On the recordMay 19, 2021
January 6 is going to haunt this institution for a long, long time. No, it was not the joyous day on Capitol Hill with our constituents celebrating the start of a new Congress and a new administration. COVID came first, then this. So nearly 5 months later, we still don't have the answers to the basic questions: Who knew what? When? What did they do about it? Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues, Katko and Thompson, for the really good job on working together to establish a bipartisan commission seeking to find the answers to the questions that are still out there. Hundreds of people were arrested. People died. Millions of dollars of damage to this building, feces spread on the walls, and, yes, the very core of democracy, this institution, was threatened. I wasn't in the Chamber that day when the breach was attempted, but I heard the shouts, saw the flash bangs, smelled the gas on that sorry day. And if it had not been for the brave Capitol and Metropolitan policemen and women that day, who knows how many of our heads would have been swinging on those gallows that were constructed on the east front of the Capitol. I talked to the exhausted SWAT team members, the police, and watched some of the body cams. I talked to some of our still-shaken colleagues who endured that day. Mr. Speaker, we need the answers, not political rhetoric. That is what this bipartisan commission can provide for all of us, for our country. Let the truth shine in.
