House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has appointed Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a notorious anti-Trumper, to serve on the select committee investigating the January 6 riot at the Capitol building, in an attempt to cast the investigation as ‘non-partisan.’
Pelosi’s decision to appoint Kinzinger, one of nine other Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection, comes after she rejected two of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s five picks for the select committee, which led to McCarthy pulling his three other picks from the list in response to the speaker’s decision.
Kinzinger will be joining only one other ‘Republican’ lawmaker in Rep. Liz Cheney.
In a statement, Kinzinger made it clear whose side he’s really on as he essentially echoed the sentiments of Pelosi and her propaganda machine better known as the mainstream media.
Kinzinger reiterated his belief that the American public deserves “transparency and truth” to determine how and why people showed up to the Capitol building to “attack our democracy,” and to determine what “led to the insurrection.”
“Let me be clear, I’m a Republican dedicated to conservative values, but I swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution — and while this is not the position I expected to be in or sought out, when duty calls, I will always answer,” said Kinzinger.
On Sunday, McCarthy accused Pelosi of stacking the select committee with people who “share her pre-conceived narrative.”
“The Speaker has structured this select committee to satisfy her political objectives. She had months to work with Republicans on a reasonable and fair approach to get answers on the events and security failures surrounding January 6,” said McCarthy.
“Instead, she has played politics. Lost in much of the news coverage is the fact that the Senate has already conducted bipartisan investigations that should serve as a roadmap for the House.”
“Speaker Pelosi’s departure from this serious-minded approach has destroyed the select committee’s credibility. The U.S. Capitol and the men and women who protect it suffered a massive leadership failure. We must make sure that never happens again and that is what Republicans will be focused on,” added McCarthy.
Rep. Jim Banks, one of the two GOP lawmakers blocked by Pelosi from serving on the January 6 Select Committee, said on Sunday that the Speaker was trying to avoid questions about her responsibility for the “breakdown of security” that allowed for the storming the Capitol.
Banks said, “It’s more clear than ever that Nancy Pelosi is not interested in investigation. She’s only interested in a narrative. She claims the reason that she booted me from the committee was because of antics on the part of Jim Jordan and I. In hindsight, what I realize what she means by that now is that we were prepared to ask questions that no one else has asked and demand answers as to why the Capital was vulnerable to an attack on January 6th?”
“Why was there a systemic breakdown of security at the Capitol on January 6th? If you’re going to investigate January 6th, why not ask those questions? That’s all that this comes down to. She has already predetermined a narrative about Donald Trump, about Republicans. She doesn’t want to talk about what happened at the Capitol that day to make sure something like that never happens again.”
When asked if he thinks that Pelosi feels the trial could reflect poorly on her if she doesn’t tightly control the narrative, Banks responded:
“I really do and here’s why, on Wednesday before I found out that I was banned from the committee — I found out, by the way, on Twitter—I was meeting with the head of the U.S. Capitol Police Union who represent the rank-and-file heroes that make up the Capitol Police who protect me, my family, my staff, every single day. He told me, the head of the Capitol Police union told me that on January 6, the Capitol Police officers weren’t prepared for what was going to happen even though the head of the Capitol Police had intelligence reports dating back to three weeks before January 6th that something potentially very dangerous could happen that day.”
“They weren’t prepared for it, they weren’t trained for it, and may be most important of all, they weren’t equipped for it. They lacked equipment, basic equipment, to take care of something like what should at that point should have been expected would occur.”
He added, “Here’s the bottom line, once you go up to the top of the flagpole of who is in charge of the Capitol Police, who the Capitol Police union chief, they blamed the leadership of the Capitol Police. But due to the rules of the United States Capitol, the power structure of the Capitol, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, has more control and authority, and responsibility over the leadership of the Capitol Police than anyone else in the United States Capitol.”
“So she doesn’t want us to ask these questions because, at the end of the day, she is ultimately responsible for the breakdown of security at the capitol that happened on January 6.”
Kinzinger and Cheney will join a radical group of Democrats including Reps. Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin, each of whom served as impeachment managers in Trump’s Senate trials.
The other members of the select committee are Reps. Stephanie Murphy, Elaine Luria, Zoe Lofgren, Pete Aguilar, and the select committee’s chairman, Bennie Thompson.
The select committee will hold its first hearing Tuesday with several Capitol and metropolitan police officers.
Author: Laurence Witts
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