House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy Friday refused to acknowledge the special committee to investigate the Jan. 6 riots that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she would create on Thursday.
PELOSI ANNOUNCES SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE JAN. 6 RIOT
“The speaker has never talked to me about it. I haven’t seen the structure of what it does or anything else. I won’t go there,” McCarthy told reporters at his weekly presser. “I recommend you read the work that the bipartisan committees in the Senate have done.”
McCarthy discussed other questions he had about the Jan. 6 riots, the day that hundreds of pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to protest Congress’s certification of the presidential electoral votes.
“When the staff that went in to park that day, why did the parking attendants know that something was happening? The sergeant-at-arms never talked to me as the Republican leader beforehand, during, or after,” the California Republican said.
“Why were there National Guards a couple of hundred, about 167, but with no weapons, patrolling the streets only from streetside but not in the Capitol?” he asked. “Did someone deny them the right of coming in from days before? Because I had meetings about it.”
Two Senate committees and several House committees are investigating the attack, while the Justice Department is pursuing criminal charges against the rioters.
Despite some Republican support in both chambers, a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riots passed the House but failed to have enough votes to advance to a final vote in the Senate.
McCarthy gave no indication that he had plans to appoint any members to the special committee announced by the speaker.
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The select committee, unlike a commission that has a 60-day time limit, has no expiration date, and as Pelosi told reporters Thursday, it can operate “as long as it takes for them … to investigate the cause of this.”
