House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy accused Democrats of attempting to frame President Trump and remove him from office via impeachment out of fear they’ll lose the 2020 election to him.
âWeâve never had an impeachment in the first term,” McCarthy said on Fox News hours before the first public impeachment proceedings began in the House. “They are so afraid to face the president in the election; theyâre trying to frame him.”
McCarthy has been one of Trump’s strongest supporters on Capitol Hill since Democrats announced a formal impeachment investigation into the president’s conduct. Democrats have seized on a July 25 phone call between Trump and the president of Ukraine after a whistleblower alleged the president abused his power in asking the foreign leader to investigate Joe Biden.
âThereâs no due process, the presidentâs attorney is not in the room, cannot cross-examine, we cannot have our witnesses,” McCarthy complained. “We canât have a whistleblower who this all started from, an individual who was not even on the phone call.”
Republicans have spent recent weeks undermining the credibility of the whistleblower, who they have requested be named and made to testify before House committees.
Democrats are running a “sham” impeachment, Republicans have said, and are looking to undo the result of the 2016 election. But naming the whistleblower would put the person in grave danger and trigger a chilling effect on future whistleblowers, Democratic leadership warned.
The White House released a transcript of the call, which McCarthy and other Republicans point to as evidence of a lack of a quid pro quo with Ukraine. Democrats have already decided Trump is guilty, McCarthy said.
“Yeah. There’s an impeach inquiry going forward. It probably never would move forward, had the speaker waited 48 hours to have the transcript. We vote on important things every day,” McCarthy said during an interview with 60 Minutes last month.
Trump has called the impeachment proceedings into his conduct the “greatest political witch hunt in American history.”
McCarthy said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has compromised his integrity and is not interested in getting to the truth, just achieving a political outcome.
âTheyâve [House Democrats] already accused him of being guilty,” McCarthy said. “They keep changing the term because theyâre trying to find a crime.”
[WATCH: Officials testify in first public hearing of impeachment investigation]
