House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is denying that he told Republican colleagues he would recommend former President Donald Trump resign if he were impeached over the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, The Hill reports.
In the aftermath of Jan. 6, GOP party leaders privately panned Trump to a greater degree than previously thought, according to The New York Times.
In a Jan. 10 phone call, McCarthy told Republican House leadership that he would advise Trump to resign if impeached, the Times reports.
"What he did is unacceptable," McCarthy reportedly said. "Nobody can defend that and nobody should defend it."
"I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign," he allegedly told colleagues he would tell Trump, regarding the impeachment resolution.
McCarthy spokesman Mark Bednar denied the allegations to both The Hill and the Times.
"He did not say that," Bednar said.
McCarthy also reportedly questioned if some GOP members who made inflammatory comments about the Capitol breach could be banned from Facebook and Twitter, the way Trump was, according to the Times reporting.
Bednar told the Times that the Republican leader "never said that particular members should be removed from Twitter."
The Times' report is based on the upcoming book "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America's Future."
Times reporter Alex Burns, who co-wrote the book with Jonathan Martin, told CNN Thursday that they are "a thousand percent confident" in their sourcing and stand by their reporting.
McCarthy did not vote in favor of impeaching or convicting Trump and visited the former president at his Mar-a-Lago resort at the end of January 2021, less than a month after the attack.
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