House Speaker Kevin McCarthy often spent the last two years avoiding much discussion about the January 6, 2021, attack.
Now, he’s effectively put the issue back in the spotlight and on the investigative agenda – a gambit that has divided House and Senate Republicans and reopened ugly wounds inside the GOP.
Republicans in the House are beginning to plot multiple probes into the 2021 Capitol attack, including looking into the Democratic-led select committee’s actions from the last Congress, the security failures from that day and potentially even the treatment of January 6 defendants, multiple sources familiar with the work tell CNN. The move comes as McCarthy green-lit the release of January 6 security footage to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sought to whitewash the severity of the attack and caused a major uproar among Senate Republicans on Tuesday.
“I think they need to watch a little less cable TV,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a member of Senate GOP leadership, said of his Republican counterparts in the House.
While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called it a “mistake” for Fox News to use the footage to downplay January 6, McCarthy defended the move and joined many in his conference to shift the focus onto the select committee after they had blamed Trump for the attack.
GOP Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, an ally of McCarthy’s, will now lead a new GOP probe into January 6, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. As chairman of the House Administration’s subcommittee on oversight, the Georgia Republican is expected to focus on the select committee and what he’s called security failures leading up to the attack.
“I’m spending some time over there getting my hands wrapped around what we have. We’re going to be looking at what happened in the Capitol. What happened leading up to it? How did…
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