House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on Sunday that Democrats in Congress are unfairly targeting President Trump in a bid to manufacture grounds for impeachment.
The California Republican, a close Trump ally, told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” that the Democrats are using congressional oversight as a facade to undermine the president. McCarthy dismissed revelations that emerged from the testimony of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen before a House committee and said the president’s decision to grant son-in-law Jared Kushner a security clearance over internal objections is a nonissue.
“I think Congressman Nadler decided to impeach the president the day the president won the election,” McCarthy said, referring to Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., the House Judiciary Committee chairman, alleging that Trump obstructed justice.
“In this process to be impeached, show me where the president did anything to be impeached,” McCarthy added. “The other thing you have to find is, listen to what Nadler said. Nadler is setting the framework now that the Democrats are not to believe the Mueller report. They’re now saying we have to do our own investigation.”
Robert Mueller, the special counsel, has been investigating Trump and his associates for the possibility of collusion with Russia in the 2016 elections.
Trump is fending off charges from Democrats, and Cohen, his former attorney, that he violated campaign finance laws by paying off an adult film actress, just before Election Day in 2016, to keep their affair quiet. Cohen handled the payoff, and McCarthy, echoing the president, said it was Cohen’s responsibility to stop Trump, then the Republican nominee, from doing anything illegal.
“If you hire an attorney — if I hire an attorney to make sure I carry out the law, the attorney has a responsibility to tell me what’s right and wrong in the process,” McCarthy said.
The president also has been under fire for granting Kushner a security clearance despite recommendations against doing so by the agencies charged with deciding if an individual can be trusted with government secrets. Trump previously had denied extending special treatment to his son-in-law.
“The president looked at the concerns and the president says those weren’t concerns,” McCarthy said. “If we went through every person who had this authority before, I’ll — I’ll guarantee you other people’s had concerns raised with them. The president gets to make that decision.”
