Nancy Pelosi primes Capitol attack panel to take hard line on Trump
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, is readying the committee that will on Tuesday begin its investigation into the attack on the Capitol to press ahead with an aggressive inquiry into Donald Trump, as she seeks to exploit a Republican refusal to participate that could leave the former president unguarded.
Pelosi’s move last week to block Jim Banks and Jim Jordan – vociferous allies of Trump – from serving on the House select committee, prompted the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, to boycott the inquiry, pulling his three other Republican picks from the panel.
But Pelosi won strong support from Democrats and told lieutenants she may have emerged with the upper hand ahead of the select committee’s first hearing.
“We have the duty, to the constitution and the country, to find the truth of the 6 January insurrection and to ensure that such an assault on our Democracy cannot again happen,” Pelosi said of the investigation in a letter to Democrats.
The speaker has suggested to top Democrats in recent days that McCarthy’s move to boycott the panel leaves Trump without any defenders in the high-profile investigation into the 6 January insurrection, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Pelosi chose some of the former president’s most critical opponents when she made her appointments to the select committee, installing both lead impeachment managers from Trump’s two impeachments as well as the Republican dissident Liz Cheney, who was ousted from party leadership in May for repudiating Trump.
On Sunday she added a second Republican, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who has also vocally differed from his party about the Capitol attack.
Kinzinger said: “For months, lies and conspiracy theories have been spread, threatening our self-governance. For months, I have said that the American people deserve transparency and truth on how and why thousands showed up to attack our democracy.
“I will work diligently to ensure we get to the truth and hold those responsible for the attack fully accountable.”
The absence of any Republican picks on the committee means that when the investigation pivots from examining security failures to the role Trump played on 6 January, the inquiry will be conducted solely by his political foes, emboldening Pelosi to seek an aggressive inquiry, the source said.
Democrats have agitated for weeks for Pelosi to take a hard line against Republicans after the party in the Senate blocked a 9/11-style bipartisan commission into the Capitol attack.
Democrats close to Pelosi say she remains furious at how Republicans have sought to downplay the brutal violence of the insurrection, which informed her decision to not give Banks and Jordan a platform from which to twist or minimize the select committee’s findings.
But the speaker’s relationship with Republicans fell to a new low after McCarthy shouted down the phone at her when she informed him of her decision to veto Banks and Jordan, the source said.
Republicans have seized on Pelosi’s intervention against Banks and Jordan, as well as her close involvement with the panel, to portray the inquiry as a partisan exercise to gain political advantage ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
McCarthy lashed out anew a day after he was denied his two top picks for the committee, and pledged to carry out a Republican-only investigation that would focus on how Pelosi should have done more to protect the Capitol.
But Democrats said Pelosi was more than justified in upending congressional norms in refusing to appoint Banks and Jordan, both of whom amplified Trump’s lies about a stolen election and objected to certifying Joe Biden’s election win.
“We want people who are going to have allegiance to the oath of office that they took, not an allegiance to one person. And they’ve clearly pledged their allegiance to the former president,” said Democrat Pete Aguilar, a member of the committee.
Several Democrats said they were particularly disturbed by a CNN report that an alleged Capitol rioter, Anthony Aguero, accompanied Banks on a trip sponsored by the Republican Study Committee to the southern border and, at times, served as an interpreter.
They also said that Pelosi came
to the conclusion Banks could not be trusted to serve as the top Republican on the panel after he issued a statement that he wanted to investigate the role of the Biden administration in the insurrection.
Democrats expressed deep reservations about Jordan, the top Republican on the House judiciary committee, after he disparaged the select committee and accused Pelosi of being responsible for a diminished security presence at the Capitol.
The speaker does not herself oversee security at the Capitol, which is the responsibility of the US Capitol police board and the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms. Both sergeants-at-arms at the time of the attack were hired by Republican leaders.
A bipartisan Senate report released last month detailed multiple security failings on the parts of the US Capitol police and the sergeants-at-arms. It did not blame Pelosi or her then opposite number in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.