In a statement issued later Wednesday, McCarthy stated he wouldn’t cooperate with the request.
“As a consultant and the chief of the minority get together, it’s with neither remorse nor satisfaction that I’ve concluded to not take part with this choose committee’s abuse of energy that stains this establishment at present and can hurt it going ahead,” he stated.
Asked whether or not the panel would subpoena him to make sure his compliance, Thompson informed reporters, “We will consider it.” McCarthy is the third GOP lawmaker the panel has requested to testify. The others, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.), have rejected the committee’s entreaties. Both males had been key allies of Trump as he sought to subvert the 2020 election outcomes.
Thompson stated the choose panel is especially curious about McCarthy’s altering tone round his characterization of Trump’s actions through the riot, including that members intend to ask him whether or not Trump or his allies instructed “what you should say publicly during the impeachment trial (if called as a witness), or in any later investigation about your conversations with him on January 6th.”
In addition, Thompson stated he was not conscious whether or not the committee had obtained any of McCarthy’s textual content messages or banking information. McCarthy’s telephone information had been on an preliminary preservation request the committee despatched to telecommunications firms on the outset of its probe.
Notably, the choose panel has obtained a raft of textual content messages despatched and acquired by Trump’s former chief of employees Mark Meadows, who briefly cooperated with its inquiry. The committee can be preventing the previous president in court docket to acquire Trump White House name logs from the National Archives, a matter that is pending earlier than the Supreme Court.
McCarthy, who helped scuttle an try to ascertain a bipartisan fee to research the revolt, has spent months thrashing the Jan. 6 committee. Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected two of McCarthy’s preliminary picks to take a seat on the panel — Jordan and Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) — deeming them too intertwined with Trump to be credible investigators. In flip, McCarthy withdrew his remaining three appointees and boycotted the committee altogether.
McCarthy additionally issued a thinly veiled threat to telecommunications firms that cooperated with the Jan. 6 committee’s request for lawmakers’ telephone information, saying a GOP majority subsequent 12 months “will not forget” their selections.
The panel proposed a Feb. three or Feb. four assembly, or a time the week after.
McCarthy has softened his tone towards Trump because the speedy aftermath of the Capitol riot. He initially stated on the House ground that Trump “bears responsibility” for the violence, however inside a six-month span had begun sidestepping such questions.
Some House Republicans who needed Trump to be purged from the get together blame McCarthy for bringing Trump again right into a place of affect — significantly after the House GOP chief met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago simply weeks after the assault. Trump loyalists within the House, nevertheless, welcomed the transfer.
McCarthy’s early post-insurrection criticism enraged Trump, who has at occasions lashed out on the lawmaker. But McCarthy has labored diligently to foster relationships with Trump and the previous president’s allies within the House as he zeroes in on his objective to say the speaker’s gavel in 2023, ought to Republicans retake the chamber.
The GOP chief has additionally provided various responses when requested if he would testify. In May, he replied to a reporter’s query with a “sure.” At different occasions, he is provided much less clear responses.
In an interview with native California information channel Eyewitness News in late December, McCarthy was requested if he would testify earlier than the Jan. 6 panel. He replied: “I don’t have anything really to add. I have been very public, but I wouldn’t hide from anything either.”
In its letter to McCarthy, the panel additionally disclosed a brand new textual content message from Fox News host Laura Ingraham to Meadows urging Trump on Jan. 12, 2021, to discourage supporters from bringing weapons to state Capitols.
“Remarks on camera discouraging protest at state capit[o]ls esp with weapons will be well advised given how hot the situation is. [E]veryone needs to calm down and pray for our country and for those who lost their lives last week,” Ingraham informed the then-chief of employees.
The message got here amid heightened fears that state Capitols had been weak to violent assaults within the aftermath of the Jan. 6 revolt.
A Fox News consultant didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
