House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should formally sideline House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) from the Democrats’ “impeachment inquiry” of President Donald Trump.

McCarthy explained Schiff should now be considered a “fact witness” in the broader investigation of these matters given his and his staff’s role in coordinating with the whistleblower over the summer.

McCarthy said the pair of major revelations this week—first that Schiff’s staff met with the whistleblower before he or she reported concerns to the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG), and second that the whistleblower concealed the Schiff staff meeting from the ICIG, as the ICIG testified this week—undercut Schiff’s ability to move forward with the investigation. As such, McCarthy said, Schiff and his staff should now be considered “fact witnesses” in the investigation—and Pelosi should formally sideline him, removing him from his chairmanship and having him recuse himself from an investigation it would be impossible for him to honestly oversee.

“Something very, very interesting came out yesterday and they control what happens—they’ll leak just a couple texts instead of the full transcript,” McCarthy said in an exclusive interview on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel this weekend.

“If the whole transcript was out there, you’d ask why go on with this investigation? Yesterday, we had the ICIG, which is the Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, in for a hearing. What we found out was he testified that the whistleblower never told him that he had already met with Schiff’s staff. Two things happen from that: It already goes to the political bias of the whistleblower. The whistleblower filling out the forms, there was a point there to put that in and [he] skipped it—did not want them to know, Schiff’s staff, that he had met with them yet. Nobody knows what was said with Schiff’s staff. Nobody knows if he met with Schiff, what they talked about, no one knows how many times they met. No one knows any about this except Schiff and his staff. Now, having done that, they are what is called ‘fact witnesses.’ When you are a fact witness, you cannot be a head of an investigation and be a prosecutor. No one in our judicial system would ever allow that. Why? Because Schiff and his staff should now be called in as witnesses. We need to cross-examine them. What did they talk about? What did you tell them? You can’t be in charge of the investigation too. This is such a hoax, every element of it, it goes against every basic fairness,” said McCarthy.

McCarthy added that the whistleblower’s decision to conceal the Schiff meeting from the Inspector General—and Schiff having lied about it to the public, which undercuts his credibility as chairman of the Intelligence Committee and as Pelosi’s lead investigator—casts a shadow of doubt over the Democrats’ already-hyper-partisan impeachment effort. Schiff’s broader history, McCarthy noted, is one filled with deceit and lies—dating back to when he falsely claimed to have “evidence” of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, something Schiff did not have and does not have.

“Even a greater point to make is that you went to the Intel Committee, then you went to the IG, and you did not tell them,” McCarthy said. “You withheld that information. Then when you had a form, you should have checked that you had done that, you did not check that form either. You made a conscious decision not to tell the IG that you had already met—and Schiff was asked this. Okay, let’s go through Schiff’s history, first he told America he had proof [of Russian collusion] beyond circumstantial. Well you know what? The millions of dollars and thousands of people looking at it—Mueller—could not find this fake proof that Schiff put America through a nightmare of for two years. Then we found out when they brought in Michael Cohen, his staff met with him how many hours? More than ten hours, three different times. We also found out later that Schiff also ran into Glenn Simpson—remember Fusion GPS?—and that he did not share that. Now, when he’s asked on television, he was asked on his own home television MSNBC does he know who the whistleblower is? He said no. He says, ‘I hope he comes forward, I hope he reaches out to us.’ He openly lied—numerous times.”

Specifically, McCarthy said the decision to allow Schiff to continue to lead the investigation lies solely with Pelosi—and he said that given Schiff’s clear dishonesty and lies, it is time for Pelosi to formally remove him from the plum Intelligence Committee chairmanship. Failure to do so, McCarthy said, could put America’s national security at risk given the fact that the Intelligence Committee handles America’s secrets. But leaving someone who should clearly be a witness not an investigator in an investigatory role, McCarthy said, undermines the credibility of the Democrats’ investigations—making them purely partisan.

