With all but two Republicans voting no, the House created a select committee, controlled by Democrats, to scrutinize the security failures and root causes that contributed to the Capitol riot.
The House voted mostly along party lines on Wednesday to create a select committee to investigate the Jan.6 riot at the Capitol, pushing ahead over near-unanimous Republican opposition with a broad inquiry controlled by Democrats into the deadliest attack on Congress in centuries. The panel, established at the behest of Speaker Nancy Pelosi after Senate Republicans blocked the formation of a bipartisan independent commission to scrutinize the assault, will investigate what its organizing resolution calls “the facts, circumstances and causes relating to the Jan.6,2021, domestic terrorist attack.” The 13-member panel, which has subpoena power, will have eight members named by the majority party and five with input from Republicans, and is meant to examine President Donald J. Trump’s role in inspiring the riot. While the measure creating it does not mention him, it charges the committee with looking at the law enforcement and government response to the storming of the Capitol and “the influencing factors that fomented such an attack on American representative democracy while engaged in a constitutional process.” It passed by a vote of 222 to 190, with only two Republicans joining Democrats to support it. “We have a duty to the Constitution and to the American people to find the truth of Jan.6 and to ensure that such an assault on our democracy can never happen again,” Ms. Pelosi said, calling Jan.6 “one of the darkest days of our history.” “The sheer scale of the violence of that day is shocking,” she added. “But what is just as shocking is remembering why this violence occurred: to block the certification of an election and the peaceful transfer of power that is the cornerstone of our democracy.” Several officers who responded to the riot that day were on hand to watch the vote from Ms. Pelosi’s box in the House gallery. They included Harry Dunn of the Capitol Police and two District of Columbia police officers, Michael Fanone, who has lobbied Republicans to support an investigation, and Daniel Hodges, who was crushed in a door during the rampage. Relatives of Brian D. Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who died after clashing with the rioters, joined them. While the measure says that five members of the panel are to be named “after consultation with the minority leader,” Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, he has not said whether he will recommend anyone. Last week, he told Mr. Fanone and Mr. Dunn in a private meeting that he would take the appointment process seriously, even as he declined to publicly denounce members of his party who have sought to downplay or spread lies about the riot.
