U.S. House backs select committee to probe Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol

WASHINGTON—The U.S. House voted Wednesday to establish a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection, in which a mob of pro-Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol.

In a 222-190 vote that was almost entirely party-line, just two Republicans joined Democrats in passing the resolution, which calls for a probe into “one of the darkest days of our democracy.” The two were Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. Nineteen Republicans did not vote. 

Rep. Troy Carter (D-New Orleans) was the only member of Louisiana’s congressional delegation to support the commission. House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-Jefferson), Rep. Julia Letlow (R-Start) and Rep. Garret Graves (R-Baton Rouge) voted in opposition.  Rep. Clay Higgins (R-Port Barre) and Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Shreveport) did not vote.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, (D-Calif.), in a statement slammed House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, for voting against the select committee and for urging his members to do the same. 

“Minority Leader McCarthy dodged, disrespected and denied Officer Michael Fanone most of the reasonable asks the hero officer made of him,” she said. 

Fanone was one of the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police officers who responded to the attack on the Capitol. In a meeting with the minority leader, Fanone asked McCarthy to take the select committee seriously, according to The Associated Press.

“Opposing the creation of the select committee breaks the promise [McCarthy] made to January 6th heroes and their families,” Pelosi said. 

McCarthy told Roll Call that he had no regrets in opposing the panel and added that the FBI should be the agency conducting investigations into the attack. 

“Nancy Pelosi has spent all the time and all these months playing politics with this, and now we’re finding [the] select committee will be more politics of what she wants to do,” he told Roll Call.

Senate Democrats tried last month to advance to a vote on a bipartisan, independent commission to investigate the insurrection, but Senate Republicans blocked the measure on a 54-35 vote, six short of the required 60-vote threshold. 

The FBI and Justice Department have already brought more than 500 charges against those individuals involved in the violent attack that left five dead and dozens of law enforcement officials injured. 

The panel voted on by the House Wednesday will be modeled after the commission established after the 9/11 attacks and will be made up of 13 members, eight selected by Pelosi and five by McCarthy. The committee will also have subpoena power.

Pelosi has not yet tapped a lawmaker to chair the panel.

During the vote, Fanone and MPD Officer Daniel Hodges were watching from the speaker’s box, along with the family of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died of injuries sustained during the attack. Sicknick’s mother, Gladys Sicknick, and his partner, Sandra Garza, also attended the vote.

During debate of the resolution on the House floor, Republicans argued against the committee because other committees were already doing their own investigations and the select panel would be redundant. 

Republicans also argued that it was “purely for political purposes,” said Rep. Michelle Fischbach, (R-Minn.).

“The resolution itself is full of charged language that implies an outcome,” Fischbach said. “Democrats are injecting partisanship into the equation, hoping to stretch out an investigation long enough to distract from their abject failure to govern.”

Democrats argued that a commission was necessary to understand the root cause of the attack on the Capitol and to pass reforms to ensure that it never happens again. 

“To be clear, this was a domestic terrorist attack on everyone who works in this Capitol complex,” Rep. Madeleine Dean, (D-Pa.), said.

“We need a select committee to understand what happened on January 6, where many of our lives were at risk. We need to know the facts and circumstances, we need to know the truth so that it never happens again,” she said.

The insurrection was spurred by a mob of pro-Trump supporters who attempted to stop Congress’ certification of the 2020 presidential election after former President Donald Trump held a rally blocks from the Capitol. Trump in remarks to the crowd purported the falsehood that the election was stolen from him. 

House Republicans in May stripped Cheney from her leadership position after she continued to push back against Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud. At the time, Cheney gave a scathing speech on the House floor, warning her GOP colleagues to not ignore the rule of law.

“Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar,” she said. “I will not participate in that. I will not sit back and watch in silence, while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law and joins the former president’s crusade to undermine our democracy.”

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, (D-Md.), said Wednesday that the panel needed to investigate “the very essence of what Jan. 6 was about.”

“The president recruited people to come to Washington, incited them in a fiery speech and then deployed them to the Capitol,” he said. “Heaven forbid that we would look at him being the cause of that event.”

Rep. Val Demings, a Florida Democrat who was chief of police for the city of Orlando, said Congress not only owed it to the American people to investigate the insurrection, but also to the officers who protected them during the attack.

“I care and so do my brothers and sisters in blue,” she said. “We will not forget, and we will not let you forget.”

Rep. Brad Wenstrup, (R-Ohio), said he did not support the resolution because one of his amendments was rejected. He also wanted the commission to look into a June 14, 2017 incident in which several Republicans were shot during a practice for a congressional baseball game. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana was severely injured, and several others were hit as well. 

“This has been created as a partisan issue,” Wenstrup said. “And if you’re not partisan then you include all the things that threaten us, that threaten this body, that threaten this building and that threaten the people that work in.”

Rep. Jim McGovern, (D-Mass.), who was managing debate on the Democratic side, told Wenstrup that Republicans controlled the House in 2017 and could have initiated a commission into that shooting. He added that the resolution was based on language written by Democrats and Republicans in a bipartisan manner.

McGovern, who presided over the House while the mob was attacking, said that he was disappointed that McCarthy did not speak on the House floor to justify himself and his vote against the commission.  

“I was hoping that maybe the minority leader would come to the floor and explain to us why he objected to the bipartisan commission and why he objects to the select committee and why he objects to getting to the truth,” he said. “There is no rational explanation for putting up roadblocks to get to the truth, unless you’re trying to keep it hidden and, I’m reminded of that old line, ‘If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.’”

As debate on the resolution wrapped up, Pelosi gave her condolences to Sicknick’s mother and his partner and reiterated the need for the bipartisan commission. 

“The sheer scale of the violence that day was shocking,” she said. “We have a duty to the Constitution and to the American people to find the truth of Jan. 6 and to ensure that such an assault on our democracy can never happen again.”