Nancy Pelosi will bring legislation for a 9/11-style commission on the MAGA riot within DAYS with focus on Kevin McCarthy's f-word laced call to Trump
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is forging ahead with legislation to create a probe of the MAGA riot modeled after the Sept. 11th commission within days – and it is likely to have subpoena power to probe the causes of the MAGA riot.
Among the issues likely to be in its purview was a key piece of evidence introduced on the last day of President Donald Trump's impeachment trial regarding Trump's phone call with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
That call while the riot raged appeared to show Trump siding with the rioters over McCarthy, according to a statement by Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has told colleagues there will be a 9/11 style commission on the Jan. 6 MAGA riot. Implementing legislation could come up this week
The House Democratic impeachment managers elected not to call witnesses in the Trump impeachment trial, but the fact-finding commission could.
The Sept. 11th Commission, which Pelosi is consulting as the basis for what will be created, had broad subpoena power to obtain testimony and documents, and used it on at least one occasion to pry loose information from the Federal Aviation Administration.
'If you are an official at any level of the government … reading 70 percent want a full accounting and you’re in a job that in any way reports to the public, [if] you’re not cooperating it does look bad,' said Al Felzenberg, who served as a spokesman for the Sept. 11th commission.
The commission will be able to pick up on evidence introduced at the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump's call with Rep. Kevin McCarthy. Managers did not interview McCarthy about the matter
A 9/11-style commission will probe the Jan. 6 Capitol riot
'If you have nothing to hide there’s no reason no to testify,' he told DailyMail.com.
'Who they were and why they were there and what kind of preparation they made in their own communities would be something I’d want to know. 'What happened?. How many people? How did they get there? Where did they come from?'
'Clearly one of the motives of the people who got into the building was to stop the tally. you can’t have that in a democracy. You can’t have attempted coups like that,' he said.
Leadership sources told The Hill the bill creating a commission would likely come up this week.
The 9/11 panel was led by a presidential appointee, with House and Senate leaders choosing its members. A challenge will be maintaining enough bipartisan cooperation to have it be effective – following a riot that featured a major party schism over the impeachment that followed.
In a statement after the conclusion of the impeachment trial, where Trump was acquitted 57 to 43, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said what happened was not an armed insurrection, while Minority Leader Mitch McConnell denounced Trump only to have the president fire back at his former partner as a 'political hack.'
The panel 'will look at the facts related to the Jan. 6 domestic terror attack. Certainly the president doing nothing to stop the attack, even after the urging of the Republican House leader, would be a relevant part of the inquiry,' said Rep. Ted Lieu of California, who served as an impeachment manager.
McCarthy, as minority leader, could get to appoint members to the commission under the 9/11 model. He called for its creation early, saying 'It is our responsibility to understand the security and intelligence breakdowns that led to the riots on January 6.'
Former Chair Thomas Kean (L) and former Vice Chair Lee Hamilton (R) of the 9/11 Commission testify before National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations Subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee during a hearing June 6, 2006 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The commission had subpoena power
According to a CNN account of his call with Trump, McCarthy was furious with the president, telling him: 'Who the f*** do you think you're talking to?'
Rep. Herrera Beutler said McCarthy told her about the call after it happened. 'When McCarthy finally reached the president on January 6 and asked him to publicly and forcefully call off the riot, the president initially repeated the falsehood that it was antifa that had breached the Capitol,” she said in a a statement introduced at trial.
'McCarthy refuted that and told the president that these were Trump supporters. That’s when, according to McCarthy, the president said: ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.’
Pelosi referenced the commission in a letter to colleagues Monday, where she also wrote about impeachment and a Capitol security review. 'It is clear from his findings and from the impeachment trial that we must get to the truth of how this happened,' she said.
Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton each testified before the Sept. 11th commission, both doing so in private rather than in open session.
