House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said that Rep. Adam Schiff would be Republicans’ first choice to testify in the ongoing impeachment proceedings.
The House passed a resolution on Thursday to continue impeachment proceedings into President Trump by a vote of 232-196. The vote was largely split along party lines, with one independent siding with the Democrats in support of the resolution and two Democrats voting with Republicans against it.
The resolution allows House Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff to open impeachment hearings up to the public and release transcripts and testimonies from witnesses. Since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment process on Sept. 24, all witnesses have testified in closed-door hearings and parts of their testimonies have only been revealed through selective leaks.
McCarthy appeared on CBS on Sunday and criticized the impeachment process while calling on House Democrats to grant their Republican colleagues more authority in the investigations, pointing to how the proceedings against former Presidents Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon worked.
“What Adam Schiff now has the power to do is tell Devin Nunes, the ranking member, that he cannot have any other member on that committee have time to ask questions,” the California Republican told Face the Nation. “In every committee today, it doesn’t matter what the issue is, you can yield your time to another individual, but not now. They want total control.”
McCarthy asserted that Schiff should be brought to testify because his staff had early contact with the whistleblower who sparked impeachment by filing an official complaint about a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“I think the very first person we should bring is Adam Schiff and his staff,” McCarthy said. “He is the only person who knows who this whistleblower is.
“How many times did he meet with the whistleblower? What did he talk to the whistleblower about? Because when the whistleblower even went to the inspector general, he never mentioned that he went with Adam Schiff,” McCarthy continued.
The whistleblower’s attorney has denied allegations that Schiff helped his client write the complaint but confirmed that the whistleblower reached out to Schiff’s staff with procedural questions on how to file a whistleblower complaint.
