“I like the idea of a 9/11 commission, but we also want something intermediary here,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Who chairs the Rules Committee, one of two Senate panels covering the events of January 6th. “When I look at our officers in the front line, they can not wait a year for some suggestions on what we can do better.”
Klobuchar’s investigation, along with the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, exposed the failures of the federal government on January 6 after only two hearings. The Senate investigative panels plan to compile a dual report and make it public, setting out recommendations to ensure that the Capitol is safe and that government agencies coordinate better in the face of terrorist threats.
But the existing investigation is unlikely to stop with the comprehensive overview of the causes and motivation for the attack that the 1/6 Commission, as initially intended, would provide. Klobuchar said her overwhelming focus remained the three hours that elapsed between a request by National Guard troops to repel rioters and their deployment to the Capitol on January 6.
The close scope means that many of the existential questions about the attack on the Capitol – as well as the thorniest questions about the extremist groups involved in the riot and the role of Donald Trump in inciting it – are likely to remain unanswered thanks to the standstill of the proposal of Pelosi’s commission.
“I do not think they exclude each other,” said Senator Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, about the Senate’s investigation and potential. 1/6 Commission. ‘If people want to investigate further, it is by no means an attempt to circumvent someone else who wants to investigate it. It should all be complementary. ”
Asked if the Senate inquiry would touch on Trump, Klobuchar said: “Our focus has always been on what happened at the Capitol. It is very clear who I think incited this uprising. But for now, our focus is on the constructive changes that can be made. ‘
Pelosi has not yet abandoned the bid for an outside commission. She insisted on Wednesday that a dual effort is still possible and recently circulated her proposal for “discussion essay” which she describes as a basis for negotiations with Republicans.
“We need to investigate this and we need to get the truth out to the American people,” Pelosi told MSNBC on Wednesday morning.
Other top Democrats endorsed her calls. “The January 6 violent attack on the Capitol was not really a biased case,” he said. Hakeem Jeffries (DN.Y.), the fourth-ranking Democratic House, told reporters on Wednesday. ” An attack on our democracy has not only the Democrats or Republicans or independents. It affects all of us. I think the goal remains to try to do it in a dual way. ‘
But the speaker made it clear that her patience is not unlimited. And an assistant indicated that the California Democrat is willing to instruct the Home Administration, Homeland Security Committees and Credits to tackle the January 6 investigation if there are no two-party breakthroughs soon. The credit panel has already taken a lead and held hearings on the Capitol Police budget containing questions about the role of power in responding to the attack.
Pelosi sees the root of the failure to merge behind a 1/6 Commission as clear: Republicans’ refusal to agree on the scope of the investigation. The IDP resisted a square focus on the siege of the Capitol and instead sought a broader overview that would jeopardize other forms of recent politically motivated violence, joining the antifa with the right-wing extremists who stormed the building.
‘What are the other things that also happened? With Antifa, and others, I think a lot of investigations need to be done, ”said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California).
Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Senate Minority Leader, stated that the only commission he would accept would look at all forms of political violence, not just the tensions that fueled the January 6 attack. The Republicans of the House rejected the idea of predetermined findings blaming the riot against white supremacists.
Complaints by Republicans that Pelosi proposed an unbalanced commission is a slap in the face, the speaker said, because its structure is still negotiable. Her initial draft of legislation established by the commission gave Democratic appointers an advantage, transgressing the tradition of the equally divided 9/11 Commission.
This is not the only counter-argument Republicans make in Pelosi’s poverty. They are also not interested in commission talks, out of the belief that the Democrats exploited the post-Jan. 6 atmosphere to raise claims about an ‘inner danger’ of IDP legislators. The Republicans further allege that the Pelosi party took advantage of the goodwill by offering a challenge for the seat of a member of the GOP House from Iowa.
“The commissioners can discuss the scope of the commission,” Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) Said in an interview. ‘The biggest problem is how to set it up. … Speaker Pelosi has all the cards and the ability to proceed with this commission. ”
Davis is one of about three dozen House Republics that sponsored legislation in the wake of the attack to set up a 1/6 commission modeled on the 9/11 commission. But his initial optimism for a deal has “faded”, he said.
Davis speculated that Pelosi’s approach to the commission talks was deliberate, aimed at creating a wedge that kept her caucus angry at Republicans for uniting her narrow majority. This is a position the Democrats outright reject as an excuse by Republicans who are unwilling to focus a commission only on the January 6 attack.
Some Republicans are still willing to engage on the subject, as long as the investigative body more closely reflects the structure of the 9/11 commission.
“It was an attack on the Capitol, and if there is an investigation and the evidence comes up and they find that one side was more responsible than the other, then so be it,” said John Thune (RS). D.), minority whip of the Senate (RS). said. ‘But the investigation itself must be balanced. That should be fair. ”
One possible X-factor in the debate is the rise of Serena Liebengood, the wife of Capitol police officer Howard Liebengood, who took his life on January 9, after nearly 24-hour shifts that began with the January 6 riots. . . Officer Liebengood, who had been in power since 2005 and whose father had been a Senate official for many years, was considered an ‘off-duty’ death.
But Serena Liebengood criticized in a letter among lawmakers this week, criticizing the Capitol police for not describing her husband’s death as ‘on duty’. And she promises to play an active role in urging lawmakers in the House and Senate to pursue a dual commission to understand what happened on January 6, as well as to bring structural reforms to the Capitol Police to investigate, which includes the priority of mental health.
The members of the 9/11 commission have long attributed to the advocacy of the families of 9/11 victims that they have kept the pressure on Congress to ensure that a dual commission is established. This advocacy has so far been largely absent from the 1/6 Commission debate.
“The Liebengood family wants Howie’s death not in vain,” the officer’s widow said in a letter to Rep. Jennifer Wexton wrote that the Virginia Democrat shared with colleagues this week.
Melanie Zanona, Burgess Everett and Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.