“To be chair of the Intel Committee, it’s just one person to appoint: the Speaker of the House,” McCarthy said. “I appoint the Intel Committee on the Republican side. I don’t have to go through conference. The Intel Committee gets the top secrets that America ever sees, threats, and everywhere else. And this is a man who openly lies to the country to try to change the outcome of an election just because he doesn’t like the outcome? One, he should no longer be chairman of that committee. She should remove him. Two, he does not have the right to be the head of the investigation. It’s not the jurisdiction of his committee. But more importantly, he is a fact witness. He does not have the right to do that. If you believe in the rule of law, he does not have the ability to [lead the investigation]. Everything about this investigation proves it just is a political hack job to just try to go after the president.”

Schiff is hardly the only high-profile Democrat that McCarthy believes should be called as a witness in this investigation. He also said that former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, Biden’s son Hunter Biden, and other top leftists should also be called as witnesses for their roles in these matters.

“What I would to do is I would like to call Adam Schiff as a witness,” McCarthy said. ”I would like to call Hunter Biden as a witness. I would like to see Vice President Biden as a witness. I would like to see Barack Obama as a witness, since he put Biden as envoy to Ukraine. These are all things we are being denied because they have already written the script that they want to impeach this president, they want to discredit democracy, and they want to change the outcome.”

But for now, as the Democrats under Pelosi’s stewardship keep the “impeachment inquiry” as a partisan matter, McCarthy says, they continue to disregard norms and traditions when it comes to impeachment—further undermining their case, and driving the fight even more into partisan camps.

“In modern history, when they went to impeach Nixon, when they went to impeach Clinton, when they went to impeach two judges, there’s always been a process for fairness that you’d first have a vote to open an impeachment inquiry,” McCarthy said. “And why you would do that as the full body, they literally say it in the past as to why: This is such an important vote. If you are going to discredit democracy by doing this, you shouldn’t take it lightly. Everybody in America lends their voice to 435 members of Congress, so they should be heard on whether you move forward. What happens when you do that is they set the rules. In the Bill Clinton impeachment, there were 900 pages. They gave the minority subpoena power. They allowed the president to be able to know who the witnesses were, to object, to cross-examine, to do other stuff. Could you imagine going to trial and not being able to call a witness, not being able to cross-examine? So there’s two reasons why Speaker Pelosi is doing this. One, she doesn’t want to put her 31 members who are Democrats who sit in seats President Trump carried to cast that vote. Secondly, she wants to take advantage and not allow any fairness. She moved it out of Judiciary, which has the jurisdiction to do it, because she moved it into Intel. Why did she move it into Intel? Well, now we’re finding out—Schiff’s staff met with the whistleblower.”

McCarthy said that Pelosi prematurely launched the impeachment proceedings without getting the evidence. “She should have waited 48 hours until she read the transcripts, until—she decided, she made a decision based on no facts,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy also explained that the House has voted on impeachment several times before—and each time it failed. He also laid out a timeline of how Schiff seems to have orchestrated this entire latest “hoax.”

“Remember, we’ve voted three times on impeaching this president,” McCarthy said. “Twice, the Democrats brought impeachment up before the Mueller report even came forward. They have no proof whatsoever, but they’re voting to impeach the president. Remember, the Washington Post just gave Adam Schiff four Pinocchio’s over the claim that neither he nor his staff had spoken to the whistleblower before he filed his complaint. What did we find? On Aug. 12, whistleblower’s complaint dated Aug. 12. On Aug. 28, Schiff tweets about withholding aid for the purpose of targeting a political opponent. Why would he know about that unless he talked to the whistleblower? Sept. 9, Schiff ordered a wide-ranging investigation. Sept. 17, he tells MSNBC ‘we have not spoken directly with the whistleblower but we would like to. But Schiff’s staff had already been in extensive contact. Sept. 19, Schiff insists to reporters that he doesn’t know the details of the complaint. Sept. 23, Pelosi decrees impeachment inquiry. Sept. 25, the transcript is released. Schiff worked with this whistleblower all the way through and lied to the American public, trying to create it, just as he did before when he lied to the American public claiming he had proof beyond circumstantial evidence [of Russian collusion]. This is the problem. This is a hoax.”

