Report: Pelosi Will Tap Top Dems To Investigate Capitol Attack, Not ‘9/11-Style Commission’

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will tap leading Democrats — all of whom have already made statements on the January 6th riots at the United States Capitol — to investigate the attack, rather than appoint a “9/11-style commission” as promised after a plan for the latter became mired in “political quicksand.”

Before a 9/11-style commission could be impaneled, Democrats began their own inquiries, opening up a Senate investigation, chaired by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and planning a number of House investigations on the subject, leaving Pelosi’s initial plan for a bipartisan probe into who and what led up to the January 6th riot, far behind.

The two parties, Politico reports, could not agree on a format for the commission, nor whether the parties should be represented in even numbers. Democrats have long contended that Republicans who supported then-President Donald Trump’s bid for a comprehensive investigation into allegations of widespread voter fraud should be iced out of the commission altogether, to avoid it becoming an adversarial process.

Initially, Pelosi also said that the inquiry would have “nothing to do with President Trump,” but a second impeachment attempt, that ended in acquittal, could change her outlook on the scope of the investigation.

Announcing the commission, Pelosi pledged that the project would “investigate and report on the facts and causes relating to the January 6, 2021, domestic terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol Complex” and the rioters “interference with the peaceful transfer of power, including facts and causes relating to the preparedness and response of the United States Capitol Police and other Federal, State, and local law enforcement in the National Capitol Region.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s panel is already doing something similar, and the “relatively well-functioning Senate inquiry” has “already helped provide the sort of answers an independent entity might take months to produce,” according to Politico.

But instead of letting the idea of an inquiry go, allowing Klobuchar to continue her work, Pelosi now says that she’ll pass off the job of an “intermediate investigation” to three Democrat-chaired and Democrat-run committees.

An aide told Politico that “the California Democrat is prepared to task the House Administration, Homeland Security and Appropriations committees with taking on the Jan. 6 inquiry if there are no bipartisan breakthroughs soon. The Appropriations panel has already gotten a head start, holding hearings on the Capitol Police budget that featured questions about the force’s role in the response to the attack.”

That decision could severely compromise the investigation’s impartiality. The House Administration Committee is chaired by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), whose office examined Republican Members’ social media posts in the wake of the Capitol attack with an eye toward disciplining any GOP official who she believed “incited” the riot or questioned official election results.

Lofgren pledged to submit for impeachment “any elected member of Congress who aided and abetted the insurrection or incited the attack seriously threatened our democratic government,” according to NBC News.

The House Homeland Security Committee is chaired by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who filed suit against former President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and two “right-wing extremist” groups, seeking “damages for the emotional distress he suffered during the Jan. 6 mob attack on the Capitol,” and alleges that Trump “acted beyond the outer perimeter of his official duties” in directing the mob “and therefore is susceptible to suit in his personal capacity,” according to Roll Call.

House Appropriations Committee chair, Rep. Rosa De Lauro (D-CT), who has already initiated her own investigation into the Capitol riots, has already decided precisely who is at fault for the attack, alleging in a statement made shortly after the riots that, “this was a coup attempt instigated by President Trump. Everyone who has aided and abetted him for the past four years bears responsibility for today’s violence.”

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