Andrew C. McCarthy


Andrew C. McCarthy III is an American columnist for National Review. He served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. A Republican, he led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and eleven others. The defendants were convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and planning a series of attacks against New York City landmarks. He also contributed to the prosecutions of terrorists who bombed United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He resigned from the Justice Department in 2003.
During the presidency of Barack Obama, McCarthy characterized Obama as a radical and a socialist, and authored a book alleging that Obama was advancing a "Sharia Agenda". He authored another book calling for Obama's impeachment.
During Donald Trump's presidency, McCarthy defended Trump amid calls for his impeachment, and authored the 2019 book Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency.

Early life and career

McCarthy is the oldest of six children. His father died when he was 13. He graduated from Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx borough of New York City, and Columbia College.
After graduating from Columbia, McCarthy became a Deputy United States Marshal in the Federal Witness Protection Program. While working at the US Marshal's Office, he studied law at New York Law School. He later joined the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York as a paralegal.
In 1986, he was hired as a prosecutor at the Southern District and worked directly for then US Attorney for the district, Rudy Giuliani. In 1995, McCarthy led the successful prosecution of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and eleven others for planning and carrying out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the planning of a series of further attacks against New York City landmarks. McCarthy led the satellite office of the Southern District, in White Plains, New York, for five years, where he investigated the 1998 bombings of United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
After the September 11th attacks in 2001, McCarthy's became a key member of a command team of prosecutors tasked with drafting search warrants and "connecting dots" in the ensuing investigations.
McCarthy is currently a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, serving as the director of the FDD's Center for Law and Counterterrorism. He has served as an attorney for Rudy Giuliani, and is also an opinion columnist for National Review and Commentary. He has also been a regular contributor to Fox News.
He has also served as an adjunct professor at New York Law School and Fordham University School of Law.

Views

Prosecution of terrorism

McCarthy was a key member of the terrorism prosecution team after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Starting in the late 1990s, however, he became a vocal skeptic of the use the Southern District of New York's law enforcement infrastructure as the primary method of countering terrorism, stating: “We've become headquarters for counterterrorism in the United States.... Not the CIA. Not anyplace in Washington. The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. From the country’s perspective, it’s not a good thing.” A prosecutor’s job, he added, “is not the national security of the United States.”
He harshly criticized the Obama administration for trying suspected terrorists in civilian courts.

Support for Rudy Giuliani

McCarthy has known Rudy Giuliani since at least as early 1986, when he began his career under Giuliani at the Southern District of New York. In February 2007, McCarthy authored an endorsement for the fledgling candidacy of Rudy Giuliani during the 2008 presidential election campaign in the National Review. McCarthy also served as Giuliani's attorney during the campaign.

Barack Obama

During the 2008 presidential election campaign, McCarthy wrote a number of posts on the National Reviews Corner blog stating that he thought that Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama was not serious about protecting United States national security against threats from Islamic extremism and elsewhere, and that Obama had a number of troubling ties and associations with leftist radicals. McCarthy promoted the conspiracy theory that Bill Ayers, co-founder of the militant radical left-wing organization Weather Underground, had authored Obama's autobiography Dreams from My Father. McCarthy reviewed the article as "thorough, thoughtful, and alarming".
McCarthy argued in October 2008, "that the issue of Obama's personal radicalism, including his collaboration with radical, America-hating Leftists, should have been disqualifying." He claimed that Obama was engaged in "bottom-up socialism."
McCarthy defended Sarah Palin's false claim that Obama's health care reform, the Affordable Care Act, would lead to the creation of "death panels."
In May 2009, McCarthy provided details of a letter declining an invitation from Attorney General Eric Holder for a round-table meeting with President Barack Obama concerning the status of people detained in the War on Terror. McCarthy noted his dissension with the administration in their policies regarding the detainees. On December 5, 2009 he came out publicly against prosecuting Islamic terrorists in civil courts rather than military tribunals, saying "A war is a war. A war is not a crime, and you don't bring your enemies to a courthouse."
Throughout the Obama administration, McCarthy promoted views about the Obama administration's advancement of a "Sharia Agenda", arguing that radical Islamists were working with liberals within the United States government to subvert democracy in the West.
In 2014, McCarthy published a book calling for Obama's impeachment, saying Obama had committed seven categories of impeachable offenses. He said, "the failure to pursue impeachment is likely to be suicide for the country."

Jamal Khashoggi

After prominent Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi operatives, McCarthy claimed that Khashoggi might have been an operative of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Gun violence

McCarthy has stated on Fox News that he supports gun violence restraining orders as a tool for American law enforcement to remove firearms from those found to be a danger to themselves and/or others. He believes that the measures can reduce the country's gun violence problem.

Donald Trump

In 2019, he authored Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency. President Trump endorsed the book in September 2019. McCarthy defended Trump amid calls for his impeachment over the Trump-Ukraine scandal where Trump sought to get the Ukrainian president to start an investigation into his political rival Joe Biden. McCarthy wrote that Trump's behavior did not reach the level of impeachable conduct. Previously, McCarthy had written op-eds calling for Hillary Clinton's impeachment before she became president.

Publications

  • Willful Blindness: Memoir of the Jihad
  • How Obama Embraces Islam's Sharia Agenda
  • The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America
  • How the Obama Administration has Politicized Justice
  • Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy
  • Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama's Impeachment
  • Islam and Free Speech
  • Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency