from jordan perry, brooks, and mccarthy. we have information from other sources that lead us to believe that each one of these individuals are colleagues have information within the committee and needs to tell the full story. plus, on the court victory to block florida s racially gerrymander congressional map. and what i learn from my battle with coronavirus that could end the helping you. when all in starts right now. good evening from new york, i am chris hayes. today the bipartisan committee investigating january six took the seismic step of subpoenaing the most powerful republican in the house. minority leader kevin mccarthy of california. and of course, that is the guy who is poised to become speaker of the house, should republicans win the house in the midterm elections. they also issued subpoenas for four of his colleagues, and in fact, their colleagues. jim jordan of ohio, mel brooks of alabama, andy biggs of arizona, and scott perry of pennsylvania. the latter fo
and for months and months, house democrats have been trying everything to avoid getting too precise at this point. which is why it is worth looking back at just how we got here. in the days after the insurrection, it really seemed like kevin mccarthy understood the gravity of the situation. it is apparent in the since leaked phone calls with his fellow republicans from the days following the attack that mccarthy privately told allies he was thinking of asking trump to resign. and you asked if, you know, what happens if he gets there after he s gone? is there any chance? are you hearing that he might resign? is there any reason to think that might happen? i ve had if you discussions. my gut tells me no. i m seriously thinking of having that conversation with him tonight. i haven t talked to him in a couple days. mccarthy appeared to take the attack so seriously that he actually deputize his own ally, member of the republican house leadership, congressman john taco of new
united and its purpose. in the face of republican stonewalling, stonewalling from trump s allies, invasions, we have the situation now where less than a month before the committee is said to go to public hearings, there is one last investigation. that is to find out with their colleagues know. and their colleagues will not tell them. so they are going to do the unprecedented thing to issue subpoenas to the republican obstructionists including kevin mccarthy the top republican of the house, the man who helped block the initial commission in the first place. congressman eric swalwell, he is a member of the house committee, and he joins me now. congressman, i don t think that anyone would deny this is a very big, significant step. what is your reaction to it? shouldn t their oath have been enough, chris? every citizen s responsibility when they witnessed a crime is to cooperate with authorities. this is the greatest crime against the constitution we have ever seen. the most amount of ar
then you have inherent contempt of congress, which is a long dormant weapon in congresses enforcement arsenal. will they pull out their weapon of inherent contempt, and use it against some of their own members if they did defy subpoenas? that would kind of feel like just desserts. then, of course, we have civil enforcement, which can be a long unwieldy process in the civil court. so, yes they should be taken seriously. we have all the usual enforcement mechanisms, but it remains to be seen, what will they do, will they comply or will they defy? so, let s start with brooks because he s so obvious. one of the things, and the world of executive privilege is this idea of waving it if you talk about the thing an issue. there s a little bit, it seems to me, of a parallel. which is brooks has been going around blabbing because trump decided to an endorsement because he s doing poorly in his primary, and he s going around telling everybody, the trump still wants to overturn the election. at
political calculations changed. it became clear that trump had a firm grip on the parties. so mccarthy encouraged his own caucus to vote against the commission that he had essentially greenlight id, and left congressman katko to fend for himself. standing alone while he tried to fact check his own party on the commission. another charge i heard was that the commission could be controlled by partisan staff, hired unilaterally by the commission chair. that is simply not true. there has been some concerns, arguments made about the criminal investigations. make no mistake about it. this commission has nothing to do with the criminal investigations. this commission bylaw cannot interfere interfere with criminal investigations. so strange about watching a republican be like wait, my colleagues are lying about something? but no, that is a lie. kevin mccarthy made a calculated decision, here it is clear, the facts of january 6th, the aftermath of the election,