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 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==