(Bloomberg) -- The Jan. 6 panel took the unusual step of voting to refer the House Republican leader and possible next speaker to the chamber’s Ethics Committee for failing to comply with subpoenas for testimony.

The action against California Representative Kevin McCarthy and three other Republicans, will likely be moot. The referrals, made in the last days of the current congressional session, will expire on Jan. 3 and the Ethics Committee will be reconstituted when the new Republican majority takes over that day.

 

McCarthy’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Also referred to the ethics panel were incoming Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan of Ohio, as well as Representatives Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona.

“This is just another partisan and political stunt,” said Russell Dye, a spokesperson for Jordan.

Jay Ostrich, a spokesperson for Perry, called Monday’s action by 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.”

Biggs, in a statement, called the referral against him a “political stunt” and said it had defamed him, and that he would review the panel’s documents and set the record straight in the next Congress.

A group of House Republicans plans to counter the committee’s findings with a “shadow” report focusing, they say, on security and law enforcement failures in the attack. 

There’s one “wild card,” according to Blake Chisam, a former staff director and chief counsel for the House Ethics committee. Chisam said that the independent Office of Congressional Ethics, which is not a congressional body, could choose on its own to consider the Jan. 6 panel’s information. It could then — during the next session — issue a recommendation that the House Ethics Committee to investigate the matter.

At issue could be arguments made that willful non-compliance with compulsory congressional committee subpoenas by lawmakers violate the House rule requiring members to conduct themselves “at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.”

Still, chances are slim that the committee, which is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats — much less the GOP-controlled full House — would take action against the four. The most severe punishment, expulsion from the House, requires a two-thirds majority vote. Censure and reprimand, which evolved through precedent and practice, are imposed by a simple majority of the full House.

(Updates with responses from lawmakers, beginning in fourth paragraph)

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