Democrats tear into Kevin McCarthy after leaked audio shows he privately blamed Trump for Jan. 6, calling him 'feckless, spineless' and a 'liar'

• Leaked audio reveals Kevin McCarthy told his GOP colleagues Trump was to blame for January 6.
• The Republican House minority leader has spent months defending Trump in public.

Top Democrats declared House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy a "liar" on Friday, after newly revealed audio captured him privately blaming the January 6 attack on the Capitol on Donald Trump, despite his defense of the former president in public.

The tapes of McCarthy's private conversations were first reported by the New York Times, and broadcast on Thursday and Friday by MSNBC and CNN. The recordings reveal McCarthy's fury at Trump for instigating a mob that ransacked the Capitol, and that he had discussed removing the president from office with his fellow Republicans and said he would urge Trump to resign. At one point, he declared, "I've had it with this guy."

Publicly, however, McCarthy posed for a photo with Trump a few days after the attack, and has spent more than a year downplaying the severity of January 6 or deflecting blame from the former president. On Thursday, McCarthy issued a blanket denial of the Times' reporting, before the tapes were released, calling it "totally false and wrong." McCarthy's spokesman, Mark Bednar, said, "McCarthy never said he'd call Trump to say he should resign."

Democrats quickly attacked McCarthy following the release of the tapes.

"Kevin McCarthy lied. About January 6th. About comments he made to his colleagues. And about Donald Trump. Why are the people he lied to still allowing him to serve in leadership?," tweeted Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat who helped spearhead Trump's first impeachment.

In a separate tweet, Swalwell called for McCarthy to lose his security clearance that provides him access to classified information.

"Authoritarians don't come to power alone. They come to power on the backs of men like Kevin McCarthy," tweeted Rep. Adam Schiff of California.

Swalwell and Schiff's colleague from California, Rep. Ted Lieu, tweeted that the audio "shows, again, that there is only one reality—it's just that many Republican Members of Congress lie about it."

Some of the harshest criticism came from Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, who called McCarthy "feckless, spineless" and "a LIAR!"

"He has undermined his oath to protect & defend the constitution," Harrison wrote.

The recordings of McCarthy show that his private discussions with his caucus about Trump were radically different from what the minority leader has said in public.

"What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that, and nobody should defend it," he said in a January 10, 2021 call with House Republicans.

This past January, congressional reporters asked McCarthy if he had told House Republicans during a January 11, 2021 phone call that Trump bore responsibility for the attack. He replied that "I'm not sure what call you're talking about."

On Friday, CNN broadcast audio recordings from the January 11 call.

"I asked him personally today, does he hold responsibility for what happened? Does he feel bad about what happened?" McCarthy is heard telling House Republicans. "He told me he does have some responsibility for what happened. And he needed to acknowledge it."