Kevin McCarthy Berates CNN Reporter For Network Hiring McCabe During Tense Exchange on Trump Indictment

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy tore into a CNN reporter on Monday afternoon for its decision to hire former deputy director of the FBI Andrew McCabe and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

“You’re with CNN, right?” asked McCarthy during an exchange in the Capitol about the indictment of former president Donald Trump by the Department of Justice. After the reporter affirmed that she was, McCarthy brought up McCabe as an example of a former official who was removed for trying to use the government for partisan political purposes.

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

“Okay so let’s talk about this even further because when somebody weaponizes government and they actually get removed from government — let’s take Andrew McCabe, okay? Former deputy director –” began McCarthy before being interrupted.

“But this is a different case, this is a different set of circumstances, right? I mean 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?” she replied.

After some crosstalk, McCarthy launched into a critique of CNN:

You can’t put words in my mouth, even though your network hired 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 hired Clapper. Clapper has come out publicly and —

After again being interrupted and asked what the House would do in response to the indictment, and whether it would consider defunding the FBI or DOJ, the speaker picked up where he left off.

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 people that a laptop was Russia collusion even though it had all this other 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. So we will take all of our power to make sure that the legal system in America gets the blinders back on and people get treated fairly. I have a real problem that your network actually pays people who did classified information and then lied to the American public to try to influence a presidential election, and then you put him on your network to try to give an opinion about a president.

McCabe was fired by former attorney general Jeff Sessions in 2018 after an internal investigation revealed that he had improperly released information about an investigation into the Clinton Foundation to the press.

In reference to Clapper, McCarthy was pointing out that he signed onto an October 2020 letter erroneously labeling a factually accurate New York Post story about Hunter Biden “Russian disinformation.”