House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) rebuffed calls on the Right to impeach President Joe Biden if Republicans take control of the House of Representatives after the midterm elections.
Moving to impeach the president should not be a political decision, McCarthy told Punchbowl News on Wednesday. Some firebrand Republicans have called for Biden’s impeachment and that of his Cabinet officials as Washington continues to reel from former President Donald Trump’s two impeachments.
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“I think the country doesn’t like impeachment used for political purposes at all,” McCarthy said. “If anyone ever rises to that occasion, you have to, but I think the country wants to heal and … start to see the system that actually works. What we’ve done in the Commitment to America, but we’re really focused on the economy, on crime, and the border. [Voters] don’t want you to focus on it. We focus on accountability.”
McCarthy added that he doesn’t think anyone in the Biden administration has committed offenses grave enough for him to bring forth articles of impeachment if he becomes the speaker of the House in the new session of Congress that begins in January.
“I don’t see it before me right now,” he said. “You watch what the Democrats did. They all came out and said they would impeach before [Donald] Trump was ever sworn in. There wasn’t a purpose for it. If you spent all that time arguing against using impeachment for political purposes, you got to be able to sustain exactly what you said.”
He also hinted at what investigations he would want a Republican-led House to pursue and what the committee shake-up might look like. McCarthy told the outlet that he may consider select committees to investigate the botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, as well as China’s relationship with the United States.
“We don’t do anything where we oversee how China’s going to capture market [share] from every different industry in America,” he said. “Is there one place to tell you all that happened with their emerging markets so then you can utilize that?”
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In terms of committee assignments, he would invite Democrats to participate in the select committees but would bar Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA) from serving on the House Intelligence Committee and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. However, he wouldn’t ban them from other committees.
Swalwell is targeted for having a past relationship with a spy for the Chinese Communist Party and Schiff because he pressed for investigations into the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia. Omar has been critical of Israel and is linked to a nonprofit group that has alleged ties to Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas.
For any of this to happen, the GOP needs a net gain of at least five House seats in the midterm elections, which are less than three weeks away.
