Pelosi: ‘I wish Republicans in the country would take back their party’
Pelosi: “I wish Republicans in the country would take back their party”
From CNN’s Leinz Vales
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday night that she wants the Republican Party to be a vibrant political party,
“I wish Republicans in the country would take back their party,” Pelosi said during CNN’s special from the US Capitol. “This is a great party, the Grand Old Party.”
Former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney were the only two Republicans on the House floor during a remembrance of the January 6 riot.
The former vice president slammed Republican leaders in Congress, saying they do not resemble the leaders he remembered from his time in the body.
“It’s not leadership that resembles any of the folks I knew when I was here for 10 years,” Cheney said at the Capitol Thursday.
Pelosi discussed her perspective on how lawmakers should serve in Congress.
“We have a difference of opinion on a spectrum of things,” Pelosi said. “You come to Congress with your ideas representing. It’s the House of Representatives, your job title and job description are the same, representative. So you know that you may have confidence in what you believe, but you have humility to recognize others are representing their districts. And for a long time that’s how I served in the Congress.”
Pelosi on officers who defended the Capitol: “We owe them so much. They saved our lives.”
From CNN’s Jason Kurtz
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remembers seeing rioters rush through the Capitol one year ago, noting that though they weren’t able to get into the House chamber, they did make their way into her office area.
“They were in my office, which is right there,” said Pelosi, gesturing for CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
“What if they had found you?” Cooper asked during CNN’s special. “What would have happened?”
“They said they were going to shoot me in the brain,” Pelosi revealed, quickly noting, “I wasn’t worried about myself.”
The House Speaker said she was more concerned for her colleagues and members of law enforcement.
“I was worried about the Capitol Police, Metropolitan police. We owe them so much. They saved our lives,” she said.
Pelosi recalls the events at the Capitol a year ago, calling it “an assault on our democracy”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recalled her experience a year ago as she took refuge inside the US Capitol as the insurrectionists stormed its hallowed halls.
“While that was happening, we were in an undisclosed location and we were fighting to get the National Guard. And it was very hard,” Pelosi told CNN during its special. “Chuck Schumer and I, Steny Hoyer, we were on the phone making calls about this, calling governors to make sure we understood the readiness of their folks to come.”
Asked about Republicans who have tried to lessen the severity of the day and didn’t participate in today’s commemorative events, Pelosi said “The fact is it was a terrible thing that happened, an assault on the Capitol, an assault on the Constitution so that we did not arrange for a peaceful transfer of power, an assault on our democracy. They can say whatever they want, but you would have to ask them why they would not want to show up for something that they knew was wrong. “
Pelosi said the work of the House select committee investigating the events from a year ago is “very important.”
“The facts and the whole thing, the setup, what went before, what happened during. That’s very important. And what’s happening after. So it’s the before, the during and the after,” she said.
Here’s a look at what the Capitol riot committee has uncovered since it was formed 6 months ago
Analysis from CNN’s Paul LeBlanc
It’s been a dramatic six months since the establishment of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot.
CNN’s live special on the one-year anniversary of the insurrection is running through some of the major revelations produced by the committee.
Much of the committee’s work to this point has taken place behind closed doors, and with an interim report not expected until the summer, the panel has drawn more headlines for the twists and turns of its plodding investigation than the revelations it’s produced.
But it hasn’t been just closed-door interviews, document requests and legal showdowns.
Here’s some of the panel’s work that has been made public.
- ‘Firsthand’ knowledge of Trump’s behavior during the riot: The select committee has information from multiple sources with firsthand knowledge that describe what then-President Donald Trump was doing during the riot, according to a person familiar with the investigation. “There’s a collection of people with relevant information,” the source told CNN’s Jamie Gangel. One key witness who has given a deposition is Keith Kellogg, then-Vice President Mike Pence’s national security adviser, who was with Trump in the White House when the riot was happening.
- Hannity’s texts: Fox Channel host Sean Hannity was concerned about Trump’s strategy and conduct before, during and after the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol, according to the panel. The committee said it has text messages from Hannity pushing back on the plan to urge Congress to challenge the certification of the election and urging Trump to prepare for his departure from office.
- Meadows’ texts: Donald Trump Jr., Fox Channel personalities and lawmakers unsuccessfully implored Meadows on Jan. 6 to get Trump to stop the violence unfurling at the US Capitol, according to text messages relayed by the House committee investigating the attack. The messages were read by committee members on the House floor before referring the criminal contempt of Congress against Meadows to the Justice Department.
