The pushback against House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s leadership continues and it appears that the case against the embattled and potential future Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives was first made by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
During an exclusive interview with Floridian Publisher Javier Manjarrés in October 2017, then-Congressman Ron DeSantis first expressed his lack of faith in House Republican Leadership over its refusal to investigate the Clinton Foundation and former House staffer Imran Awan.
Imran Awan, the House IT aide who was associated with an individual with ties to the terror group Hezbollah and arrested on a federal bank fraud charge, was never called to testify before the House Oversight Committee DeSantis sat on, or any other congressional committee under then-Speaker Paul Ryan and then-Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
“Part of the frustration that I have had, the House and Republican rule has not been as effective as it needs to be in doing oversight,” said Rep. DeSantis.
DeSantis accused Ryan and McCarthy of barring him and other Republicans from investigating the Clintons and Awan.
"I mean, you remember the Clinton Foundation? When that scandal broke, we were barred from the leadership from doing one hearing, one subpoena, and nothing in the congress about the Clinton Foundation. You had all this money going into the foundation from foreign governments, you had money going to Bill Clinton from foreign governments, you had Hillary taking action as Secretary of State," said DeSantis.
When asked if the biggest hurdle he faced was trying to overcome House Leadership, DeSantis responded that the Awan case could have been one of the biggest scandals in history.
“I think that there is concern that there is not going to be investigated as zealously as it needs to be, this has the potential to be the biggest scandal in Congress since the House banking scandal in the early ‘90s, but in order to get the facts, you really got to go at it that hasn’t been done so far, I can’t answer that,” added DeSantis.
That lack of faith in McCarthy is now being echoed by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R), the firebrand Florida lawmaker and ally of now-Gov. DeSantis.
“We need a leader with credibility across every spectrum of the Republican Conference, and that person is not Kevin McCarthy,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz.
Rep. Gaetz has openly-opposed Leader McCarthy, and while McCarthy recently received enough votes to win the Republican nomination to be Speaker, there is a very real possibility that he will not be elected Speaker in January.
To become the next Speaker of the House, McCarthy needs 218 votes. According to Gaetz, McCarthy does not have the votes and says he would support Rep. Jim Jordan instead, whom he also says is the “most-talented” and hardest working” member of Congress.
Rep. Jordan is also a strong ally of Gov. Ron DeSantis and was one of the first to know along with Manjarres that DeSantis was going to run for governor and not Attorney General during the 2018 midterm election cycle.
Since Republicans won the majority less than two weeks ago, Leader McCarthy and House Republicans announced that they would investigate the Biden administration, holding several press conferences to announce their intentions.
“We are going to make it very clear that this is now an investigation of President Biden,” Rep. James Comer said during a Capitol press conference along with several members, including Rep. Byron Donalds.
It will remain to be seen if Republicans follow through with the investigations. Republicans like DeSantis and Jordan were paid the same investigation lip service by McCarthy before.
