Despite House Speaker Kevin McCarthy saying he would block their committee assignments, Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell were nominated for reppointment to the House Intelligence Committee by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Jeffries, D-N.Y., formally recommended the two California lawmakers to the panel via a Saturday letter to McCarthy, R-Calif., Punchbowl News reported.
"It is my understanding that you intend to break with the longstanding House tradition of deference to the minority party Intelligence Committee recommendations and deny seats to Ranking Member Schiff and Representative Swalwell," Jeffries wrote in the letter.
"The denial of seats to duly elected Members of the House Democratic Caucus runs counter to the serious and sober mission of the Intelligence Committee."
Schiff headed up the first impeachment of former President Donald Trump and was a member of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi's House select committee that investigated events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
In March 2021, McCarthy filed a two-page House resolution demanding Swalwell be removed from the committee due to his "troublesome" connections to a woman accused of being a Chinese spy.
Unlike most House committees, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has special rules empowering the speaker to assign the panel's members.
McCarthy earlier this month confirmed that he will remove three high-profile Democrats from committees in the new Congress.
Those lawmakers include Schiff and Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee, and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., from the House Foreign Affairs Committee as payback for Democrats ousting Republicans from panels.
"What I am doing with the Intel Committee [is] bringing it back to the jurisdiction it's supposed to do. Forward-looking to keep this country safe, keep the politics out of it," McCarthy told reporters, The Hill reported.
"So yes, I'm doing exactly what we're supposed to do."
Democrats had stripped Reps. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., and Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., of their committee assignments in the last Congress.
In his letter, Jeffries pointed out that Gosar and Greene were removed from their committee assignments "after a bipartisan vote of the House found them unfit to serve on standing committees for directly inciting violence against their colleagues."
He also ridiculed McCarthy and Republicans for allowing "serial fraudster [Rep.] George Santos" to be placed "on two standing committees of the House and welcomed into your conference."