“I like the idea of a 9/11 Commission, but we also want to have something in between here,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Who chairs the Rules Committee, one of two Senate panels investigating the events of January 6. “When watching our officers on the front lines, they can’t wait a year for some suggestions on what we can do better.”
Klobuchar’s investigation, together with the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, exposed some of the federal government’s failures to respond promptly on January 6, after just two hearings. Senate investigation panels plan to write and publicly publish a bipartisan report outlining recommendations to ensure that the Capitol is safe and that government agencies are better coordinated in the face of terrorist threats.
But the existing investigation is likely to stop before a comprehensive review of the causes and motivations behind the attack that the 1/6 Commission, as initially envisaged, would produce. Klobuchar said his overwhelming focus remains the three hours that elapsed between the National Guard’s call for troops to repel the protesters and their deployment on Capitol Hill on January 6.
This narrow scope means that many of the existential questions about the attack on the Capitol – as well as the most thorny about the extremist groups involved in the rebellion and Donald Trump’s role in inciting it – are likely to remain unanswered thanks to the postponement of the commission’s proposal. Pelosi.
“I don’t think they are mutually exclusive,” said Senator Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, of the Senate investigation and potential 1/6 Commission. “If people want to do more investigations, this is by no means an attempt to circumvent anyone who wants to investigate. Everything must be complementary. “
When asked whether the Senate investigation would touch Trump, Klobuchar said: “Our focus has always been on what happened on Capitol Hill. It is very clear who I think incited this insurrection. But now our focus is on the constructive changes that can be made. “
Pelosi has not abandoned the effort by an external commission yet. She insisted on Wednesday that a bipartisan effort is still possible and recently distributed her proposal for a “draft discussion” that she described as the basis for negotiations with Republicans.
“We must investigate and obtain the truth for the American people,” said Pelosi on Wednesday morning on MSNBC.
Other leading Democrats echoed his calls. “The January 6 violent attack on the Capitol was not really a partisan issue,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries (DN.Y.), the fourth-place Democrat in the House, on Wednesday. “An attack on our democracy affects not only Democrats or Republicans or independents. It affects us all. I think the objective remains to try to do this in a bipartisan way. “
But the speaker made it clear that her patience is not unlimited. And an aide indicated that the California Democrat is prepared to instruct the House’s Administration, Homeland Security and Appropriations Committees to take over the January 6 investigation if there are no bipartisan advances soon. The Appropriations panel has already taken the lead, holding hearings on the budget of the Capitol Police, which asked questions about the role of the force in responding to the attack.
Pelosi sees the root of the failure to come together behind a 1/6 Commission as clear: the Republicans’ refusal to agree with the scope of the investigation. The Republican Party resisted a square approach to the siege of the Capitol and instead sought a broader review involving other types of recent politically motivated violence, combining antifa with the right-wing extremists who invaded the building.
“What are the other things that happened as well? With Antifa and others, I think there should be a lot of investigations, ”said House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Said the only commission he would accept would consider all forms of political violence, not just the tension that fueled the January 6 attack. And House Republicans rejected the notion of predetermined findings that blame the white supremacists for some riot.
The Republicans’ complaints that Pelosi proposed an unbalanced commission are a scam, the spokesman said, because his structure is still negotiable. His initial draft legislation creating the commission gave Democratic nominees an advantage, breaking with the equally divided 9/11 Commission tradition.
This is not the only counter-argument that Republicans make against Pelosi. They are also uninterested in commission negotiations because they believe Democrats have exploited post-January. 6 atmosphere to fuel Republican lawmakers’ complaints about an “internal threat”. In addition, Republicans argue that Pelosi’s party drained goodwill by challenging the seat of a member of the Iowa Republican Party Chamber.
“The scope of the commission can be debated by the commissioners,” said Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) In an interview. “The biggest problem is how to configure it. … President Pelosi holds all the cards and the ability to proceed with this commission. “
Davis is one of about three dozen House Republicans who sponsored legislation after the attack to establish a 1/6 Commission along the lines of the 9/11 Commission. But his initial optimism for a deal, he said, “has already faded.”
Davis speculated that Pelosi’s approach to the commission’s negotiations is intentional, designed to create a wedge that keeps his caucus angry with Republicans in order to unify his narrow majority. It is a position that Democrats immediately dismiss as an excuse for Republicans who do not want to focus a commission on the January 6 attack alone.
Some Republicans are still willing to get involved, as long as the investigative body mirrors the structure of the 9/11 Commission more closely.
“It was an attack on the Capitol, and if there is an investigation and the evidence is revealed and they find that one side was more responsible than the others, so be it,” said John Thune (RS.D.) said. “But the investigation itself must be balanced. It must be fair. “
A potential X-factor in the debate is the emergence of Serena Liebengood, the wife of Capitol police officer Howard Liebengood, who took her own life on January 9, after almost uninterrupted shifts that started with the January 6 riots. Officer Liebengood, who has served in the force since 2005 and whose father was a former Senate official, was classified as an “out of service” death.
But Serena Liebengood, in a letter that circulated among lawmakers this week, is criticizing the Capitol Police for refusing to label her husband’s death “in the line of duty.” And she is promising to take an active role in lobbying legislators in the House and Senate to seek a bipartisan commission to understand what happened on January 6, as well as exploring structural reforms for the Capitol Police that include prioritizing mental health.
Notably, members of the 9/11 Commission have long credited the defense of the families of the 9/11 victims with maintaining pressure on Congress to ensure that a bipartisan commission is established. This defense has so far been absent from the Commission’s 1/6 debate.
“The Liebengood family wishes that Howie’s death was not in vain,” wrote the officer’s widow in a letter to Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton that the Virginia Democrat shared with colleagues this week.
Melanie Zanona, Burgess Everett and Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.