Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) wasn’t having any of CNN’s nonsense about the Trump indictment in the classified document probe. Speaker McCarthy has had good and bad moments; this was one of his best. He took this reporter to the shredder, citing the explicit double standard with these indictments. Donald Trump might have been sloppy with classified materials, having stored some of them in his bathroom at Mar-a-Lago. The audio recordings are also not pretty, but Joe Biden also was caught mishandling classified material. He left some in his garage at his Delaware home. It was caught on camera. Hillary Clinton did all her official State Department business on an unsecured and unauthorized server. She got away with it.
When the reporter tried to push back, McCarthy cited how CNN still has James Clapper and Andrew McCabe on contributor contracts. McCabe was fired from the FBI for leaking sensitive information about the investigation into the Clinton Foundation and then lying about it. Clapper outright lied to Congress about the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance operations. There was talk about charging Clapper with perjury, but the statute of limitations has long expired. It helped when a good portion of that time when charges could have been presented happened when Eric Holder was attorney general. Bonchie at RedState transcribed the exchange:
We have a sitting president who possessed classified documents dating back decades to his time as Vice President and as a Senator. Yet he is now weaponizing the federal government to go after his leading political opponent.
— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) June 12, 2023
Where is the equal justice under the law? pic.twitter.com/5bez0yzCso
McCarthy just LIT UP this CNN reporter about them hiring McCabe and Clapper after they leaked classified information and interfered in 2020 pic.twitter.com/JyZg171M0z
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) June 12, 2023
REPORTER: But this is a different case, this is a different set of circumstances. Right? The former president is accused of misleading law enforcement, of a conspiracy of obstructing justice. That’s a different set of facts. Are you prepared to defend him as the former president and what other actions will the House take in the House Judiciary Committee in terms of funding?
MCCARTHY: I’m answering your question. You can ask me any question you want, but I’m entitled to answer the question. You can’t put words in my mouth. Even though your network can hire Andrew McCabe who was fired from the FBI for leaking classified documents. Did you remove him from your network? No, you continue to put him on to give judgment against President Trump. You also hire Clapper.
REPORTER: What steps is the House going to take in terms of…is there any effort to defund the FBI, any effort to defund the Department of Justice after what you’ve seen the last couple of days?
MCCARTHY: So your network hires Clapper, who literally lied to the American public. One of 51 other individuals that had briefings and used it politically to tell the American public that a laptop was Russia collusion even though it had all this information about the Biden administration. Are you prepared to get rid of those people from your network? Because my concern as a policymaker is that when you weaponize government, and now you’re weaponizing networks, that is wrong.
Again, CNN hired leakers and liars to offer analysis on these topics, people who have mishandled classified information. But if you’re part of the spook community or the wider intelligence community, you can do that apparently.
Joe Biden signed off on the investigation into Donald Trump, and the Justice Department falls within the executive, so the optics of this not looking like the president using the vast legal resources of the federal government to go after his political enemies don’t fly with half the country. We know the FBI is interfering in our elections, peddled a fake Russian collusion narrative to hamstring the Trump administration, with the end goal of indicting him, and worked with Big Tech to develop censorship systems to suppress conservative opinion to influence the wider audience.
