Publicly, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) says he’s disgusted and outraged that failed ex-president Donald Trump has been criminally charged for his role in the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election which led to the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol by thousands of pro-Trump rioters.
However, an overlooked detail in the latest indictment from Special Counsel Jack Smith suggests that McCarthy may have already provided damning evidence which could seal Trump’s fate when the case goes to trial.
According to Jose Pagliery of The Daily Beast, that detail can be found in the 115th paragraph of the indictment which was handed down Monday by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. The paragraph refers to Jan. 6 and reads:
At 3:00 p.m., the defendant had a phone call with the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives. The defendant told the Minority Leader that the crowd at the Capitol was more upset about the election than the Minority Leader was.
As Pagliery rightly notes, there’s only a few people who would have known what was said on that phone call and could have provided details to the special counsel.
By choosing to speak as an omniscient narrator for that paragraph, federal prosecutors have left it entirely unclear how they know what was said on that phone call. And that’s fueling speculation about a number of possibilities: Is there a recording of the call? Did Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows—who is speculated to have been in the room with Trump at the time—provide an account to investigators? Did McCarthy?
In time, we’ll likely get an answer to those questions, and when we do, if indeed the information came from McCarthy, the extremist wing of the House GOP will demand that he be removed as Speaker.
Imagine it: Trump in prison and McCarthy dumped by his own party. The GOP would be in tatters, and that’s the best possible news for the country.
