House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Tuesday he isn’t opposed to special counsel Robert Mueller testifying before Congress about his findings from the federal Russia investigation.
“I’ll leave that up to Mueller,” the California Republican told reporters during a press conference on Capitol Hill. “If he wants to come, I have no problem with him coming. I think more transparency is great.”
McCarthy didn’t directly answer whether he believed a second special counsel should be appointed to probe the Justice Department and its handling of the Russia inquiry, but he did say Attorney General William Barr should also appear before congressional investigators about his four-page summary of Mueller’s report.
McCarthy on Tuesday reiterated a call he made the day before that lawmakers who have spent the past two years saying “there was circumstantial evidence of collusion” between President Trump and Moscow ahead of the 2016 election, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., “owe America an apology.” McCarthy additionally sent House Speaker Nancy Pelosi well-wishes on her 79th birthday.
“Today is Nancy Pelosi’s birthday. I wish the speaker a happy birthday,” he said of the California Democrat. “A wish I hope she makes today is that she will turn a page, that she will also take a moment within her own conference — because when it comes to the intel committee, those are selected by the speaker and the leader on the Republican side — to bring the confidence back to the intel committee. You cannot have a chair of a committee that misled the American public, misled their conference.”
