(Headline USA) House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., dismissed a request by the House’s Jan. 6th Commission to submit to an interview and turn over records pertaining to the mostly peaceful uprising in protest of the disputed 2020 election.
The partisan inquisition is seeking first-hand details from members of Congress on then-President Donald Trump’s actions.
McCarthy, R-Calif., issued a statement Wednesday saying the investigation was not legitimate and accused the panel of “abuse of power.”
The commission’s Democrat chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, requested that McCarthy provide information to the nine-member panel about his conversations with Trump “before, during and after” the riot.
The request also seeks information about McCarthy’s communications with then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the days before the attack.
“We also must learn about how the President’s plans for January 6th came together, and all the other ways he attempted to alter the results of the election,” Thompson said in his letter. “For example, in advance of January 6th, you reportedly explained to Mark Meadows and the former President that objections to the certification of the electoral votes on January 6th ‘was doomed to fail.’”
The effort to raise such objections has been standard practice for every Joint Session of Congress to confirm the Electoral College vote in recent memory. Democrats deployed it widely to protest the presidential elections of Trump and former GOP President George W. Bush.
While often is symbolic, the objections this time were based on valid concerns about the legitimacy of the election after several Democrat-led states that Trump won in 2016 abused their emergency authority to implement last-minute rulese changes.
Meanwhile, leftist oligarchs like Facebook CEO funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into defacto contributions to the Biden campaign through phony nonprofits under the guise of improving “voter access.”
It remains unclear whether the J6 panel will be able to compel testimony from McCarthy or any other congressional allies of Trump. While the committee has considered subpoenaing fellow lawmakers, that would be an extraordinary move and could run up against legal and political challenges.
GOP members of Congress, including McCarthy, are already promising to settle scores over the Left’s egregious abuse of power if and when they regain the congressional majority.
The committee acknowledged the sensitive and unusual nature of its request as it proposed a meeting with McCarthy on either Feb. 3 or 4.
“The Select Committee has tremendous respect for the prerogatives of Congress and the privacy of its Members,” Thompson wrote. “At the same time, we have a solemn responsibility to investigate fully the facts and circumstances of these events.”
Democrats have been seeking more information about McCarthy’s communications with Trump since the former president’s second impeachment trial last year.
At one point in the trial, Democrats said they would try and call Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash., as a witness because she had described a potentially pivotal call between the two men after hearing an account from McCarthy.
Herrera Beutler’s statement said McCarthy told her he had asked Trump to publicly “call off the riot” and had said the unruly mob was made up of Trump supporters, not far-left Antifa institagors.
Herrera Beutler said in the statement, “That’s when, according to McCarthy, the president said, ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.’”
While most of those present were Trump supporters, evidence of Antifa’s involvmenet was reported widely by conservative media in the days afterward.
EXPOSED— ANTIFA was littered throughout the Capitol yesterday.
A THREAD:
— Tayler Hansen (@TaylerUSA) January 7, 2021
At least one left-wing activist, John Sullivan, is known to have been present in the Capitol, while subsequently claiming he was there to document it as a “journalist.”
Theories also have continued to flourish that federal agents may have planted false-flag instigators, including suspected CIA informant Ray Epps, a former leader of the Arizona Oath Keepers.
Following a Senate Judiciary interrogation of top Justice Department officials on Tuesday, the J6 panel admitted having secretly interviewed Epps but robustly denied that he was working with any federal “law enforcement” agencies.
In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 revolt, McCarthy had initially criticized Trump’s actions, saying he “bears responsibility” for the chaos..
“The saddest day I have ever had” in Congress, McCarthy said the night of the attack, even as he went on to join 138 other House Republicans in voting to reject election results.
The latest request from the panel also puts McCarthy face-to-face with Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, whom Pelosi hand-picked after denying the GOP minority leader’s selections in an unprecedented move.
Cheney, whom Republicans dumped from the No. 3 House leadership position last summer, has declared herself to be the ranking minority member of the panel, even though she and Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois are the only two non-Democrats on it.
McCarthy had counseled Cheney to stay on message, but as she continued to attack Trump, prompting the GOP caucus to oust her and select Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., as her replacement.
McCarthy is the third member of Congress the committee has reached out to for voluntary information. In the past few weeks, GOP Reps. Jim Jordan and Scott Perry were also contacted by the panel but have rebuffed the requests.
The panel has interviewed almost 350 people and issued public subpoenas to around 50 people and organizations as it seeks to create a dossier of opposition research that Democrats may use in the upcoming midterm election and the 2024 presidential election.
On Wednesday, former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany spoke to the panel virtually, according to a person familiar with the interview who requested anonymity to discuss it. The committee subpoenaed McEnany in November.
The committee says the extraordinary trove of material it has collected—35,000 pages of records so far, including texts, emails and phone records from people close to Trump—is fleshing valuable ammunition as it hopes to deflect from a year of disastrous Biden administration policies by carping on the four-hour melee.
The event followed months in which Democrats tacitly—or openly—encouraged leftist rioters to wreak havoc on major US cities, destroying millions of dollars worth of private property and costing at least a dozen lives.
Two Trump supporters were killed by law-enforcement during the Capitol uprising, and two others died of natural causes.
Thompson told The Associated Press in an interview last month that about 90% of the witnesses subpoenaed by the committee have cooperated, despite the refusal of high-profile Trump allies like Meadows and Steve Bannon, who contend that a Trump lawsuit on executive privilege is still working its way through the courts.
The committee has threatened both men with criminal contempt—another rare, if not unprecedented—partisan deviation from normal congressional protocol.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
