Republicans Start the New Year With a Gift to Donald Trump

[ad_1]

Kevin McCarthy’s last-ditch effort to save his flailing bid to lead the House could be a gift to Donald Trump, whose fate over his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot rests in the hands of the incoming GOP. majority.

In a series of calls with Republican colleagues over the weekend, McCarthy—the House minority leader and leading candidate for House speaker—sought to reach out to the far-right members of his party who remain in fence about his hiring and likely. threat to his ability to get the votes he needs.

According to accounts of the calls detailed by Congress and members of the press, McCarthy offered to change several House rules, including one that would allow a sitting House speaker to be replaced with just five member votes, among other concessions to his party’s hard-liners.

McCarthy’s campaign to become speaker also included an offer to restore a House procedural law known as the Holman Rule, a more than century-old provision that allows members to run amendments to spending packages. to reduce the salaries of specific federal employees, or even to cut specific programs from the budget.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy hopes to become the next House speaker but is opposed by House Freedom Caucus members Chip Roy (left), Andy Biggs (bottom right) and Lauren Boebert (top). Newsweek/Getty Images photo illustration

Although the provision has been largely inactive since its removal from House rules in 1983, some GOP members on the fence about having McCarthy as speaker—including the House Freedom Caucus—have already suggested they want it reinstated. as they prepare to begin investigating several Biden administration agencies it opposes, including the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Newsweek has contacted McCarthy’s office for comment.

McCarthy has already indicated that he will honor demands by far-right members of his conference, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado, to investigate Biden administration officials such as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for their handling of on the immigration crisis at the US-Mexico border.

But their list also includes top law enforcement officials like FBI Director Christopher Wray, who is leading the investigation into Trump’s illegal removal of classified documents after leaving the White House. Some Republican members of the House have gone so far as to suggest that Congress move to defund the FBI, which they believe—and Trump—is politically motivated to retaliate against the former president for his impeachment efforts. the results of the 2020 presidential election. .

Steps like that—as well as a proposal by one of McCarthy’s challengers for the speaker post, Arizona Representative Andy Biggs, to eliminate parts of the Justice Department using the Holman Rule—would have clear implications for the agency’s ongoing investigation into Trump’s related actions. including the riots on Jan. 6. As a result, Democratic-led efforts to see the former president tried for crimes he may have committed during and after his tenure could be jeopardized.

“Republicans could also try to defund any investigations into Trump, or even defund probes and prosecutions related to the January 6, 2021 attack,” wrote the Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent in an August 2022 column on the reinstatement of the Holman Rule. “They can do it without the more likely act of defunding the entire FBI.”

But it’s also an open question whether that will actually happen. Any amendments floated by House Republicans would still need to win approval from the Democratic-controlled Senate, meaning any showdown to defund the Trump investigations could result in a long, difficult stalemates in Congress over federal spending packages.

Meanwhile, McCarthy’s public attempts at drumming up support for his speakership bid were largely unsuccessful. Although he proposed inserting language into the rules that would make it easier to remove him from office, it was strongly rejected by his opponents, with a McCarthy speakership out of the question.

“The times call for a radical departure from the status quo—not a continuation of past, and ongoing, Republican failures,” a Jan. 1 joint letter signed by nine members of the House Freedom Caucus .

“For someone with a 14-year presence in senior House Republican leadership, Mr. McCarthy bears quite the burden to correct the dysfunction that he now openly admits to during that long period,” the letter said.

[ad_2]