Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and seven Democrats prepare to question three Capitol cops who were injured on January 6 in first committee hearing Republicans have called a 'sham' after two Trump supporters were blocked
The select committee investigating the January 6th riot at the Capitol holds its first hearing under a cloud of controversy Tuesday after Speaker Nancy Pelosi nixed two GOP choices for the panel and Republicans pulled all their picks in the return.
Two Republicans - Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger - will be part of the investigation and take part in questioning the four police officers about their experiences the day of the MAGA riot.
'This is absolutely not a game. This is deadly serious,' Cheney told ABC's Good Morning America on Tuesday.
But the two are there at the invitation of Pelosi, whose bipartisan bickering with House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy reached a new level of nastiness over the issue.
Both leaders were at an event in the White House Rose Garden on Monday to mark the 31st anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act - they didn't acknowledge one another during the ceremony, where they sat on opposite sides of the aisle.
After Pelosi vetoed Republican Reps. Jim Banks and Jim Jordan - both staunch Trump allies who voted against certifying the election results for Joe Biden - from participating on the panel last week, McCarthy pulled his three other picks for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.
The speaker said she removed the two Republicans based on the 'integrity' of the investigation. As speaker, Pelosi has final say on who sits on the panel.
She also struck back, adding Kinzinger to the committee to join her previous Republican pick, Cheney.
The two Republicans - both of whom voted for Trump's second impeachment and who have been vocal critics of the former president's - give the panel the veneer of bipartisanship even as McCarthy called Tuesday's hearing a sham.
'She's broken Congress. Then it just makes the whole committee sham and the outcome predetermined,' McCarthy told reporters at the White House on Monday.
He slammed Cheney and Kinzinger as 'Pelosi Republicans.' McCarthy, facing pressure from some conservatives in his GOP conference to punish the two lawmakers, merely told DailyMail.com 'we'll see' about any possible consequences.
The select committee investigating the January 6th riot at the Capitol holds its first hearing under a cloud of controversy Tuesday after Speaker Nancy Pelosi nixed two of House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy's choices
The hearing room in the Cannon House Office Building where the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol will hold its first hearing
Two Republicans - Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger - will be part of the investigation of the January 6th riot
In response, Cheney and Kinzinger called McCarthy 'childish' as they met with the seven Democrats serving on the committee in the Capitol Monday as part of their prep session.
'We've got very serious business here. We have important work to do,' Cheney said to reporters on Capitol Hill. She was booted off the House GOP leadership team earlier this year for her criticism of Trump.
Kinzinger said that McCarthy 'can call me whatever names he wants,' before reassuring, 'I'm a Republican.'
'If the conference decided, or if Kevin decides, they want to punish Liz Cheney and I for getting to the bottom and telling the truth, I think that probably says more about them than it does for us,' he continued.
McCarthy offered a privileged resolution on the House floor on Monday night to seat all five of his original picks.
But Democrats easily voted it down - with Kinzinger and Cheney joining them to kill McCarthy's attempt to get his people back on the panel.
At Tuesday's hearing, the lawmakers will hear from four police officers who were at the Capitol on January 6th, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building, leaving five people dead and a trail of destruction.
The officers are:
- Harry Dunn, Private First Class, U.S. Capitol Police
- Aquilino Gonell, Sergeant, U.S. Capitol Police
- Michael Fanone, Officer, Metropolitan Police Department
- Daniel Hodges, Officer, Metropolitan Police Department
The hearing will include footage from the day of the riot never seen before, according to Rep. Adam Schiff, one of the panel members.
'I hope they'll get a much better sense of what it was like to be on the front lines that day, what these officers endured, the fact that many of them thought it was going to be their last day of life that they were going to die defending the Capitol, and sustain grievous injuries,' he told CNN of Tuesday's hearing.
'They'll see some footage that they've never seen before,' he added.
