‘We Will Look Into Both’: McCarthy Breaks With Comer, Says House Oversight Needed on Both Trump and Biden Docs Cases

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) took questions on Tuesday about the ongoing special counsel investigations of both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

While speaking to reporters, McCarthy struck a noticeably different tune than House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) who told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday, “With respect to investigating President Trump, there have been so many investigations of President Trump. I don’t feel like we need to spend a whole lot of time investigating President Trump because the Democrats have done that for the past six years.”

McCarthy, during his remarks, vowed to “look into both situations” and argued that oversight over a special counsel is a key function of the House.

“The White House is calling out Republicans as hypocrites in terms of the reaction from famous classified documents to Trump. What’s your reaction to that statement? And also, do you see a difference in the two investigations?” an out-of-view reporter asked McCarthy.

“Look, I see from an aspect of how it’s treated. And the one thing you always want is fair justice in America,” McCarthy replied.

“So let’s just put it on its premise that the past president, President Trump, had documents that he was his lawyers were talking with, the archives knew they were there. They actually asked to put another lock on. So it was behind lock at any time, they could have walked in and grabbed it. No, they had the FBI come and raid Mar-a-Lago,” McCarthy continued.

Notably, the search of Mar-a-Lago was conducted with a warrant after Trump’s legal team submitted a certified letter claiming no more documents were at Mar-a-Lago, which turned out to be false.

“Now we have a current sitting president that had gone on 60 Minutes criticizing President Trump for what he’s done. We had all the Democrats attacking. They even put a special counsel prosecutor to go after President Trump on this. Before the election, they found out President Biden had these documents not under lock, a simple push of a button that could open a garage door that every American has and knows what happens with how people get robbed, mainly by going through a garage door. It makes it quite easy,” McCarthy added as he continued to call out Biden’s apparent hypocrisy on the issue.

“Did you have concerns that Trump actually had the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago?” asked another reporter.

“Look, I have concerns. I have concerns when any classified documents are anywhere outside. Look, I deal as a gang of eight inside a skiff, but I don’t take documents out of there, presidents are different,” McCarthy replied, adding:

But the one thing I will say here, too is a president who just left office is not the individual who’s packing up their boxes, who’s not moving them. So how much does he even know in that process and others? And did you have to have an FBI raid it? At any time, the president would have lawyers provided it to them.

But it’s interesting, in the raid of Mar-a-Lago, did they just go to where they knew the boxes are already were or did they go through the former first lady’s clothes? Did they go through his son’s area? What have they done? They haven’t even gone into the garage. He let some attorney do it for Biden. So it’s not a fair process when you equalize this out. And that is what is wrong with the system. And is it right that Garland should even be in charge of this? Look, the House we have a constitutional responsibility to oversee the Justice Department, and that also means overseeing special counsels.

“So we will look into both situations,” McCarthy concluded.

“So both investigations?” asked another reporter.

“Yes, yes, yes,” replied McCarthy.

“What do you think of the special counsel? Is he the right person for this job, or do you?” another reporter began to ask as McCarthy jumped in.

“Look, I don’t know enough. It is just interesting to me when they select someone, they always have ties to someone else. They have a very big department there. I would want to make sure any time you’re going to deal with a situation as serious as this, that you can have some fresh eyes and a non-biased, and I’m not saying someone’s biased, but it’s just interesting to me that it seems like they’ve worked on cases before that could be on one side or another. How it comes out, I don’t know. I don’t know any of that. But I would just hope whatever comes forward, you want the American public to trust the final answer. That’s why the House will oversee and look at these investigations as well,” McCarthy concluded.

Watch the full clip above via C-SPAN

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