Drew Angerer/Pool via AP
From left, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, at the Capitol, February 3, 2021
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she’s determined to set up an independent commission, much like the one that investigated the 9/11 attacks and made recommendations to prevent its recurrence, to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol by President Trump’s supporters. South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, widely viewed as the congressional Republican who’s closest to Trump—he plans to golf with the former president this week—has endorsed the idea of a commission as well.
Does anyone think that Pelosi and Graham have the same ideas about this commission?
The differences in perspectives are already apparent. Republicans have said they’d like the new commission to investigate what preparations Pelosi had taken in the run-up to the attack. Of course, the other legislative leader with oversight of the Capitol cops co-equal to Pelosi’s was the Senate majority leader in the period up to and including January 6. That would be Mitch McConnell. I’ve seen no Republican calls, however, to investigate his preparations.
The commission that investigated the 2001 attack by al-Qaeda was given a broad mandate and subpoena power by a bipartisan vote of Congress. Pelosi has stated she’ll seek a similar congressional mandate to establish the 1/6 commission, and I doubt that such a commission can be established absent such a vote. It will need to pass with a number of Republican votes to have the bipartisan credibility that its advocates have said they desire, though bipartisan cred is hard to come by these days.
Democrats can pass a bill establishing the 1/6 commission in the House with the unified support of their own party, and it will get at least a smattering of Republican support as well. I have trouble envisioning how it can get more than that smattering, however. Does House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy really want to be subpoenaed to testify about his phone call with Trump, in which (according to Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington state) the president rejected McCarthy’s pleas for help in the middle of the insurrection? And what if the price for Republican votes is a demand to put die-hard Trumpists on the commission?
The vote in the Senate poses problems, too. McConnell is the wild card here. I suspect there will be a number of Republican senators happy to establish such a commission, but will there be the 17 votes necessary to block a filibuster, and what conditions will Senate Republicans seek to put on the commission’s mandate? Further, if House Republicans insist on putting Trump defenders on the commission, will Senate Republicans go along with that? Or will they submit their own list of more fact-based prospective commission members?
For Republicans, every one of these questions is politically charged. Every decision they make on the commission’s mandate and every name they put forward as a potential commission member will be viewed through the prism of being pro- or anti-Trump. They all know that Republican votes for impeachment and conviction led to censure from the Republicans back home.
And who would be the chair (or co-chairs) of this commission? This runs up against the very real problem that there is hardly any prominent figure in America today who will be trusted by both Trump supporters and Trump opponents to deliver an impartial accounting of why and how 1/6 happened. (At least, I can’t think of one; I would welcome your suggestions.)
My hunch is that many Republicans, as a way to appease Trump supporters, will insist on things like forcing the commission to take testimony from random Democrats who have used the word “fight” in recent years. Democrats will need to stand firm against such Trumpian nonsense, and if that results in fewer Republicans backing the commission, so be it.
This doesn’t negate the case for establishing the commission. If Republicans insist on installing members who are blinded by their devotion to the Donald, those members can issue a minority report, as we saw with the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. The key to claiming some bipartisan cred requires that it be a small minority, which means that the commission members put forth by Senate Republicans, it not their House counterparts, must have at least one foot (preferably, two) in the reality-based community. That way, the Trump die-hards would comprise no more than a quarter, say, of commission members. If that.
The 9/11 Commission didn’t hesitate to expose the negligence that George W. Bush’s administration demonstrated when presented with intelligence of the coming attacks. They subpoenaed Bush’s national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to testify about why a report specifically warning of an impending al-Qaeda attack failed to raise administration concerns.
Any investigation of 1/6 will cut much closer to the bone, of course. That’s its value and purpose: in particular, to nail down Trump’s response to the insurrection in the hours that it threatened both the Congress and the certification of the election. By being independent of Congress once established, moreover, it permits the legislative work of the nation to proceed. (Executing that legislative work requires abolishing the filibuster, of course, but that’s another story.)
The case the House managers so ably made went largely undisputed by Trump’s attorneys, who objected far more to the procedure than to the facts. But the nation needs more, and such a commission could well provide it.
