Bipartisan support for a 9/11-style commission to further investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot has grown bipartisan support with lawmakers urging such a body to get to the root cause of the events that day.
“I’d like to know, did the Capitol Hill police inform the House sergeant at arms and the Senate sergeant at arms the day before the attack that they needed more troops?” Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox News on Sunday after mentioning he believed there was a preplanned element to the highly publicized actions that took place.
“We need to look at did Nancy Pelosi know on January 5 that there was a threat to the Capitol…
What did President Trump do after the attack…
We need a 9/11 commission to find out what happened and make sure it never happens again, and I want to make sure that the Capitol footprint can be better defended next time,” he continued.
Graham would add that the preplanned element had no connection to former president Donald Trump’s speech during a rally earlier that day.
Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who unlike Graham, voted to convict the former president during the impeachment trial, also called for a 9/11-style commission, telling ABC over the weekend that “there should be a complete investigation about what happened.”
“I think there should be a complete investigation about what happened on Jan. 6. Why was there not more law enforcement, National Guard already mobilized, what was known, who knew it, and when they knew it, all that, because that builds the basis so this never happens again in the future,” Cassidy said.
On the other side of the aisle, Democrat Senator Dennis Coons also vocalized support for such a commission, telling ABC “there’s still more evidence that the American people need and deserve to hear.”
“A 9/11 commission is a way that we make sure that we secure the Capitol going forward and that we lay bare the record of just how responsible and how abjectly violating of his constitutional oath president Trump really was,” Coons said on Sunday.
Sen. Chris Coons echoes calls for a 9/11-style commission in wake of the impeachment trial: "There's still more evidence that the American people need and deserve to hear." https://t.co/L6vzgDaa8k pic.twitter.com/6zHCURRPfa
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) February 14, 2021
Democrat House impeachment manager Rep. Madeleine Dean also appeared on the same ABC news program Sunday, saying:
“Of course, there must be a full commission and impartial commission, not guided by politics, but filled with people who would stand up to the courage of their conviction, like Dr. Cassidy.”
The growing calls for the commission preceded the failure of the Senate to obtain the 67-vote threshold to convict Trump on inciting an insurrection as charged in the House’s article of impeachment.
A 9/11-style commission is in reference to the bipartisan body set up in the wake of the collapse of the 3 World Trade Center buildings in New York in 2001. The commission’s goal was to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks.