The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol is redoubling its efforts to have GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy appear for an interview amid new revelations concerning his private conversations about the deadly attack, the chairman said Tuesday. Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said the panel expects to decide this week about issuing a second request to McCarthy, who has declined to voluntarily appear before the panel. The committee is also looking at summoning a widening group of House Republicans for interviews, Thompson said, as more information emerges about their conversations with the Trump White House in the run-up to the Capitol siege. The committee is racing to wrap up this phase of its work amid newly released audio recordings of McCarthy’s private remarks after the Jan. 6 attack, when supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol trying to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. In a Jan. 10, 2021, audio recording released Tuesday by The New York Times, McCarthy tells fellow Republican leaders that Trump’s far-right allies in the House are “putting people in jeopardy” with their public tweets and comments that could put other lawmakers at risk of violence. McCarthy singled out several conservative representatives, among them Matt Gaetz of Florida and Mo Brooks of Alabama, as potentially endangering the security of other lawmakers and the Capitol complex. There’s discussion on the call of disciplining Brooks, who addressed the Jan. 6 rally and urged the crowd to “fight like hell” before they marched to the Capitol. There’s no indication McCarthy followed up with any disciplinary measures. Gaetz had gone on television to attack Republicans who had criticized Trump, including Liz Cheney of Wyoming. “He’s putting people in jeopardy,” McCarthy said, according to the new audio. “And he doesn’t need to be doing this. We saw what people would do in the Capitol, you know, and these people came prepared with rope, with everything else.” On Twitter, Gaetz called McCarthy and Rep. Steve Scalise, who said Gaetz’ actions were “potentially illegal,” “weak men.” “While I was protecting President Trump from impeachment, they were protecting Liz Cheney from criticism,” Gaetz tweeted late Tuesday. Brooks dismissed the report, telling the Times on Tuesday that “Kevin McCarthy spoke before knowing the facts.” He said he did not recall Mr. McCarthy ever speaking with him directly about his rally speech. Earlier, the Times reported that McCarthy, in conversations with House Republicans, said that Trump had acknowledged bearing some responsibility for the attack. The audio recordings released by the Times are part of reporting for a forthcoming book, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future.” Thompson said the committee met most of Tuesday deciding next steps on McCarthy and other House members. “We will probably look at engaging some of the lawmakers by invitation at this point, and we’ll go from there,” Thompson said at the Capitol. The panel had previously sought interviews from McCarthy and Republican Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, two Trump allies central to the effort to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost to Biden. All three have declined to voluntarily appear, but the committee has stopped short of taking the more dramatic step of issuing subpoenas to the sitting […]

The post House 1/6 Panel Wants to Hear From McCarthy after New Audio appeared first on The Yeshiva World.