Recently, the January 6 Select Committee summoned House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to testify about his private communications. However, McCarthy has rejected the January 6 Committee’s request, blasting it as a brazen “abuse of power” in addition to an “illegitimate” investigation.
Furthermore, McCarthy has long blasted the Select Committee as an illegitimate creation of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), notably when Pelosi blocked Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) from serving on the committee.
Consequently, the January 6 Committee has not been “conducting a legitimate investigation,” given that “[House Speaker] Pelosi took the unprecedented action of rejecting the Republican members I named to serve on the committee,” McCarthy remarked.
The House Minority Leader proceeded to detail how the Select Committee is serving absolutely no “legislative purpose.” On the contrary, the sole objective of the committee is apparently an effort “to damage its political opponents.”
McCarthy noted that the January 6 Select Committee generally “[acts] like the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee one day and the DOJ the next.”
Furthermore, the January 6 Committee has already demonstrated remarkably unlawful violations of privacy and unconstitutional behavior, including the manipulation of evidence. The committee has also demonstrated enormous audacity by holding former White House officials, such as Chief of Staff Mark Meadow, in contempt of Congress merely for not hearing what they want to hear, per remarks from McCarthy.
“The committee has demanded testimony from staffers who applied for First Amendment permits,” McCarthy asserted, noting that the committee has also “subpoenaed the call records of private citizens and their financial records from banks, [all] while demanding secrecy not supported by law.”
In addition, the January 6 Committee has also “lied about the contents it has received,” and it has generally held individuals in contempt of Congress merely “for exercising their Constitutional right to avail themselves of judicial proceedings.”
The House Minority Leader also added that his material commentary regarding January 6 is already available in the public domain, which means that his private correspondences “have nothing else to add.”
“It is with neither regret nor satisfaction that I have [decided] to not participate [in the January 6 Committee’s] abuse of power,” McCarthy concluded.