GOP SUPPORT FALTERS FOR PROBE OF CAPITOL RIOT
Republicans leery of pinning blame on Trump supporters
Congress’ pursuit of an independent investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection is facing long odds, as bipartisan resolve to hold the perpetrators and instigators accountable erodes, and Republicans face sustained pressure to disavow that it was supporters of former President Donald Trump who attacked the U.S. Capitol.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, announced late last week that she had drafted a fresh proposal for an outside commission to examine what caused the deadly riot. But in a sign of how delicate the political climate has become, she has yet to share her recommendations with Republican leaders, who rejected her initial approach, labeling it too narrow in scope and too heavily weighted toward Democrats in composition.
“Compromise has been necessary,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to other Democrats, informing them she had begun to share her latest proposal with other Republicans in Congress. “It is my hope that we can reach agreement very soon.”
A spokesman for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, declined to comment on a proposal that the leader had not yet seen, adding that “hopefully the speaker has addressed our basic concerns of equal representation and subpoena authority.”
Behind the scenes, Democrats are developing contingency plans. Pelosi acknowledged this week that one backup option is to appoint a select committee of House members to investigate events surrounding the riot, though she told USA Today that it was “not my preference.” Another would be to defer to congressional committees that are currently examining the failures in planning that left the Capitol vulnerable to attack, which Pelosi has called a potential “resource” to a future commission, should one be established.
Those House investigations have been slow to get off the ground, however, as political interests steadily overtake lawmakers’ appetite to push for accountability.
Initial negotiations that aimed to establish an independent commission in the style of the panel that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks ran aground earlier this year after Republican leaders insisted that it scrutinize leftwing extremism — including the amorphous antifa movement that Trump and other conservatives have blamed for fomenting violence in D.C. and other cities — alongside the far-right and
White nationalist groups suspected of having planned or encouraged the mayhem.
Democrats resisted, accusing the GOP of trying to distract the public from the fact that extremist groups in the Republican base were responsible for the riot.
Many rank-and-file Republicans have been forced to walk a political tightrope, as a majority still believe the election was stolen from Trump. The former president still wields outsize influence in the GOP, which is presently the minority party in Washington but is within striking distance of making a comeback in 2022 if leaders can hold their ranks together.
The pressure to prioritize a political win over accountability for the former president kept the vast majority of Republicans in both the House and Senate from endorsing impeachment charges against Trump accusing him of inciting the riot. The discrepancy was especially apparent in the Senate, where several Republicans — including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. — blamed Trump for the attack but did not vote to convict him.
These same dynamics now threaten to upend what bipartisan momentum remains for a Jan. 6 commission, which only a handful of Republicans have said is vital to establishing a record of what went wrong.