Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) accused Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) of breaking U.S. laws in an effort to quash a House ethics investigation.

During an interview on Face the Nation Sunday, McCarthy praised Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) after she filed a motion to have Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) removed.

"Look, the one thing I've always found, when you sit down with a member and talk to them, find out what their concerns are, especially when it's based upon policy, you can solve that problem," he said. "And I watched that with Marjorie, from the vote to Speaker to the vote for the Fiscal Responsibility Act. There's times she [had] a difference of opinion, and you sit down and find common ground."

McCarthy then turned to Gaetz, who orchestrated the bid to oust him.

"Matt's case was much different," McCarthy said. "It was about a personal thing that he had done, and that's what he was trying to get something illegally stopped."

"This is not the case here," he added. "So I would not be afraid of a motion to vacate. This is about policy."

CBS host Margaret Brennan asked McCarthy if he had "evidence to back up your allegation" about Gaetz.

"Well, I think the Ethics Committee, it was purely Matt coming to me, trying me to do something illegal to stop the Ethics Committee from moving forward an investigation that was started long before I became Speaker," McCarthy recalled.

"Something illegal?" Brennan pressed.

"I don't know what the facts are there," McCarthy said of Gaetz's ethics case. "It's a personal issue of what he'd done as a member of Congress."

"I simply would say the Ethics Committee has the right to look at whatever they're going forward, and I'm not going to get in the middle of it one way or another."