With the House GOP set to take control of the chamber in January, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy is sticking to his threat of removing prominent Democrats including Adam Schiff from key committee assignments, and Schiff tore into the GOP leader’s comments Sunday on CNN.
Schiff currently chairs the intel committee, where both as ranking member and chairman he’s helped lead some of the Congressional investigations into Trump’s ties to Russia. It doesn’t take a lot of digging to see how those allying themselves with Trump would be hoping to punish anybody they could for the Russia probe, with the investigation by Special Counsel John Durham into the origins of the probe at least on the Justice Department side winding down after two trials that ended in acquittals and a guilty plea for altering an email that wasn’t confirmed to be critical to the furtherance of any major part of the probe. Schiff has previously promoted the idea that there was “collusion” between Trump and Russia, although the portrait provided by the evidence is complicated, a fact Republicans have proven eager to exploit in trying to depict Schiff as deceptive. McCarthy could, it appears, unilaterally remove Schiff from the intel committee because of the procedural make-up of that particular panel. (It’s what is known as a select committee.)
“McCarthy apparently doesn’t think it’s collusion if your campaign manager is giving inside polling data and battle strategy in key states to an agent of Russian intelligence while the Russians are helping your campaign, but most Americans would call that collusion,” Schiff said, contesting those trying to undercut observations he has made about the Trump team’s ties to Russia. “McCarthy’s problem is not with what I’ve said about Russia. McCarthy’s problem is he can’t get to 218 without Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Paul Gosar, and Matt Gaetz, and so he will do whatever they ask. And right now they’re asking for me to be removed from my committees, and he’s willing to do it… Kevin McCarthy has no ideology. He has no core set of beliefs. It’s very hard not only to get to 218 that way. It’s even more difficult to keep 218.”
To be elected as Speaker, it’s not just a majority in a particular member’s party that’s needed — it’s a majority in the chamber, and with Republicans’ pending control only slim and several extremist members already opposing Kevin, it’s unclear how he’ll get there. Watch Schiff below:
Schiff on CNN on Kevin McCarthy threatening to kick him off the intel committee: "McCarthy's problem is not with what I said about Russia. McCarthy's problem is he can't get to 218 without Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, and Matt Gaetz, and so he will do whatever they ask." pic.twitter.com/AR5nntoNYK
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 27, 2022
