicans likely won’t even get on the Senate ballot in 2024 thanks to the state’s all-in primary system, but at least they can try to keep Schiff off of it as well.

After the House censured Rep. Gosar last year, then-Minority Leader McCarthy gave a speech from the well of the House, calling Democrats hypocrites for refusing to hold their own members accountable.

As Roll Call reported at the time:

McCarthy referenced several instances that were not examples of a member calling for violence against another member. He mentioned a time when California Democrat Maxine Waters was not formally reprimanded for comments she made during the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd. Democrats defeated a measure to censure her for telling protesters that if Chauvin was acquitted they should “get more confrontational.”

McCarthy also referred to California’s Eric Swalwell being targeted by a suspected Chinese spy and to anti-Semitic rhetoric by Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar, neither of which resulted in them losing their committee assignments.

“Let me be clear: I do not condone violence, and Representative Gosar had echoed that sentiment. The video was deleted. But Democrats won’t listen because they will do anything to distract from the failures of one-party rule in one year destroying a nation,” the minority leader said.

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