Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s, D-Calif., highly criticized January 6 House Select Committee is said to be “scrutinizing one particular phrase” that emerged from leaked phone messages made by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., according to a report in The Hill.
The messages were published by The New York Times and appear to some to indicate that McCarthy believed Trump bore responsibility for the January 6 breach at the Capitol.
Further, some hold that McCarthy believed President Donald Trump’s actions in the days and weeks following the election were criminal and that the president would seek a pardon.
The leaked audio recordings note that McCarthy appreciated then Vice President Mike Pence’s decision to certify the Electoral College count: “Now, this is one personal fear I have. I do not want to get into any conversation about [former Vice President Mike] Pence pardoning,” McCarthy says in the January 10 recording.
The Hill report notes that “experts” speculate the committee “may want to zero in on that exchange, as the audio shows Republicans at the highest level may have been worried about the legality of Trump’s actions leading up to Jan. 6.”
Jeff Robbins, a Democrat and chief counsel for the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said: “You would not want to be the middleman in a conversation about Trump being pardoned by Pence because [McCarthy] would be concerned about somebody saying he obstructed justice in some way.”
Robbins added: “There’s no need to have a personal fear about being involved in a pardon conversation unless there’s been some suggestion of a conversation about a pardon. And there’s no need to have a discussion about a pardon unless people within McCarthy’s sphere are having serious discussions about Trump’s culpability in a crime.”
“And there’s no need for a pardon if all you’ve done is something that is immoral or unethical or optically bad. The need for a pardon exists when there is criminal culpability.”
Robbins speculates that between January 6 and 10 questions regarding pardons and criminality were likely a topic of conversation between McCarthy and other high-ranking Republicans.
The Select Committee requested McCarthy voluntarily speak with the committee’s investigators about his conversations with Trump during and after the attack, as well as reports that he said the former president admitted to being “somewhat responsible for the attack.”
McCarthy declined the invitation to speak with the committee.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., whom a number of leading media hosts have called a “national disgrace,” told CBS News: “I think it is very important that Kevin McCarthy has evidence the former President acknowledged bearing some responsibility for that attack on the Capitol. This is an admission of guilt by the former President.”
Fellow Select Committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., told CBS: “The reports of what the President said, that he understood that he bore responsibility, that’s consciousness of his guilt. And it is an important element of piecing together all of the facts relative to Jan. 6.”
Though offering praise for the Select Committee’s work, Robbins noted that the recording of Trump saying “he accepted some responsibility is too vague, [as] it could mean a lot of different things.”
Robbins added: “The conclusion that the former president may have actually committed a federal crime comes into play in reference to his personal fear in getting involved in a conversation about a pardon.”
The committee is preparing for hearings as early as May.
Molly Reynolds, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, notes that the committee has been debating whether its final report on the matter should include a recommendation to the Department of Justice to pursue charges against Trump — a referral the department may not choose to take.
Regarding the work of the committee, Reynolds said:
“The Select Committee has a different job than the Department of Justice. The Select Committee’s job is to hold people accountable in a public way for behavior — some of which may be criminal and some of which may not be —and to tell the story in a way that gets its arms around as much of what happened as possible.”
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