January 6 panel to invite House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy to testify – live | US

That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

• The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection requested information from minority leader Kevin McCarthy. Committee chair Bennie Thompson sent a letter to McCarthy requesting his voluntary cooperation with the panel, but it’s unclear whether the Republican leader will actually appear before investigators. Two other Republican congressman have already rejected requests to speak to the committee.
• Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer called out centrists Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema for opposing filibuster reform. “I don’t want to delude your listeners, this is an uphill fight,” Schumer said last night, at an event with the liberal think tank Center for American Progress. “Because Manchin and Sinema do not believe in changing the rules.”
• Joe Biden will attend Senate Democrats’ caucus lunch tomorrow to discuss voting rights and filibuster reform. The news comes one day after the president called on Senate Democrats to change chamber rules to allow voting rights bills to advance. “Let the majority prevail,” Biden said in Atlanta, Georgia. “And if that bare minimum is blocked, we have no option but to change the Senate rules, including getting rid of the filibuster for this.”
• Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell criticized Biden’s speech on voting rights as “profoundly unpresidential”. “Twelve months ago, a newly-inaugurated President Biden stood on the West Front of the Capitol and said this: ‘My whole soul is in this: bringing America together, uniting our people, and uniting our nation,” said McConnell, who vehemently opposes filibuster reform. “Yesterday, the same man delivered a deliberately divisive speech that was designed to pull our country farther apart.”
• The price of goods and services in the US jumped by 7% in December compared to the same month last year, according to the latest report from the labor department. The increase marks the seventh consecutive month in which inflation has topped 5%.

Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy was recently asked whether he would be willing to share information with the select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection.

“I don’t really have anything to add. I have been very public, but I wouldn’t hide from anything,” the Republican congressman said late last month.

That statement will be put to the test now that the select committee has formally requested information from McCarthy, who will have to decide whether he will join other Republican congressmen in refusing to speak to investigators.

Bennie Thompson, the chair of the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection, said in his letter to Kevin McCarthy that the panel is interested in “how the President’s plans for January 6th came together, and all the other ways he attempted to alter the results of the election”.

“For example, in advance of January 6th, you reportedly explained to Mark Meadows and the former President that objections to the certification of the electoral votes on January 6th ‘was doomed to fail,’” Thompson said.

“How did they respond? Why were they nevertheless so confident that the election result would be overturned?”

The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection shared a letter that chair Bennie Thompson sent to minority leader Kevin McCarthy requesting information from him.

“We write to request your voluntary cooperation with our investigation on a range of critical topics, including your conversations with President Trump before, during and after the violent January 6th attack,” Thompson said in the letter.

“You have acknowledged speaking directly with the former President while the violence was underway on January 6th.”

Thompson argued that McCarthy could provide insight into “President Trump’s state of mind during the January 6th attack,” as well as after the insurrection occurred.

Thompson proposed a date of February 3 or February 4 for McCarthy to appear before the panel, but again, it seems unlikely that the Republican leader will voluntarily agree to speak to investigators.

The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection will invite minority leader Kevin McCarthy to appear before the panel.

“We’re going to invite the minority leader,” the chair of the committee, congressman Bennie Thompson, told a group of reporters on Capitol Hill, per Politico.

It seems unlikely that McCarthy will voluntarily agree to speak to investigators. So far, two sitting Republican congressmen — Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania — have declined requests to appear before the committee.

In a Sunday letter to Thompson, Jordan accused the panel of “an outrageous abuse” of its authority, arguing the request for his testimony was “far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry”.