House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy shut down Sunday talk of using impeachment as a political tool against President Biden on Sunday.
The California Republican who is poised to become speaker if his party wins the House majority told Fox News Channel that immediately impeaching Mr. Biden was not on the GOP’s agenda.
“One thing we learned that the Democrats did is they used impeachment for political reasons,” McCarthy said in an interview on “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo. “We believe in the rule of law.”
Mr. McCarthy said that Republicans would not be afraid to hold the White House accountable when in power, but ruled out weaponizing impeachment to settle political scores.
“We’re not going to pick and choose just because somebody has power. We’re going to uphold the law,” he said. “At any time, if someone breaks the law and the ramification becomes impeachment, we would move towards that, but we’re not going to use it for political purposes.”
The announcement comes as a handful of members of Mr. McCarthy’s conference have signaled a desire to impeach Mr. Biden once in the majority. GOP lawmakers have cited the White House’s unwillingness to stop a massive influx of illegal immigration through the U.S.-Mexico border as reason enough.
“We will secure our borders and finally my friends, we will impeach Joe Biden for his dereliction of duty,” Rep. Madison Cawthorn, North Carolina Republican, said during a rally with former President Donald Trump over the weekend.
Mr. McCarthy cautioned, however, that while impeachment could be necessary under the right circumstances, Republicans were going to focus on kitchen-table issues when in power.
“Our focus is going to be securing our border, making us energy independent, bringing these prices down, making our schools and streets safe again, and holding this administration accountable,” said the minority leader. “We will take the facts wherever [they] go because America’s been through too much with people playing politics with the concept of impeachment, but if it rises to that level, we would have the law determine that.”
Correction: A prior version of this article misstated the network on which Mr. McCarthy appeared on Sunday.
• Haris Alic can be reached at halic@washingtontimes.com.
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