It’s been a very bad few weeks for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who found out that his phone records have been requested by the House Select Committee on the January 6 Capitol insurrection, with CNN reporting:
“House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is among a group of GOP lawmakers whose phone records are of interest to the select committee investigating the deadly January 6 riot on Capitol Hill, CNN has learned.
“The committee asked a group of telecommunication companies to preserve phone records belonging to McCarthy, along with several other House Republicans, earlier this week.”
That led McCarthy to directly threaten any telecom company that complies with the request from the select committee:
“If these companies comply with the Democrat order to turn over private information, they are in violation of federal law and subject to losing their ability to operate in the United States. If companies still choose to violate federal law, a Republican majority will not forget and will stand with Americans to hold them fully accountable under the law.”
If that sounds like a threat, then you’re reading the statement from McCarthy correctly. It’s quite clearly a threat, and it may well mean that McCarthy has broken the law and is facing serious legal jeopardy.
Specifically, McCarthy could be prosecuted under the Victim and Witness Protection Act, which “forbids anyone from corruptly, or by threats of force or by any threatening communication, influencing, obstructing, or impeding any pending proceeding before a department or agency of the United States, or Congress.”
McCarthy’s strident tweet led legal analyst Ken White to suggest that a case could be made against the California congressman:
That was followed by comments from former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner, who said the Justice Department “should already have an arrest warrant” for McCarthy:
Kevin McCarthy should have run his statement by an attorney before he issued it. But he didn’t, and that may wind up being a fatal flaw which results in him being charged with a federal crime.
