Andy McCarthy: Congress Should Be Outraged Over Saudi’s Deportation

Congress should be screaming from the rooftop over the Saudi national who was deported after being initially named a person of interest in the Boston Marathon bombing investigation, former assistant U.S. attorney Andy McCarthy tells Newsmax TV.

“This is one of the most peculiar things I’ve ever heard,” McCarthy tells Newsmax. If true, he said, Congress should be outraged.

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Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi, a 20-year-old college student, was temporarily held under guard in a Boston hospital after the bombing, and police searched his apartment.

McCarthy noted that the Saudi foreign minister met with Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday, then had an unscheduled visit with President Obama on Wednesday before Alharbi was sent back to Saudi Arabia on what were called “national security grounds.”

“What these grounds are, whether they involve the bombing or whether they involve something else before the bombing, we don’t know because apparently everything now is sealed and classified,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy was quick to note that recent attacks and attempted attacks on U.S. soil are not the fault of President Barack Obama, but the president does not enhance the security of the country “by pretending that our enemies are our friends.”

While Obama has been aggressive in attacking al-Qaida overseas, McCarthy says his policies have actually resulted in a resurgence of al-Qaida. “He makes the grave mistake for the country of trying to have good relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic supremacist groups that are anti-American.”

If the bombers end up being jihadists, how they are tried will depend on whether they fit the definition of enemy combatant defined by Congress, McCarthy said. "Even if someone is a jihadist terrorist, but is not directly related to al-Qaida, no authority exists to treat them as enemy combatants. Military force is authorized only against the people, nations, or groups that carried out 9/11 or those who harbored them.

“Unless you fall in that box, we can’t even talk about doing a military proceeding against you.”

McCarthy agreed with the assessment former Boston mayor and U.S. Ambassador Ray Flynn gave Newsmax earlier this week that the U.S. should clamp down on people who overstay their visas.

“So the problem of border security is much more profound than just the ingress and egress at the Mexican border,” McCarthy said, “and we have to do a much better job of tracking who’s in the country and getting out of the country people who don’t have a legal right to be here.”