Rep. Liz Cheney hinted to Fox News viewers today that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is covering up information about Republican complicity in the January 6th insurrection, which may go beyond Donald Trump.
At about six minutes into her interview on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked Cheney, whether McCarthy and Rep. Elise Stefanik (who just replaced Cheney after she was ousted from her House leadership position) are “being complicit in what you consider the Trump lies?”
Yes, Cheney said, “They are.” She went on to say that fidelity to the U.S. Constitution is more important than partisanship. She said Trump’s “continued attacks on the Constitution and the rule of law is dangerous” and that “we all have an obligation to stand up against that.”
But then she took it a step further.
Wallace played a clip from McCarthy’s April 25th appearance on the show. (Wallace left out the part where McCarthy weasled on saying whether it was true that when McCarthy called Trump for help during the Capitol siege, Trump had sided with the insurrectionists.)
In the exchange played for Cheney, Wallace had either wittingly or unwittingly handed McCarthy the opportunity to parse his denial as to what, exactly, "never happened." Was McCarthy denying that Trump reached out to discuss the January 6th phone call? Denying that they spoke at all about the phone call after the fact? Denying that he refused to discuss it with Trump?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Has the president ever reached out to you, since that report came out, to discuss what you and he talked about in the January 6th phone call?
And did you say to him, I can't because we are under oath?
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): No.
WALLACE: That never happened?
MCCARTHY: It's never happened.
WALLACE: And you --
MCCARTHY: Never -- never even close.
WALLACE: And -- and if it did happen, you would agree that would be witness tampering?
MCCARTHY: Yes, but it never happened.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
After the clip, Wallace asked Cheney if she knew whether Trump and McCarthy worked to “get their stories straight about what happened in that January 6th phone call?”
Cheney didn’t say it explicitly but she strongly hinted that they had. She also hinted that Congressmembers "who may be retired" were involved.
CHENEY: Leader McCarthy has spoken to a number of people in -- in large groups and small groups since the sixth about his exchanges with the president. He's spoken publicly on the House floor about his view as president's responsibility. I think it's very important that, you know, he clearly has facts about that day, that an investigation into what happened, into the president's actions, ought to get to the bottom of. And I think that he has important information that needs to be part of any investigation, whether it's the FBI, the Department of Justice, or this commission that I -- I hope will be set up.
…
WALLACE: Do think that raises issues of his -- President Trump's responsibility for the riot, whether or not he's trying to tamper with Kevin McCarthy as a witness?
CHENEY: Certainly. I mean I think that -- that, you know, any conversations
-- and we -- we know certainly that that conversation happened. Any conversations that have gone on with the president about the president's potential involvement in January 6th, his potential determination not to step in and offer assistance, any -- any conversations that have -- have to do with, you know, any members of Congress, those, you know, people who may be retired. We know that there were conversations in the Oval Office before this about the possibility of declaring martial law and seizing, you know, election -- and seizing the ballot machines.
So I think that -- that all of this really points to why it's so important that we have a commission. You know, we've done that after Pearl Harbor. We did it after the Kennedy assassination. We did it after 9/11. It's a way that we, as a country, come together in a non-partisan fashion to understand what happened, to get to the bottom of it. It must have subpoena power. And -- and to begin to take steps so we can insure it never happens again.
You can watch Cheney implicate McCarthy and others below, from the May 16, 2021 Fox News Sunday.