Jamie Raskin says the GOP lawmakers' refusal to testify is unjustifiable and that they could 'plead the 5th'

• Rep. Jamie Raskin says "it's shocking" that Republicans are refusing to comply with the Jan. 6 investigation.
• Several Republican lawmakers who were issued subpoenas have pushed back against the House select committee.

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland pushed back on Republican lawmakers who are refusing to cooperate with the House select committee's investigation into the January 6 attack on the Capitol, saying it is unjustifiable.

"It's shocking to me that members of Congress would not want to participate," Raskin, who is a member of the House select committee, told Insider on Friday. "They have an opportunity to plead the Fifth Amendment if they think something they might say would incriminate themselves."

He added: "There's no justification for anyone to blow off the committee."

Raskin's remarks come after The New York Times reported on Thursday that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Jim Jordan of Ohio, and Andy Biggs of Arizona have all signaled that they would not comply with the committee's subpoenas.

Perry, Biggs and Jordan were summoned to testify before the committee. McCarthy and Republican Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, were expected to testify next week.

Brooks did not respond to Insider's request for comment about whether he will comply with the committee's subpoena.

The Times reported that McCarthy filed a court brief in response to the subpoena and argued that it was illegitimate. On Friday, McCarthy's attorney questioned the committee's legality in a letter to its chairman. The other lawmakers sent letters to the committee objecting to the congressional investigation.

In response, the House could vote to hold these lawmakers in criminal contempt and then make a referral to Justice Department, as it recently did with two former Trump advisers. Another option would be to ask a federal court to enforce the subpoena. It's not yet clear whether the House will take either of these actions.

Raskin told Insider that Republicans' resistance to participate in the investigation will "undermine the comprehensiveness of our investigation inevitably."

"We do have a lot of testimony, but we obviously would prefer to hear from people who were actors in different parts of the relevant events," he said.

The House select committee is expected to hold several public hearings on its findings around the January 6 riot starting on June 9.

Lawmakers on the House select committee previously stated that they wanted to know information from these Republican lawmakers that pertained to the events around the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

"We'll tell the story about what happened. We will use a combination of witnesses, exhibits, things that we have — to the tens of thousands of exhibits we've interviewed and looked at as well as the hundreds of witnesses we deposed or just talked to in general," Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat who chairs the committee, told reporters last month.