Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was fired from the House speakership last month after losing the support of eight Republicans, including Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett. Now, McCarthy stands accused of elbowing Burchett in the Capitol hallway.
Burchett has declined to file an ethics complaint. “I’m not going to seek medical attention. And I’m not going to seek an attorney. I’m not going to seek an ethics validation. I could care less,” Burchett told CNN.
However, McCarthy became the subject of an ethics complaint by another political rival: Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.
Gaetz received national attention last month for filing the motion to vacate the speakership. “The rot starts at the top,” he said in his Tuesday complaint, regarding the alleged elbowing.
He continued —
It has come to my attention that this morning, November 14, 2023, following a meeting of the House Republican Conference, Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) assaulted Representative Tim Burchett (R-TN) in the hallways of Capitol complex… Needless to say, this incident deserves immediate and swift investigation by the Ethics Committee…
While Rep. Burchett is within his rights to decline to press charges against Rep. McCarthy, your Committee does have a duty to investigate. breaches of the binding Code of Official Conduct, whose first rule is that ‘A Member… shall behave at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.’
Video footage has yet to emerge, but eyewitnesses have confirmed McCarthy’s bump. Claudia Grisales, NPR’s congressional correspondent, claims to have been interviewing Burchett at the time of the incident.
“He lunged towards me, in that moment,” NPR congressional correspondent Claudia Grisales reportedly told CNN. “I thought, maybe initially it was a joke, and I looked up, I saw it was McCarthy surrounded by his detail… I could tell by Burchett’s response soon after, it was not a joke, at all.”
McCarthy has denied any intent to elbow Burchett, but he’s acknowledged the possibility of an accident. “I didn’t shove or elbow him. It’s a tight hallway,” McCarthy told CNN Tuesday.
The California Republican also dismissed a question about Gaetz’s ethics complaint. “I think Ethics is a good place for Gaetz to be,” McCarthy told reporters, according to CNN.
Gaetz himself is being investigated by the Ethics Committee, following accusations of sex trafficking.
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article.