McCarthy said if the Democrats were interested in the facts and in being fair, they would have answered concerns he raised with Pelosi much more seriously and honestly—concerns that were instead brushed aside by the Speaker from San Francisco.

“If they truly believed in fairness, they would treat this president the same as we treated impeachment any other time—have an impeachment inquiry vote,” McCarthy said. “I sent a letter to Pelosi just along those lines with a few simple questions: Is she going to give the minority the same rights that the minority has been given any other time? We had coequal subpoena power, because right now we don’t. When we have those hearings, you know who controls who gets in the room? The Democrats. They can have all the people they want, but they limit the number of Republicans who can come into that room and staff others. Will they provide the president’s counsel the right to attend all hearings and depositions? Will they provide the president’s counsel the right to present evidence? Or what about to object? What about to cross-examine? Or what about to even recommend additions to the witness list?”

While Democrats are racing down the rabbit-hole of impeachment again, however, they continue failing to achieve any policy solutions for Americans whatsoever, McCarthy added.

“The only thing they’ve done are failed investigations,” McCarthy said. “Think of this. Here we are with the debate about China, where America is going to go, will we get fair trade, we have the USMCA—the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement—it’s been 300 days since the president has signed it. Mexico has already ratified it. Canada is waiting on us. Mexico and Canada in the last month became our number one and number two traders. The president is going to sit down with Xi Jinping of China in November. Wouldn’t it be smarter for America to have an agreement with our top two traders before we sit down with China? But, Nancy Pelosi has all the power to call USMCA up. She is more concerned about tearing down this president instead of building America up. What about prescription drugs? What about the crisis along the border? What about our veterans? All of that stopped because all they care about is impeaching the president. Every time we see it there is a common denominator. Adam Schiff is lying at the top to put America through a nightmare again with the very fabric of democracy that holds our country together. This has got to stop.”

The political backlash against Democrats could be intense heading into the 2020 presidential and congressional elections, and McCarthy seems to think it will be. After winning North Carolina’s ninth congressional district special election in September, Republicans only need to retake a net of 19 seats from the Democrats to retake the majority in the House. With, as McCarthy mentioned earlier in the interview, 31 Democrats representing districts that Trump won in 2016—13 of which Trump won by six percent or more—that seems a very realistic goal for Republicans in 2020.

“I don’t look at this from the aspect of making a political gain,” McCarthy said. “What I really think about is the republic itself and the fairness. But what I see out there when I listen to the Democrats on the other side is they’re very worried, and they should be. If you look, 63 percent of Americans do not believe anything in that phone call with Ukraine is impeachable. If you look at the majority of Americans, they don’t see anything that the Democrats have accomplished except the investigations. You have found that Pelosi told the American people if they gave them the right to be the majority, that they would be different—that they would govern different—but now we found out that was not true.”

If Republicans do take back the majority, McCarthy would presumably become Speaker of the House–something President Trump has signaled he supports:

Leader McCarthy, we look forward to you soon becoming Speaker of the House. The Do Nothing Dems don’t have a chance! https://t.co/uWPdGJg99F — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 3, 2019

McCarthy also said with Pelosi answering to the “Squad” of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and others—as well as the rise of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), whom McCarthy now expects will be the 2020 Democrat presidential nominee—the Democrat Party is in leftist shambles, fractured to pieces by its leftist socialist flank, leaving a wide open lane for Republicans.

“We’ve watched these new socialist Democrats hijack the party, whereas I believe the only reason Nancy Pelosi agreed to an impeachment inquiry was the pressure from socialist Democrats,” McCarthy said. “Remember, AOC tweeted that weekend against the Speaker again—and then moved. Time and time again, many people believe she is only Speaker in name—she doesn’t have the power. When you look at the floor, she cannot pass anything because of this new AOC, Tlaib, Omar, and the others—and then think about who is going to be their nominee for president. It is going to be Elizabeth Warren. Elizabeth Warren’s philosophy and beliefs are out of step with the majority of Americans.”

LISTEN TO HOUSE GOP LEADER KEVIN MCCARTHY ON BREITBART NEWS SATURDAY: