Jan. 6: What does McCarthy know?
The “full extent” of the Republican cover-up of Donald Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection is being exposed, said Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent in The Washington Post. The House Jan. 6 committee last week took the dramatic step of issuing subpoenas to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and four other Republicans who apparently communicated with the former president before, during, and after the riot that day, after they refused to voluntarily testify about what was said. Those GOP members will defy the subpoenas, setting up a legal battle, since the party’s position is that the “entire investigation is illegitimate.” But the committee already knows that McCarthy in particular “pleaded with Trump to call off the rioters” as they stormed into the Capitol, and the details of that conversation may shed light on “Trump’s true insurrectionist intentions.”
“No good will come of this effort,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. The committee has already “spent 10 months interviewing more than 1,000 witnesses and obtained tens of thousands of phone records, text messages, and documents.” The subpoenas “aren’t likely to yield new information even as they further erode whatever comity remains in the House.” Democrats just want to embarrass Republicans and suggest they have “some complicity with the riot.” The Democrats may come to regret setting a precedent here, said Lisa Mascaro in the Associated Press. If Republicans take the House in November, they are likely to subpoena Democratic legislators in their own tit-for-tat investigations of Hunter Biden and other matters.
Given what’s at stake, Democrats are “right to turn up the heat,” said Hayes Brown in MSNBC .com. Jan. 6 was “an attempted coup,” with the complicity of a sitting president and, possibly, members of Congress. A livid McCarthy initially blamed Trump for the insurrection, but because the GOP is a MAGA party, reversed course in hopes of becoming Speaker of the House next year. Testifying about the day’s events “must be his worst nightmare.” McCarthy nonetheless has an obligation to reveal what he knows, said The Washington Post in an editorial. The minority leader and his fellow Republicans were “key witnesses” to a “direct assault on U.S. democracy.” With the country “vulnerable to another attack” in 2024, their silence is shameful.