House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) mentioned Monday that the chamber will kind an “independent 9/11-type commission” to research the circumstances surrounding the revolt on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
The determination follows a safety assessment by retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, whom Pelosi tapped final month to discover how cops on the Capitol didn’t cease the assault by a whole bunch of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters, who violently stormed the halls of Congress and compelled lawmakers, staffers and reporters into hiding for hours.
“It is clear from his findings and from the impeachment trial that we must get to the truth of how this happened,” Pelosi mentioned in a press release on Monday, referring to Honoré’s assessment.
“Now, as always, security is the order of the day: the security of our country, the security of our Capitol, which is the temple of our democracy, and the security of our Members,” the speaker mentioned.
Her announcement follows calls from legislators to determine such a fee, with Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who now chairs the Senate Ethics Committee, saying a fee might “lay bare the record of just how responsible and how abjectly violating of his constitutional oath President Trump really was.”
Pelosi additionally known as for funds to bolster safety within the interim, saying “we must put forth a supplemental appropriation to provide for the safety of Members and the security of the Capitol.”
The fee will probably be styled after one shaped in 2002 following the 9/11 terror assaults, which sought to establish the safety failures surrounding that tragedy. The 9/11 fee known as a number of witnesses to testify in private and non-private, together with former President Bill Clinton and then-President George W. Bush, and launched its ultimate report in 2004.
But the bipartisan panel and its report have been undercut by a number of controversies that Pelosi might want to keep away from. While the ultimate report laid blame on the FBI and CIA for failing to cease the assaults, media investigations later discovered that some fee staffers had undisclosed conflicts of interest that will have motivated them to reduce culpability on the a part of the Bush administration. The fee additionally got here beneath hearth for counting on info that was gathered by torturing al Quaeda detainees. The co-chairs of the fee later spoke out, saying they have been “set up to fail.”
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