WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that a proposed commission to study what went wrong in the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol must be “strongly bipartisan” and have the power to subpoena witnesses, similar to a commission that studied the 9/11 terrorist attacks and spurred major reforms in the intelligence community and beyond.
Pelosi said she is working on legislation to form a commission, with the details closely mirroring the bipartisan 9/11 panel that made sweeping recommendations in 2004 to prevent another terrorist attack like the ones in New York and Washington. The two chairmen of that panel, former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean and former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton, wrote a letter to congressional leaders and President Joe Biden last week recommending they set up a commission to investigate and “establish a single narrative and set of facts to identify how the Capitol was left vulnerable, as well as corrective actions to make the institution safe again.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said he will support the commission. But to ensure Republican support, Pelosi said Democrats sent the proposal to GOP leaders “to see what suggestions they may have because, for this to work, it really has to be strongly bipartisan.”
The negotiations over setting up the commission are the most recent test for a Congress that is not only shaken by the attack — which left five people dead — but also deeply divided over anything involving former President Donald Trump. The vast majority of Republicans stood by Trump as Democrats tried, unsuccessfully, to impeach him for telling his supporters who attacked the Capitol to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat as Congress counted votes. It is an open question whether the commission will be authorized to investigate Trump’s actions.
