Former Congressman Warns Something Big Is Coming

WASHINGTON — Representative Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who is attempting to become the adjacent House speaker, on Wednesday warned the special committee investigating the Jan. vi, 2021, attack on the Capitol that members of his party planned to launch an inquiry of their ain into the panel’due south work next year when Republicans assume control of the chamber.

In a alphabetic character sent to the committee’south chairman, Mr. McCarthy instructed the console to preserve its records — an action already required under House rules — including any recorded transcripts of its more than than 1,000 interviews. The missive was the first official indication that newly empowered House Republicans plan not but to cease the inquiry at the start of the new Congress, just also to attempt to dismantle and discredit its findings — the latest piece of a broader effort the party has undertaken over the past two years to deny, downplay or shift blame for the deadly assault by a pro-Trump mob.

It comes as Mr. McCarthy toils to shore upwards his position with hard-right Republicans in his briefing who take refused to support his bid for speaker, imperiling his chances of existence elected in Jan.

Mr. McCarthy pledged in the letter that he would concord public hearings scrutinizing the security breakdowns that occurred during the assault, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, disrupting Congress’s formal count of balloter votes to confirm Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s election as president.

“Although your committee’s public hearings did non focus on why the Capitol circuitous was not secure on Jan. 6, 2021, the Republican majority in the 118th Congress volition hold hearings that exercise so,” Mr. McCarthy wrote to Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and chairman of the committee.

A spokesman for the Jan. six commission declined to annotate on the letter of the alphabet, which was reported before by The Federalist.

The committee, which will be dissolved at the terminate of the electric current Congress, is finishing up its concluding batch of witness interviews, including a session on Wednesday with Robin Vos, the speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, who said former President Donald J. Trump has continued to try to pressure lawmakers to overturn the 2020 election — even more than than a year afterwards his defeat.

The panel is also completing an all-encompassing study, which is expected to exist released in December and is the subject of much internal debate over how much to focus on Mr. Trump’s actions versus security failures at the Capitol. Members of the committee’s so-called Blue Team have conducted months of investigation and research into such failures, but it was unclear how much of their work would be featured.

Mr. McCarthy highlighted the complaints raised by some current and sometime staffers in media reports that their work investigating security failures, the financing of the rallies that preceded the attack and the threat of white nationalism would exist overshadowed in the report past a focus on Mr. Trump’southward attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

Lawmakers on the commission accept said they are attempting to create a readable report — and had to make hard choices about what to include, given the voluminous prove accumulated — simply plan to release the full transcripts of their interviews afterward making some redactions to forestall the identification of witnesses who were granted anonymity.

In improver to interviewing more than than 1,000 witnesses, the commission has obtained more than one million pages of documents.

Shortly subsequently the attack, both the Senate and the House held multiple hearings investigating security failures, and the Senate produced a bipartisan report detailing those failures.

Republicans, especially those on the difficult right, have pressed to focus on the security flaws, which they have baselessly blamed on Speaker Nancy Pelosi, rather than on Mr. Trump’s function in pushing for the election to exist overturned and summoning a big crowd to march on the Capitol, where they attacked and injured more than 150 police officers in a encarmine rampage.

In a contempo closed-door meeting of Republicans, right-wing lawmakers including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia besides extracted a hope that their leaders would investigate Ms. Pelosi and the Justice Department for their treatment of defendants jailed in connection with the Jan. half dozen attack.

Mr. McCarthy has long derided the Jan. 6 committee’south investigation. He refused to comply with a subpoena and has argued the panel is “illegitimate” because Ms. Pelosi rejected ii of his nominees.

The console has taken no footstep to enforce that amendment, citing congressional traditions.