Republican Group Displays 'Stop Lying' Billboards Over McCarthy's District

A Republican campaign group has targeted Kevin McCarthy with billboard ads that call on the GOP House Minority Leader to "stop lying" about January 6.

The Republican Accountability Project (RAP), a conservative anti-Donald Trump group, shared a photo of one of the billboards in a Tuesday Twitter post that criticized the Republican leader.

"We've heard the tapes, Kevin. Stop lying about January 6th," the billboard read. According to RAP, several billboards targeting McCarthy went up around California's 23rd congressional district, which is represented by the GOP leader.

Since being shared on Tuesday, the post has attracted some 26,000 likes and more than 5,870 retweets.

The billboard, one of six in the district, refers to a recording of a January 10, 2021 meeting where McCarthy appears to consider calling on then-President Donald Trump to resign from office.

Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin of The New York Times reported McCarthy had debated making the call following the storming of the Capitol on January 6 last year.

The report is based on the pair's upcoming book This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America's Future.

A spokesperson issued a statement on behalf of the U.S. House Minority Leader, which denied the claims and added: "McCarthy never said he'd call Trump to say he should resign."

When asked about the reasons behind the campaign, a spokesperson for RAP told Newsweek: "We're calling out Kevin McCarthy for his lies about January 6. In private, Kevin McCarthy spoke about Donald Trump's conduct on January 6 as "atrocious and totally wrong."

"He even went as far as saying he would tell Trump he should resign. Yet, weeks later McCarthy was visiting Trump at Mar-A-Lago and signaling support for the former president. Kevin McCarthy's lies serve as another reminder that Donald Trump owns the GOP."

The spokesperson later added: "This is the kind of thing that can too easily get swept under the rug in today's news cycle. McCarthy essentially admitted that Donald Trump incited the January 6 attack, but now he spends much of his time trying to discredit the work of the House Jan. 6 Committee. The public should know that McCarthy is willing to lie to become Speaker of the House."

RAP targeted McCarthy earlier this year over his refusal to testify before the House Select Committee investigating the storming of the Capitol.

It ran 50 billboards across McCarthy's district as well as on bus shelters around Washington D.C. in January.

Newsweek has contacted RAP and McCarthy for comment.

McCarthy has faced criticism from other conservative figures since the audio was leaked to The New York Times.

Fox News talisman Tucker Carlson hit out McCarthy after the audio also revealed the House Minority Leader asked if social media companies could suspend some GOP lawmakers' accounts following the storming of the Capitol.

In the audio, recorded two days after Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter, McCarthy appeared concerned about further violence and said of other Republican lawmakers: "Can't they take their Twitter accounts away too?"

Carlson made the remarks while talking about Elon Musk's $44 billion buyout of Twitter and the future of the platform.

In the Tuesday night monologue, Carlson said: "Congressman Kevin McCarthy of California told his close friend Liz Cheney that he hoped the social media companies would censor more conservative Republicans in Congress.

"Donald Trump, the sitting president, had already been silenced by those companies. But McCarthy wanted the tech oligarchs to do more to force disobedient lawmakers off the internet."