Thames pushes House select committee after Senate Republicans block bipartisan investigation into Jan. 6 attack
3 min read
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s move to form a select committee has always been a declining option – one that will require the support of a majority of the Democrat-led House. Several Democrats on Friday said they hoped Pelosi would form a new group – and that the Caucasus would strongly support such an initiative.
“This is his next move,” a senior House Democrat said Friday.
Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat who served as indictment manager at former President Donald Trump’s second trial, said the Senate should pass a bill creating an external commission.
“However, if it fails, Congress should form a select committee to fully investigate the causes and consequences of the January 6 uprising,” Castro told CNN.
If the council creates such a committee, it will empower Democrats to plan sub-bonuses and investigations, and to investigate the causes of the attack and Trump’s role behind it. This would provoke a backlash from Republicans who are already trying to paint such an initiative as a discriminatory effort, despite their role in wiping out the group outside the two parties, which has 10 commissioners equally divided between the two parties.
“I don’t think a select committee is the right way to go,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told CNN last week, referring to the “Pelosi Select Committee.”
Pelosi’s office will not discuss his plans, but the California Democrats have repeatedly indicated that his preference is to create a commission outside the two parties and that a select committee is a clear option at the table. Doing so could create a ground war with existing House committee chairs, but Democrat lawmakers underestimated Friday, preferring to hold a comprehensive inquiry into what happened.
In a statement Friday after the Republicans successfully filed the bill to create the commission, Pelosi identified that as not working.
“Democrats will find the truth while respecting our responsibility to the Congress we serve and to the country we love,” Pelosi said.
Republicans said Friday they recognized this as the next step. Opposing the commission, Senate Republicans said it would be easier to argue that if Pelosi went that route, such an investigation would be conducted to help Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections.
Other Republicans, however, are perplexed that their colleagues will not approve of the bipartisan commission, arguing that their party control will give Democrats, who are almost certain to carry out a headline-grabbing investigation into everything that happened on January 6.
In the Senate, two separate committees, the Rules Committee and the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, will issue a report on the week of June 7 to investigate the lack of a security product. But those inquiries focus less narrowly on the reasons behind the uprising, in an attempt to respond that day.
On Friday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he would not comment if he believed his group leaders should conduct their own investigation into the attack.
But the New York Democrats made it clear that they thought the council should move forward.
“We wanted to do it two-party,” Schumer said. “Every Democrat voted for both parties, but the facts must come out,” he said when asked if the findings of the Democrat-led panel were credible.
Ali Jaslov contributed to this story.
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