Andrew C. McCarthy

Andrew C. McCarthy III (born ) is an American lawyer and columnist for National Review. He served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. 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. He defended claims that the Affordable Care Act would lead to "death panels", and promoted a 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. He is a Republican. 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. 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. He has also served as an adjunct professor at New York Law School and Fordham University School of Law. He has been considered as a more moderate part of the counter-jihad movement as he distinguishes between Islam and Islamism.

Support for Rudy Giuliani McCarthy has known Rudy Giuliani since at least as early as 1986, when he began his career under Giuliani at the Southern District of New York. 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 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." 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."

Hillary Clinton Even though Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State had ended in 2013, McCarthy called for her impeachment from that office in 2016 for actions performed during that tenure. The purpose of this would have been to bar her from holding further federal offices, thus frustrating her presidential run.

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, McCarthy authored Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency, alleging that the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration colluded to rig the 2016 election against Trump, who endorsed the book in September 2019. McCarthy defended Trump amid calls for his impeachment in 2019 over the Trump–Ukraine scandal wherein Trump sought to intimidate the Ukrainian president into starting an investigation of the allegedly corrupt business dealings of Hunter Biden, the son of Trump's political rival, Joe Biden. McCarthy expressed a belief that Trump's actions regarding the incident did not reach the level of impeachable conduct.

In 2023, McCarthy wrote in National Review about Trump's federal indictment for allegedly mishandling classified documents, saying that earlier failures to prosecute Hillary Clinton did not mean that Trump is "owed a pass": "I don't believe that Trump's lawyers, who were trying to help him, would testify—as they have very reluctantly testified—that he tried to get them to destroy evidence and obstruct justice, unless he really did try to get them to destroy evidence and obstruct justice."

Publications Willful Blindness: Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books, 2008) How Obama Embraces Islam's Sharia Agenda (Encounter Broadsides, 2010) Team B II: Shariah: The Threat To America (Center for Security Policy Press, 2010) The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America (Encounter Books, 2010) How the Obama Administration has Politicized Justice (Encounter Broadsides, 2010) Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy (Encounter Books, 2013) Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama's Impeachment (Encounter Books, 2014) Islam and Free Speech (Encounter Broadside, 2015) Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency (Encounter Books, 2019)