Republicans Rip Jan. 6 Committee over Ethics Referrals: ‘Partisan and Political Stunt’

House Republicans tore into the January 6 select committee after it referred them on Monday to the House Ethics Committee for the members’ purported “failure to comply with the subpoenas issued to them,” according to the executive summary of the committee’s final report.

The members who were referenced in the 154-page executive summary, which was issued after a committee meeting, were House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Scott Perry (R-PA), and Andy Biggs (R-AZ).

A spokesman for Jordan responded by citing the partisan nature of the committee, a nine-member panel of seven Democrats and two Never Trump Republicans, the latter of whom are finishing out their final days in office.

“This is just another partisan and political stunt made by a Select Committee that knowingly altered evidence, blocked minority representation on a Committee for the first time in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives, and failed to respond to Mr. Jordan’s numerous letters and concerns,” spokesman Russell Dye said in a statement provided to Breitbart News.

Jordan twice wrote to the committee after being subpoenaed, demanding information from the committee and questioning its legitimacy, but the committee responded to only the first letter from Jordan by pushing out its deadline for Jordan to appear before the committee.

A spokesman for Perry, the chair of the Freedom Caucus, chided the committee as a “soon-to-be defunct kangaroo court” in response to Perry’s ethics referral. Perry too had sent multiple letters to the committee laying out numerous objections and received one response from the committee — to his first two letters — pushing out its deadline for Perry to appear before the committee.

“More games from a petulant and soon-to-be defunct kangaroo court desperate for revenge and struggling to get out from under the weight of its own irrelevancy,” Perry spokesman Jay Ostrich said in a statement provided to Breitbart News.

Ostrich added that Perry “is pressing on with his commitment to help his constituents, who, once again — unlike several members of this illegitimate entity — overwhelmingly sent him back to Washington to fix what President Biden and his enablers have broken.”

Biggs said in response to the ethics referral against him that it was “inappropriate to use” the House Ethics Committee “to help reach the J6 Committee’s pre-determined conclusions”:

The January 6 committee contended that the four members violated House Rules by their perceived “willful noncompliance” with subpoenas, even after Jordan and Perry, as well as Biggs and McCarthy, all communicated objections and concerns to the committee following receipt of their subpoenas.

It remains unclear if and when the House ethics panel will address the committee’s referrals.

The committee, an initiative of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), has for 18 months been probing the January 6 Capitol riot with a specific focus on former President Donald Trump and Trump’s allies.

The committee announced Monday, in addition to its ethics referrals, that it would recommend a criminal investigation into Trump by the Justice Department on four charges: conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to make a false statement, and inciting, assisting, or aiding and comforting an insurrection against the country.

Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.