Leaked audio shows Kevin McCarthy demanding inquiry into Jan. 6 riot, a position he later completely reversed

• Kevin McCarthy once called for an inquiry into the Jan 6 riot, per new audio played by CNN.
• That clip totally contradicts his later public position, which opposed investigating the riot.

Leaked audio shows House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy supporting a congressional inquiry into the January 6, the total opposite to the opinion he later argued in public.

The audio, recorded five days after the riot, was played Wednesday on CNN after being obtained by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns.

It undermines the fervent arguments McCarthy made in public against the creation of the bipartisan House committee investigating the riot, which is due to begin its public hearings Thursday evening.

In the audio, McCarthy can be heard addressing Republican leaders. In one part he describes how on the day of the riot he asked then-President Donald Trump to call off the rioters.

"When they started breaking into my office, myself and the staff got removed from the office. In doing so, I made a phone call to the president, telling him what was going on, asking him to tell these people to stop, to make a video and go out. And I was very intense and very loud about it," he said.

In another clip he argued strongly for a Congressional inquiry and described himself as "committed" to making that happen.

"I know there's going to be some dark days, then it's going to get really dark. But the one thing I will tell you, we should take this moment to change course, to improve, and more importantly we've got to be united against what the Democrats are going to do in the future," he said in the clips.

"We cannot just sweep this under the rug. We need to know why it happened, who did it and people need to be held accountable for it," he said. "And I'm committed to make sure that happens."

In the weeks after the riot, McCarthy revised his position totally and made a show of solidarity with Trump, posing for a joint photo at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

In May 2021, McCarthy opposed the idea of a bipartisan commission to investigate the attack. He also opposed the formation of the House committee to investigate January 6, and refused to nominate any Republicans to the committee.

As McCarthy has distanced himself from attempts to uncover more about the riot, he has sought to make Rep. Liz Cheney, one of two Republicans on the committee, a pariah in the GOP, expelling her from a House leadership position.

McCarthy has resisted complying with a subpoena from the committee, which wants to question him about his communications with Trump on January 6, 2021, the reasons for his abrupt change of stance about the riot, and a previous leaked recording where he said Trump accepted some culpability for the riot.

At a press conference Wednesday, McCarthy said that he would not be watching Thursday's hearings because he'd be too busy.