The Schiff-Swalwell saga: Is McCarthy being politic, or playing politics?
Jamie McIntyre
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) insists his rejection of California Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell to be members of the Intelligence Committee is all about protecting national security.
House Democrats say it’s vengeance, plain and simple, payback for the barring of Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) from committee assignments in the last Congress, when Democrats were in charge and Nancy Pelosi was speaker.
House Democrats in February 2021 banished Greene from committee assignments following incendiary and violent statements issued before being elected to Congress. In 2021, the House voted to censure Gosar and stripped his committee assignments after he posted an anime video to social media showing him appearing to kill Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Joe Biden.
On one level, the Schiff-Swalwell dispute is a particularly acrimonious version of the partisan rancor that passes for politics as usual in Washington these days. And on another level, it’s an illustrative example of the dueling realities that have deepened the divide between Democrats and Republicans.
Take the case of Schiff, despised by many on the Right for what they saw as a hyperpartisan campaign to take down former President Donald Trump, along with accusations that he was a chronic leaker of information from classified briefings he received as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee while Democrats held the House.
“Adam Schiff openly lied to the American public,” said McCarthy in his first news conference as speaker last month. “He told you he had proof … He put America, for four years, through an impeachment that he knew was a lie.”
“Was that the role of the Intel Committee? No,” McCarthy continued. “So, what I am doing with the Intel Committee is bringing it back to the jurisdiction it’s supposed to do, forward-looking to keep this country safe. Keep the politics out of it.”
The case against Schiff includes his claim, made during an appearance on the CBS Sunday program Face the Nation, in March 2019 that there was “direct evidence” of collusion in emails between Donald Trump’s son, Don Jr., and Russian intermediaries.
But when the report from special counsel Robert Mueller was released two months later, it noted “collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law.” The Mueller report went on to state “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
In a public statement on May 29, Mueller said it was “our conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy.”
On that basis, McCarthy said Schiff knowingly lied about evidence that didn’t exist. Schiff, a former federal prosecutor, still says his view of the Mueller report is defensible, arguing Mueller came to “no conclusion” as to whether Trump and his campaign colluded with the Russians.
“What he does reveal in his report, what we found in our investigation is that Donald Trump’s campaign manager was sharing internal campaign polling data and a strategy for key battleground states with an agent of Russian intelligence, while that same unit of Russian intelligence was helping the Trump campaign, both with the hacking-and-dumping operation, as well as a social media operation to elect Donald Trump,” Schiff said on CNN late last month. “To most Americans, that is collusion.”
Schiff is also accused of lying when he denied knowing the identity of the whistleblower who triggered the first impeachment investigation into President Trump.
“The Washington Post identified that, yes, before the person became a whistleblower, they sought advice from the committee,” Schiff said on CNN. “When I was asked the question, I thought they were referring to whether we had brought the whistleblower in. And I should have been more clear in my answer.”
“But, again, let’s be clear what’s really going on here. McCarthy … needs Marjorie Taylor Greene’s vote. He needs Paul Gosar’s vote. He wants to retaliate for their removal from the committee.”
As for Swalwell, McCarthy says he was compromised by a female Chinese spy who Swalwell met when he was a Dublin, California, city councilmember running for Congress a decade ago.
The woman in question was identified as Christine Fang in a December 2020 Axios expose, which described her as “a suspected Chinese intelligence operative” who “targeted up-and-coming local politicians in the Bay Area and across the country who had the potential to make it big on the national stage” between 2011 and 2015, when she left the country.
Fang was a fundraiser for Swalwell’s 2014 congressional reelection campaign, and according to Axios, was involved in “romantic or sexual relationships with at least two Midwestern mayors,” but there was no evidence Swalwell was one of her paramours.
Swalwell insists as soon as he was notified by the FBI that Fang could be working on behalf of Chinese intelligence, he cut ties with her and fully cooperated.
“Don’t take my word for it. Take the FBI’s word for it,” Swalwell said, also on CNN. “Three different times, they came out and said two things: All I did was help them, and, also, I was never under any suspicion of wrongdoing.”
McCarthy has intimated there is more to the story than he can reveal publicly.
“If you got the briefing I got from the FBI, you wouldn’t have Swalwell on any committee,” he said at his news conference. “You’re going to tell me there’s 200 other Democrats that couldn’t fill that slot, but they kept him on it? The only way that they even knew it came forward is when they went to nominate him to the Intel Committee. And then the FBI came and told the leadership, ‘He’s got a problem.'”
“There’s nothing there,” insisted Swalwell on CNN. “I did what every American should have. This is some Bakersfield B.S. It’s Kevin McCarthy weaponizing his ability to commit this political abuse.”
In a letter to McCarthy recommending Schiff and Swalwell’s return to the Intelligence Committee where Schiff had been chairman, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) argued their cases were entirely different from Greene and Gosar. That pair of House Republicans, Jeffries said, were stripped of their committee assignments “after a bipartisan vote of the House found them unfit … for directly inciting violence against their colleagues.”
“It does not serve as precedent or justification for the removal of Representatives Schiff and Swalwell, given that they have never exhibited violent thoughts or behavior,” Jeffries continued.
McCarthy was unmoved, replying to Jeffries, “I appreciate the loyalty you have to your Democrat colleagues … but I cannot put partisan loyalty above national security.”
“It is my assessment that the misuse of [the Intelligence Committee] during the 116th and 117th Congress severely undermined its primary national security and oversight mission — ultimately leaving our nation less safe.”
Both Schiff and Swalwell seem resigned to their banishment. Swalwell is vowing “not to back down” and is asserting that McCarthy’s “false claims” have resulted in a steady stream of death threats.
“We hear it on voice mails. We see it in emails or shouted at airports or public spaces,” Swalwell said he’s told McCarthy. “You have to condemn the violence and stop spreading smears. Otherwise, you have put a target on all of our backs, the backs of our families. And there are real-life consequences, as we have just seen, sadly, with Speaker Pelosi’s husband.”
Meanwhile, Schiff announced he will seek the Senate seat currently held by Dianne Feinstein, who will turn 90 in June and is expected to retire.
Schiff said his decision to run is unrelated to his beef with McCarthy.
“Although I do think that Kevin McCarthy gave me another powerful reason for Californians to vote for me, and that is they could make Adam Schiff Kevin McCarthy’s home-state senator.”