CNN
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Throughout a personal assembly final summer season, Home Minority Chief Kevin McCarthy informed two cops who defended the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and the mom of a 3rd who died after the riot, that former President Donald Trump had no thought his supporters had been finishing up the assault, in line with newly obtained audio of the dialog.
Testimony to the Home Choose Committee on January 6 revealed that Trump watched television for hours because the rioters engaged in a brutal battle with regulation enforcement.
However McCarthy maintained Trump was unaware of the violence contained in the Capitol when he spoke with Trump by telephone that afternoon. He additionally appeared to take credit score for getting the then-President to make a late-afternoon public assertion urging his supporters to “go home,” in line with one of many conferences’ attendees, then-DC Metropolitan police officer Michael Fanone.
“I’m simply telling you from my telephone name, I don’t know that he did know that,” McCarthy stated throughout the June 2021 assembly about Trump’s information of the combating, in line with audio secretly recorded by Fanone on the time and detailed in his new e book titled, “Maintain the Line: The Rebellion and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul.”
The District is a single-party consent jurisdiction for recordings, that means it’s authorized for one get together to document one other with out permission. CNN has reached out to McCarthy’s workplace for remark.
The assembly got here as plenty of Home Republicans had been trying to downplay or distort the info of what befell on January 6, when Trump’s false claims of a stolen election triggered a lethal assault on the Capitol by a violent pro-Trump mob.
It additionally befell as McCarthy was “backing off on a pledge to nominate Republicans to the particular January 6 Committee,” Fanone writes, including: “The one purpose McCarthy had agreed to satisfy with us was as a result of he’d been getting warmth for refusing to see me.”
Whereas some particulars of the assembly had been reported on the day it occurred, the newly launched audio underscores simply how shortly Trump regained his grip on the Republican Social gathering following the January 6 assault regardless of an preliminary groundswell of bipartisan outrage over his unwillingness to denounce the violence because it was occurring.
McCarthy himself stated he considered asking Trump to resign within the instant aftermath of the assault, in line with beforehand launched audio of a personal dialog between the Home minority chief and different Republican lawmakers.
Fanone, who was stun-gunned a number of instances and crushed with a flagpole throughout the riot, had beforehand made a number of makes an attempt to satisfy with the California Republican to debate the rebel earlier than McCarthy finally agreed, in line with his new e book.
Republicans, together with McCarthy, had largely opposed efforts to look at the circumstances of the rebel, drawing intense criticism from Fanone and a number of other different cops who had been there.
US Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, who additionally defended the Capitol throughout the rebel, and the mom of late Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick additionally participated within the assembly with McCarthy and all three repeatedly pressed McCarthy to acknowledge Trump’s function in spurring on the assault, in line with the recording. Sicknick suffered a number of strokes and died a day after the riot.
It was his mom, Gladys Sicknick, who first challenged McCarthy’s declare about what Trump knew and when he knew it.
“He already knew what was happening,” she stated of Trump, in line with the audio obtained by CNN. “Individuals had been combating for hours and hours and hours. This doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Later within the assembly, Fanone additionally confronted McCarthy about his protection of Trump, telling the Republican chief: “Whilst you had been on the telephone with him, I used to be getting the shit kicked out of me!”
“I requested McCarthy why he would take credit score for Trump’s pathetic, half-hearted late-afternoon video tackle to his followers. I stated, ‘Trump says to his folks, ‘That is what occurs if you steal an election. Go house. I really like you.’ What the f–ok is that? That got here from the president of the USA,” Fanone writes in his e book.
All three urged McCarthy to sentence 21 members of his personal get together who voted earlier that month in opposition to awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to officers who defended the Capitol and pushed him to decide to a critical “rebel investigation,” Fanone writes in his memoir.
“I informed McCarthy I felt betrayed by the best way some Republicans had been twisting a riotous assault on regulation enforcement officers right into a fundraising grift,” Fanone writes in his e book.
“‘It’s crap,’ I stated. ‘It’s disgraceful,’” he provides, recalling his feedback throughout the assembly and noting that “McCarthy supplied no response.”
McCarthy stated forward of his assembly with Fanone that he has “no downside speaking to anyone about” his dialog with Trump on January 6 when requested by CNN if he would converse to the committee in regards to the name.
Fanone suffered a coronary heart assault and a concussion throughout the rebel and is coping with a traumatic mind harm and post-traumatic stress dysfunction.
