House poised to launch new probe of Jan. 6 insurrection

House poised to launch new probe of Jan. 6 insurrection

Via AP News:

The House is poised to launch a new investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection on Wednesday with expected approval of a 13-person select committee to probe the violent attack.

The panel would be led by Democrats, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointing a chairperson and at least eight of the committee’s members. The resolution up for a vote gives Pelosi a possible say in the appointment of the other five members as well, directing that they will be named “after consultation” with House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy.

In a memo to all House Republicans late Tuesday, No. 2 House Republican Steve Scalise urged his members to vote against the resolution, saying the select panel “is likely to pursue a partisan agenda” in investigating the siege by former President Donald Trump’s supporters. Scalise and McCarthy have so far declined to say whether Republicans will even participate.

Pelosi is moving to form the select committee after Senate Republicans blocked the creation of a separate independent and bipartisan panel that would have been evenly split between the parties and modeled after a commission that investigated the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Republicans ready to move on from the insurrection — and Trump’s role in it — argued against that as well, claiming it would be duplicative and partisan.

The speaker has said that it was her preference to have an independent panel lead the inquiry, but that Congress could not wait any longer to begin a deeper look at the insurrection.

The GOP role in the probe, and the appointments to the panel, could help determine whether the committee becomes a bipartisan effort or a tool of further division. Two Senate committees issued a bipartisan report with security recommendations earlier this month, but it did not examine the origins of the siege, leaving many unanswered questions about the events of the day.

McCarthy is facing pressure to take the investigation seriously from police officers who responded to the attack, Democrats and even some of his fellow Republicans. Pelosi has invited representatives of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia and the U.S. Capitol Police to sit in the gallery and watch Wednesday’s vote, according to a person familiar with the plan who wasn’t authorized to discuss it and spoke on condition of anonymity. Dozens of those officers were brutally beaten and suffered injuries as Trump’s supporters pushed past them and broke into the building to interrupt the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.

Two of the officers who responded, Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone and Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, met with McCarthy on Friday and asked him to take the House investigation seriously.

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