Ethics Complaint Being Filed Against Rep. McCarthy

Citing Stephen Colbert's at least partly tongue-in-cheek call for "Benghazi Hearing Hearings," the Agenda Project Action Fund posted a YouTube video calling for a House Ethics Committee investigation of House majority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and the Select Committee on Benghazi. That effort appears to have paid off.

A top aide to Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) confirms that he plans to file an ethics complaint against McCarthy Wednesday.

McCarthy, who has been the leading candidate to succeed the resigning John Boehner (R-Ohio) as House Speaker, got into some trouble with his own party after suggesting on Fox's Sean Hannity show that the hearings may have helped lower the poll numbers of Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton and leaving the impression that might have been one of the reasons for the investigation. Clinton has since incorporated footage of McCarthy from the show in a campaign ad, confirming GOP concerns that the statement was handing her a political weapon.

"On Monday, we released a video titled The New McCarthyism, demanding that Congress 'investigate the investigators',” said Agenda Project Action Fund in praising the complaint. "In less than 2 days, the video reached more than 200,000 views."

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.