January 6 committee demands ethics sanctions against GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, House Republicans

The January 6 committee on Monday voted to file ethics complaints against House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy and three of Donald Trump's Republican allies in Congress after they failed to cooperate with the panel's probe of the US Capitol riot.

The panel's seven Democrats and two Republicans announced they were recommending the four lawmakers by sanctioned by the House Ethics Committee during their tenth public meeting.

In addition to McCarthy, they are singling out Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Jim Jordan of Ohio.

'Despite the Select Committee's repeated attempts to obtain information from these Members and the issuance of subpoenas, each has refused to cooperate and failed to comply with a lawfully issued subpoena,' the committee wrote in the executive summary of its final report obtained by DailyMail.com.

'Accordingly, the Select Committee is referring their failure to comply with the subpoenas issued to them to the Ethics Committee for further action.'

But it also encourages Justice Department prosecutors to continue seeking the lawmakers' testimonies.

The report states the Justice Department could access 'via grand jury subpoena or otherwise, the testimony of Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, Representative Scott Perry, Representative Jim Jordan and others, each of whom appears to have had materially relevant communications with Donald Trump or others in the White House but who failed to comply with the Select Committee's subpoenas.' 

The January 6 committee on Monday filed ethics complaints against House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy and three of Donald Trump's Republican allies in Congress after they failed to cooperate with the panel's probe of the US Capitol riot

Prominent Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan is known to have participated in multiple meetings with the Trump campaign and even one at the White House

Rep. Andy Biggs (left) is known to have exchanged text messages with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows about election fraud conspiracy theories in the lead-up to the Capitol attack. A White House aide testified seeing Meadows burning documents after a meeting with Rep. Scott Perry (right) 

Rep. Jamie Raskin, who led a subcommittee dedicated to examining criminal referrals, said during the hearing on Monday that 'we understand the gravity of each and every referral we are making today, just as we understand the magnitude of the crime against democracy that we described in our report.'

'But we have gone where the facts and the law lead us and inescapably they lead us here,' Raskin said.

All four refused to comply with voluntary requests to appear before the committee, which later evolved into unheeded subpoenas. 

Throughout the committee's nine public hearings, they detailed Biggs, Perry and Jordan's efforts to promote Trump's 2020 election fraud claims and even going further in participating in the ex-president's plan.

Perry, for instance, linked Trump to Jeffrey Clark, a mid-level Justice Department lawyer who Trump sought to install as Attorney General so he could send a letter to multiple states urging them to overturn Joe Biden's Electoral College victories.

'After introducing Jeffrey Clark to the President, Perry sent multiple text messages to [then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows] between December 26th and December 28th, pressing that Clark be elevated within the Department,' the report states. 

A former White House staffer testified to the committee that she saw then-Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows burning documents after a meeting with Perry. 

Members of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol hold its last public hearing in the Canon House Office Building

Jordan is known to have participated in multiple meetings with the Trump campaign and even one at the White House, according to the New York Times, to discuss executing Trump's voter fraud claims.

He's also admitted to speaking with Trump by phone on January 6 last year, but his recollections of the details and number of calls has varied.

Ahead of the riot, the committee's report states that Jordan, Perry and Trump 'discussed issuing social media posts to encourage Trump supporters to march to the Capitol on January 6th.' 

Arizona's outgoing state House Speaker, Rusty Bowers, testified before the committee previously that Biggs had been among the lawmakers pressuring him to help overturn Trump's narrow loss there.

'Representative Biggs was involved in numerous elements of President Trump's efforts to contest the election results,' the report states.

' As early as November 6, 2020, Representative Biggs texted Mark Meadows, urging him to 'encourage the state legislatures to appoint [electors].' In the following days, Representative Biggs told Meadows not to let President Trump concede his loss.'

It continues, 'Between then and January 6th, Representative Biggs coordinated with Arizona State Representative Mark Finchem to gather signatures from Arizona lawmakers endorsing fake Trump electors.678 He also contacted fake Trump electors in at least one State seeking evidence related to voter fraud.'

Biggs is also known to have exchanged text messages with Meadows about election fraud conspiracy theories in the lead-up to the Capitol attack.

McCarthy is the only one not accused of helping Trump foment the riot. Indeed, the committee has gone out of its way to contrast the GOP leader's anger toward the ex-president in the immediate aftermath with his later comments downplaying January 6 and delegitimizing the panel's work.

The referral to the Ethics Committee is largely symbolic. The longstanding panel is evenly divided between Republican and Democratic members.

While the committee does have the power to recommend punishment for House members and employees found to have breached rules of conduct, it's unlikely that a majority vote can be reached for serious repercussions against McCarthy or the other three GOP members.

When lawmakers returned to the House floor on the evening of January 6, McCarthy said Trump 'bears responsibility' for the attack.

Subsequent details released by the committee revealed that he told fellow GOP leaders that he pressed the then-president to resign over the day's violent events.

But McCarthy was also the highest-ranking lawmaker who visited Trump at the time just weeks later, when he flew down to Mar-a-Lago.

The report points out that Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and a senior White House adviser, recalled McCarthy being 'scared' when he called administration aides for help as rioters broke into the US Capitol.

It also reaffirms the ex-president's reply: 'Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.'

According to the report, McCarthy offered to submit written testimony while also attacking the legitimacy of the committee - but was turned down.