Kevin McCarthy pleaded ignorance about his photo with Trump at Mar-a-Lago weeks after January 6: book

• Kevin McCarthy privately said he didn't expect to take a photo with Trump in Mar-a-Lago in January 2021.
• The top Republican's comments were reported in a forthcoming book that will be published on May 3.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy privately told a lawmaker that he didn't know his picture would be taken with former President Donald Trump during his visit to Mar-a-Lago just weeks after the Capitol riot, according to a new book.

"I didn't know they were going to take a picture," McCarthy reportedly told an unnamed colleague, according to "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America's Future." The New York Times on Thursday reported new excerpts from the forthcoming book that will be published on May 3.

It's not clear what McCarthy meant by his reported comments. The photo of the pair is clearly posed.

In a statement after The Times published the new excerpts, McCarthy issued a full-throated denial of all of his comments as reported in "This Will Not Pass."

"The New York Times' reporting on me is totally false and wrong," McCarthy said in a statement. "It comes as no surprise to me that the corporate media is obsessed with doing everything it can to further a liberal agenda."

McCarthy has defended his decision to visit with Trump. At the time, he said their meeting was an effort to unite the party ahead of the 2022 midterms.

"One of the problems we have in America today is people aren't talking to each other enough," McCarthy told Punchbowl News in February 2021, adding "and I don't quite grasp why we're now challenging people that they can't talk to one another."

Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who was once the No. 3 House Republican, has torched his decision to bring Trump back into the fold before the Senate even acquitted him of inciting the insurrection.

"He's not just a former president. He provoked an attack on the Capitol, an attack on our democracy," Cheney told NBC News. And so I can't understand why you would want to go rehabilitate him."