On Monday, the House select committee investigating the pro-Trump riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 issued three more letters seeking information from members of Congress. In total, the committee has now sent similar letters to six of its colleagues.
What the requests focus on is not a concerted effort to till the soil for the riot. Instead, they suggest a scattershot effort to compile information hinted at by public reporting. Though, of course, that impression is probably incomplete.
Here are the six members of the House who have been contacted by the committee and what the committee wants to learn.
The focus of the committee’s interest in McCarthy appears to be the call he had with President Donald Trump as the riot was underway. At the time, McCarthy told other members of the House Republican caucus that Trump had chastised him for being less worried about the 2020 election results than the rioters. He has generally declined to offer more detail on the call in the months since.
The committee’s argument is that the conversation could show Trump’s “state of mind” during the riot. In its letter, the committee notes that McCarthy also said that Trump accepted “some degree of responsibility” when they spoke, a potential indication of some culpability for what unfolded.
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