McCarthy pushes back against Cassidy Hutchinson's Jan. 6 committee testimony, insisting that calls to the White House that day were for one reason alone: 'I was trying to find the president'

• Kevin McCarthy said he'd never talked to Trump about his aborted January 6 march to the Capitol.
• The House minority leader said he didn't want anyone at the Capitol during the deadly attack.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Friday that he and then-President Donald Trump never discussed a post-"Stop the Steal" rally visit to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and that any calls he made while rioters stormed the building were about finding the commander in chief.

"I was trying to find the president," McCarthy told reporters of the back and forth that went on with the White House while Trump supporters attacked the Capitol.

The California Republican's latest comments contradict testimony Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump White House aide, provided to the January 6 House select committee. Hutchinson told investigators that McCarthy flew into a rage during a conversation they had after Trump closed out his election-fraud-centric speech on the Ellipse by declaring that he was going to march to the Capitol with the partially armed crowd.

"'Well, he just said it onstage, Cassidy. Figure it out. Don't come up here,'" McCarthy said during a combative call, according to Hutchinson.

McCarthy denied every part of that during a Friday press conference in the Capitol.

He told reporters he didn't watch Trump's "fight like hell" speech that day, so he couldn't have known about any trek to the Capitol.

"I was busy working," McCarthy told Manu Raju, a CNN correspondent.

McCarthy conceded that he did reach out to the White House once rioters breached security but said he called the Trump advisors Dan Scavino and Jared Kushner only to find out where Trump was during the chaos.

He said he didn't recall speaking to Hutchinson that day. But he added that if he did, he wouldn't have been inviting anyone to join the melee.

"If I talked to her, I don't remember it," McCarthy said. "If it was coming up here, I don't think I wanted a lot of people coming up to the Capitol."