House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., reamed out a CNN reporter Monday and asked if she was prepared to defend her network after she asked him about former President Donald Trump’s recent classified documents-related federal indictment.
Surrounded by reporters, McCarthy called out CNN’s hiring of former federal law enforcement officials who have been accused by Republicans of abusing their positions.
“The idea of equal justice is not playing out here,” the speaker told CNN’s Lauren Fox. “You’re with CNN right?”
“Let’s take Andrew McCabe for example,” he said, before Fox interrupted him.
“But this is a different set of circumstances,” she said and asked McCarthy again if he was prepared to defend the former president.
“Are you prepared to defend your network, CNN?” McCarthy fired back. “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.”
McCarthy also mentioned James Clapper, another federal law enforcement official who claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Like McCabe, Clapper has also worked in cable news since resigning from the Pentagon.
Following Friday’s federal indictment, McCabe described the storage of sensitive documents at Trump’s estate Mar-a-Lago as “absolutely a spy’s dream.”
McCarthy and other House Republicans have said Trump is being treated unfairly by President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice and have slammed the indictment as politically motivated.
The former president, who is also a candidate in the 2024 presidential election, stands accused of threatening national security by mishandling classified documents and has been charged with more than 30 counts, most of which stem from potential violations of the Espionage Act.
Trump is scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday in Miami.
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