The Progressive Populist Today Blog: Editorial: Pelosi Keeps Probe Going

Friday, July 30, 2021

Editorial: Pelosi Keeps Probe Going

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was right when she rejected two provocative House members whom Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy had nominated to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Among the five Republicans McCarthy nominated for the committee were Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who participated in the pro-Trump rallies that immediately preceded the Capitol attack and was a potential material witness to the investigation, and Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who made public statements indicating he intended to disrupt the committee’s work by demanding it probe Black Lives Matter and other events unrelated to the Jan. 6 violence.

Pelosi already had asked Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who already had been dumped from Republican leadership because she supported Trump’s impeachment, to serve on the committee. Pelosi said she would seat the other three Republicans McCarthy proposed. But McCarthy pulled those nominations in a fit after Jordan and Banks were rejected, and he said, “Unless Speaker Pelosi reverses course and seats all five Republican nominees, Republicans will not be party to their sham process and will instead pursue our own investigation of the facts.”

Pelosi got a second Republican on the committee when Rep. Adam Kinziger (R-Ill.), another Republican on the outs with party leadership, announced he accepted her request that he serve. When asked if he would punish Cheney and Kinziger for agreeing to participate in the probe, McCarthy replied, “We’ll see,” and dismissed them as “Pelosi Republicans.”

Nominating Jordan and Banks for the select committee was McCarthy’s attempt to distract from the real purpose of the committee. McCarthy apparently hoped to discredit any work the committee could do, and he succeeded in suckering some Washington pundits into believing Pelosi was the problem. Chris Cilliza of CNN was one of the first taking the bait, noting, after she rejected Jordan and Banks, “Nancy Pelosi just doomed the already tiny chances of the 1/6 committee actually mattering.” As if the Republicans ever showed good faith in probing Jan. 6.

Republicans have been lying about the election results since before the election; they’ve lied about the insurrection since Jan. 6, at first claiming members of Antifa and Black Lives Matter led the riots, even though we all saw it on TV and the rioters were almost all White, many of the rioters wore Trump/MAGA paraphernalia and many of them were eventually caught by the FBI because they proclaimed on social media that they had gone to DC to overturn the election. Now Republican lawblockers are seeking to obstruct the investigation of who is responsible for the violent attacks on Capitol and Metro DC police, the storming of the Capitol during a joint session of Congress, attempts to find and capture members of Congress and the vice president during the riot, breaking into congressional offices and literally smearing their feces in Capitol hallways.

McCarthy has reversed his position from the week after the insurrection, when he said Trump “bears responsibility for [the Jan. 6] attack on Congress by mob rioters.”

McCarthy called Trump during the riots, asking him to speak out to stop the mob, but Trump was unmoved. “He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding,” McCarthy said Jan. 13. “These facts require immediate action by President Trump to accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure President-elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term.”

At that time, McCarthy said he supported a censure resolution against Trump. Sen. Mitch McConnell, who was still Senate majority leader, also signaled his openness to conviction in the impeachment. But accountability for the outgoing president didn’t last long for either of them, and in the past six months other Republicans also have unified in obstruction of the investigation, as they realize the investigation will yield nothing good for their party. After McCarthy was summoned to Mar-A-Lago to meet with Trump Jan. 28, he returned chastened, with renewed loyalty to the Lost Cause of the Great Misleader.

When Democratic congressional leaders offered to give Republicans equal representation and share subpoena power on a joint committee to investigate Jan. 6, both McCarthy and McConnell rejected it, on the instructions of Trump, and the minority blocked it in the Senate with a filibuster May 28. So Pelosi got the House to authorize the select committee on a nearly party-line vote.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), one of seven Republican senators who voted to remove Trump from office in February, is retiring and doesn’t need to pander to Trump, but he joined the obstructionists July 25, as he said on CNN investigating Jan. 6 “is politically to the advantage of Democrats, to try to keep this issue in the forefront” and argued “it is a constant reminder about a terrible episode in our history ... rather than looking at the policies of the current President.”

(Tim O’Brien noted that this is the same Pat Toomey who pushed hard in 2012 and 2013 for the sham Benghazi investigation. “I have long supported a congressional investigation and want to get answers to important questions,” Toomey said back then.)

The Justice Department had arrested and charged 590 people in the Capitol insurrection as of July 23, but there are still plenty of questions to be answered. Among those questions:

• Who organized the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse, where Trump told the crowd to march on the Capitol?

• What role did Trump or the White House play in organizing the rally?

• What happened at a Jan. 5 meeting of Trump family members, Trump administration officials, Trump campaign advisers, Jan. 6 rally organizers and at least one US senator at the Trump International Hotel in Washington the night before the insurrection?

• Did members of Congress have communications with the insurrectionists? Who were they, and what role, if any, did they play? Did they give tours of the Capitol in the days before the insurrection?

• Did Trump prevent any law enforcement agency from responding to appeals for backup? Who was responsible for restricting the DC National Guard from responding to the riot?

• Was Vice President Mike Pence requested to overthrow the election results? What did he know about efforts to target him for refusing to steal the election? Did the vice president’s Secret Service security detail request assistance?

But the insurrection is not history. It’s not even over, as Trump is still rallying crowds with the Big Lies that ignited the insurrection, that Democrats “stole” the election. “In my opinion, there’s no way [Democrats] win election without cheating,” Trump said at a Phoenix rally July 24, even as Republican legislators across the country are fixing state laws to allow legislatures or courts to overturn elections. As Aaron Rupar of Vox.com noted, tweeted, “Irony just suffered a mortal wound.”

Trump still claims he’ll be returned to the White House after state-level “audits” of the 2020 election results, and he threatened that if Republican officials don’t amplify his claims about election fraud, Republican voters won’t want to vote for Republican candidates in future elections.

Trump and his Republican enablers must be held accountable. The House Select Committee must get the facts in public testimony and follow the facts where they lead. — JMC