GOP senators block Jan. 6 Commission, likely ending bid for independent probe of Capitol riot
Source: Washington Post
The bipartisan push to independently investigate the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot suffered a fatal blow Friday, after nearly all Senate Republicans banded together in opposition. The 54 to 35 outcome, which fell six votes shy of the 60 needed to circumvent a procedural filibuster, followed hours of overnight chaos as lawmakers haggled over unrelated legislation. The vote stood as a blunt rejection by Republicans of an emotional last-minute appeal from the family of a Capitol Police officer who died after responding to the insurrection, and an eleventh-hour bid by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to save the measure by introducing changes intended to address her party’s principal objections.
The legislation, a product of cross-party negotiations between leaders of the House Homeland Security Committee, galvanized significant support among Republicans in the lower chamber. Last week, 35 GOP members joined all voting House Democrats to back creation of a Jan. 6 Commission, to be modeled after a similar independent panel formed in the aftermath of 9/11, and charged with producing an objective account of what fueled the day’s violence.
But in the Senate, Republican sentiment soured after Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) dismissed the commission as needlessly duplicative of ongoing congressional probes, and a Trojan horse that would help Democrats in the next year’s midterm elections. “I do not believe the additional, extraneous ‘commission’ that Democratic leaders want would uncover crucial new facts or promote healing,” McConnell said Thursday, arguing that both the Justice Department and Senate committees were already handling that substantive work. “... I’ll continue to urge my colleagues to oppose this extraneous layer when the time comes for the Senate to vote.”
Former president Donald Trump, whose most zealous supporters carried out the attack, cast a long shadow over the GOP as lawmakers wrestled with the proposal to establish a 10-person panel of non-government experts charged with finding answers — and accountability. The proposal called for five members, including the chair, to be appointed by Democrats and another five, including the vice chair, to be appointed by Republicans. The commission would have had the power to issue subpoenas on a bipartisan basis, which some Democrats warned — and many Republicans worried — could have been used to force the former president, and his allies in Congress, to testify under oath.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/january-6-commission-senate/2021/05/28/54e9f692-bf27-11eb-b26e-53663e6be6ff_story.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
...it was Joe who said January 6 was the greatest attack on our government since the civil war...
...why not shine light on it...how do Republicans know nothing new will come of it...if we don't take it seriously and play politics, they're free to play politics too...
...no, the Republicans don't want the commission because of politics, because the guilty have something to hide...
...this is big, very big...
...we, the American people, deserve to know the truth about who's tried/trying to overthrow our government and why...
...this is so huge, it's more than worth dumping the filibuster over...
...let's find out...
