GOP leader suggests Trump had to strike Iran because of impeachment

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy went on Fox News Tuesday morning and seemed to suggest Donald Trump ordered the strike killing Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani because the House Intelligence Committee focused on impeachment instead of Iran.

On Monday, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), chair of the Intelligence Committee, called Trump’s decision “provocative,” criticized Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian cultural sites, and described Trump’s behavior as “the acts of a President with no functional national security process.”

Asked by Fox host Pete Hegseth to respond, McCarthy blamed Schiff for Iranian-backed attacks against U.S. troops.

“You know what? He’s the chairman of the Intel Committee,” McCarthy said about Schiff. “Maybe had he spent the last year working on that — trying to protect us from what was happening in Iran, from the bombing of the tankers, Saudi Arabia, taking down our drones. Instead of taking that committee and making an impeachment, he would never have made that comment.”

Contrary to McCarthy’s statement, the Trump administration justified the killing of Soleimani by claiming it would stop imminent future threats. Even that explanation has been questioned by multiple members of Congress who have been briefed on the strike.

“My staff was briefed by a number of people representing a variety of agencies in the United States government and they came away with no feeling that there was evidence of an imminent attack,” Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) told CNN.

Schiff, who has seen some of the intelligence the Trump administration relied on, told the Washington Post on Monday that he is “certainly not satisfied that the intelligence supports the conclusion that the killing of Soleimani was going to either prevent attacks on the United States or reduce the risk to American lives.”

The Trump administration has not publicly released evidence of such threats.

While he is correct in that Schiff played a leading role in the impeachment of Trump, only the third U.S. president to be impeached, McCarthy does not explain how one California congressman could have stopped Iranian-backed terror activities, especially when Trump is both commander in chief and has more than a dozen intelligence agencies within the executive branch.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.