House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) doesn’t want telecommunication or social media companies to comply with a request from Congress related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attacks, reported the Washington Post.
A committee to investigate the attack – which was carried out by supporters of former President Donald Trump who wanted to prevent the certification of electoral votes for current President Joe Biden – was announced by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier this summer. Chairman Rep. Bernie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) announced Thursday that Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) will serve as his vice chair.
Recently, the panel asked 35 companies to preserve “metadata, subscriber information, technical usage information, and content of communications,” for individuals who they suspect had a role in the attack and attempts to thwart the election process.
McCarthy declared that Republicans, many who have been opposed to the creation of the investigation committee, “will not forget” if the companies comply with the request.
“If these companies comply with the Democrat order to turn over private information, they are in violation of federal law and subject to losing their ability to operate in the United States,” McCarthy said. “If companies still choose to violate federal law, a Republican majority will not forget and will stand with Americans to hold them fully accountable under the law.”
On the day of the attack, McCarthy was on a phone call with Trump, according to Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.).
“McCarthy refuted that and told the president that these were Trump supporters,” she said, regarding Trump’s claims that antifa (a decentralized left-wing group) carried out the attack. “That’s when, according to McCarthy, the president said: ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.’”
According to the Washington Post, it is not clear what federal law McCarthy claims the companies would be breaking in complying with the request. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the outlet Wednesday.
Mike Stern, a former lawyer for the nonpartisan House counsel office, said the companies are actually be legally obligated to respond if a subpoena was issued. He said, however, that there are probably laws that bar phone carriers and other companies from turning over records voluntarily.
“Even if there is arguably a competing legal obligation or privilege that might trump the subpoena, I know of no principle that requires any subpoena recipient to risk contempt in order to protect the interests of their customers,” Stern said.
On the Democratic side, lawmakers and legal experts have accused McCarthy treason and obstructing justice.
“Every day we enter new uncharted territory,” Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.) said in a statement, according to the Washington Post.
“Last night, the House Republican Leader openly threatened subpoenaed parties to undermine and impede the historic probe into January 6. His threats are treasonous.”
Norman Eisen, former White House ethics counsel in the Obama administration, argued that McCarthy’s action “meets the elements of obstruction and is “unjustified by law.”
“It’s Orwellian. If these telecom companies fail to comply with the requirement to preserve these records, if they did what Kevin McCarthy wants … that would be a violation of law,” Eisen, the executive chairman of the States United Democracy Center and a senior fellow at Brookings, said during an interview on CNN.
So far, several companies have already agreed to comply with the committee’s request, including Reddit and Snapchat. Other companies, including Facebook (which owns Instagram) and Google (which owns YouTube), plan to cooperate but did not elaborate on if they would comply with specific requests.
Rumble, a YouTube rival popular with conservative influencers, said the company “complies with all valid law enforcement and investigative requests.” It did not say whether it considers the committee’s requests as such, nor whether it will comply with them, according to the Washington Post.
Switzerland-based Proton Technologies, the parent company behind the encrypted email service ProtonMail, is the only company that has said it won’t comply with the request. It claims Swiss blocking laws restricting the sharing of evidence from the country with foreign authorities prevents Proton from complying.
“Our use of zero-access encryption means that we do not have access to the message content being requested,” U.S. communications manager Matt Fossen said in a statement to the Washington Post.
Spokesmen for Microsoft and Twitter declined to comment. Additionally, spokesmen for Apple, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, TikTok, Slack, MeWe, 4chan, Signal, Parler, and Twitch did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday and early Wednesday about the panel’s requests and McCarthy’s remarks. Although Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, Amazon also declined to comment.
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