Rep. McCarthy questions legitimacy of FBI targeting Trump

Amber CoakleyAugust 10, 2022

U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., speaks to a South Carolina GOP fundraising dinner on Friday, July 29, 2022, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)

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UPDATED 6:45 AM PT – Wednesday, August 10, 2022

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) expressed outrage at the FBI’s raid on 45th President Donald Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago. During a press conference on Tuesday, McCarthy called the agency’s actions unprecedented and that they revealed a dark truth about the state of justice in the country. He also questioned the legitimacy of the raid while calling it “an act of hypocrisy.”

“We now find that justice in America is not equal,” said McCarthy. “It’s determined upon whether you want to go after a political person or not. And you go after your political foes, I think that’s wrong. It’s unprecedented that you would go into a former president — why wouldn’t they just ask the president if they have something there that they want? He surely would have provided it to them. Why did they have to show up in the manner that they did? Because this isn’t the way they treated other people. This isn’t the way they treated other people within their own party.”

Additionally, he touched on the special treatment given to individuals like Hillary Clinton who was not given the same level of scrutiny as President Trump under similar circumstances. Clinton drew controversy in 2016 when she was found to have used a private email server for official public communications, which contained classified information during her tenure as the secretary of state.

“They want to work out whether there’s something taken or not, move it back,” continued the California lawmaker. “It’s happened many times before, we have a history of this with Hillary Clinton and others. They were treated differently. That’s the problem. And you’ve never done this to a former president. So if this was going to be the case, shouldn’t the attorney general lay out to the American people today? Shouldn’t that have been the very first thing explaining why? Why would you go to this level without communicating? That’s what’s different to me. Why wouldn’t you have them wait? So many questions, I think all of America’s asking.”

McCarthy concluded by calling on American citizens to express outrage at this potential weaponization of the Department of Justice against the Democrat’s political opposition.

“I think, and it’s not just me saying this, you’ve got the Democrat former governor of New York, Cuomo, upset about it,” he noted. “You’ve got the Democrat who ran for president, Yang, upset about it. I think every American should be upset about this. You should never use the Justice Department on a political whim like this and I think that’s the real question that we’re looking at.”

In the meantime, McCarthy and several of his colleagues have called for an investigation into the Department of Justice and Attorney General Merrick Garland.