Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) criticized Republicans’ bids to boot him and Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from their committee assignments while supporting far-right members in their own conference, telling CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday that “the hypocrisy just grabs you by the throat.”
Driving the news: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) formally removed Schiff and Swalwell from their seats on the House Intelligence Committee last week, the latest in an ongoing tit-for-tat battle with Democrats over committee assignments.
- McCarthy had vowed to remove the lawmakers over Swalwell’s association with a Chinese spy and Schiff’s promotion of the Steele dossier.
- The move was a reprisal for the decision by Democrats and some Republicans in 2021 to remove Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) from their committees.
- McCarthy previously vowed to remove Omar from her seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee over comments she has made about Israel that colleagues in both parties labeled anti-Semitic. The move is opposed by a group of House Republicans.
State of play: Schiff, joined by Omar and Swalwell on the program, said that the Republican effort to remove them from their committees was “all pretext.”
- “If you look at the leader of the Republican party, Donald Trump, he is dining with white nationalists and anti-semites. The people that Kevin Mccarthy just put on committees, like Marjorie Taylor Greene and others, are speaking at white nationalist rallies,” Schiff said.
- According to Schiff, McCarthy’s moves had nothing to do with the conduct of Democratic members but rather were emblematic of his reliance on extreme party members, given the GOP’s slim majority.
- “How can you, on the one hand, suggest that these are some kind of legitimate basis for unseating Democrats from committees, and put someone like George Santos on any committee? The hypocrisy just grabs you by the throat,” Schiff said.
Omar called out a number of Republicans for their past Islamophobic remarks during the program, noting that, “these people are okay with Islamophobia, they’re okay with trafficking in their own ways, in anti-semitism.”
- Swalwell said McCarthy was committing “political abuse” because he perceived the three of them as effective political opponents.