Kevin McCarthy just gave away the January 6th game
When the January 6th Committee subpoenaed certain House Republicans, it wasn’t with the expectation that they would be eager to testify. If anything, the main purpose of the subpoenas is to make them look guilty in the court of public opinion for refusing to testify. But given what a dummy Kevin McCarthy is, he appears to have found an even dumber way to handle it.
McCarthy has informed the January 6th Committee that he’ll only testify if the committee first gives him the evidence it already has in relation to the questions it’s going to ask him, according to The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell. McCarthy’s strategy is so transparent, it’s almost hilarious.
McCarthy wants this evidence for two reasons. First, it would clue him in to what the committee already knows, thus allowing him to know precisely what he can or can’t get away with lying about. Second, McCarthy could then just leak this evidence to the media, dishonestly out of context, before the public hearings begin – and muddy the waters in advance.
This would be a smart strategy on Kevin McCarthy’s part, if everyone on the January 6th Committee were a naive idiot. Unfortunately for him, no one on the committee is an idiot, and in fact every single person on the committee is a lot smarter than he is.
So McCarthy’s offer will be promptly shut down by the committee. And on top of that, not only will the committee get to make McCarthy look guilty by pointing out that he’s refusing to testify, it can make him look even guiltier for having plotted to try to surreptitiously obtain the committee’s evidence in advance.
People like Kevin McCarthy only get anywhere when they remember that they’re the dumbest person in the room. McCarthy, who spent a little too much time around Donald Trump, has apparently forgotten how dumb he is – and now believes his own hype instead. Good. The smarter McCarthy mistakenly thinks he is, the worse he’ll end up blowing this.
