House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy was embroiled in controversy on Wednesday after The Washington Post reported a story that said McCarthy said Russian President Vladimir Putin paid Donald Trump.
Positioned at the top of The Washington Post’s headline, just below the announcement that the Department of Justice had appointed a special counsel to look into Trump’s presidential campaign’s ties to Russia, was the McCarthy story under the headline: “House majority leader to colleagues in 2016: ‘I think Putin pays’ Trump.”
The story said it heard a recording of McCarthy talking with fellow California Rep. Dana Rohbracher when McCarthy reportedly said: “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.”
The Post reported that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan immediately stopped the conversation and urged those in attendance to remain secret. The story was trending on social media, but McCarthy tweeted reaction to the story.