- The big lie, up close: Other messages to Meadows revealed by Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California last month show correspondence before and after the 2020 presidential election centered on keeping Trump in power. One of the messages was about Jeffrey Clark. Schiff read a text from an unknown number that applauded the potential appointment of Clark to be acting attorney general while Trump tried to get the Justice Department to support his false claims of election fraud.
- Gripping testimony: The panel’s first and only public hearing so far featured harrowing testimony from officers who experienced firsthand the violent events of Jan. 6 at the hands of the pro-Trump mob. While a few of the officers had already shared their accounts of the attack publicly, their July testimony under oath brought the insurrection into chilling clarity.
Read more about the committee’s work here.
NOW: CNN hosts special from US Capitol to mark 1-year anniversary of the insurrection
From CNN’s Shawna Mizelle
Several lawmakers and members of the law enforcement community tasked with protecting the US Capitol are participating in a live event hosted now by CNN to mark the one-year anniversary of the deadly January 6 insurrection.
The two-hour conversation — “Live from the Capitol: January 6th, One Year Later” — will include remarks from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, and nine other House members: Democratic Reps. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, Jason Crow of Colorado, Veronica Escobar of Texas, Ruben Gallego of Arizona, Dan Kildee of Michigan and Susan Wild of Pennsylvania.
Several members of the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol will also mark the anniversary, with committee Chair Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, attending, as well as Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland.
In addition to the lawmakers, some officers who fought to protect the Capitol against the pro-Donald Trump mob will also be at the event, including US Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, as well as DC Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges.
The event is being held in the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall, one of the areas that rioters accessed during the riot after they temporarily overcame law enforcement officers and stormed the building.
Biden says he called some congressional staffers today
From CNN’s Kevin Liptak
President Biden wrote on Instagram that he telephoned Senate and House staff today to hear their Jan. 6, 2021 stories and thank them for their courage.
“In the face of a violent mob on Jan. 6, House and Senate staff sprang into action to defend the Capitol and our democracy. I called some of them today to hear their stories and thank them for their courage. They are just a few of the unsung heroes of that day,” Biden wrote.
Biden marked the day with a speech from the Capitol this morning, where he vowed to defend the nation’s founding ideals from the threats posed by the violent mob that stormed the Capitol one year ago and the prevailing lies that Trump and his allies continue to repeat about the 2020 election.
See Biden’s post:
CNN’s Maegan Vazquez, Clare Foran and Kate Sullivan contributed reporting to this post.
Where things stand in the Department of Justice’s investigation of the Capitol riot
From CNN’s Evan Perez and Katelyn Polantz
A year after the Jan. 6 insurrection, the Justice Department continues to press forward on the biggest investigation in FBI history, with 700 people already arrested and hundreds more offenders still at large and several more years of prosecutions ahead.
But the expansive investigation has yet to shed light on how vigorously the former president and political allies could be investigated for inciting rioters by spreading a lie that the election was stolen and asking them to march to the Capitol.
After opening aggressively, with prosecutors raising the prospect of using a rarely used seditious conspiracy law to charge some Capitol attackers, the Justice Department since Attorney General Merrick Garland took office in March 2021 has settled into a less headline-grabbing approach that Justice officials say is intended to keep the probe away from the political maelstrom.
Garland, a former appeals court judge, has made restoring institutional norms a top focus of his tenure, after a Trump era that regularly injected politics at the department. That includes a reminder to prosecutors that they should only speak in indictments and other court proceedings.
“The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy,” Garland said in a speech Wednesday. “We will follow the facts wherever they lead.”
His quiet approach has not satisfied Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans who openly discuss their interest in identifying crimes they believe the Justice Department should prosecute. It’s also opened Garland to criticism that he hasn’t been as publicly dynamic or aggressive as the nation needs to counter a threat to democracy.
“I think Merrick Garland has been extremely weak and I think there should be a lot more of the organizers of Jan. 6 that should be arrested by now,” Rep. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, said on CNN this week.
Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley defended the agency’s efforts.
“We are proud of the men and women of the Justice Department, who are undertaking the largest investigation in the department’s history,” Coley said in a statement. “They are following the facts and the law and the Constitution while working at impressive speed and scale to hold accountable all those responsible for the attack on the Capitol, and will continue to do so.”
Read more about the investigation here.
House Democrats reflected on the events of the Capitol riot in a session today. Here’s what they shared.
From CNN’s Annie Grayer
House Democrats gathered for more than two hours to commemorate their experiences of being in the House chamber during the violent Jan. 6, 2021 attack.
Members shared their firsthand and deeply emotional stories from that day. They were joined by the parents of slain Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, Charles and Gladys Sicknick.
Many shared the shock and horror they felt while in the chamber, and both the physical and emotional bruises that they experienced. Many thanked Rep. Jason Crow who as a former Army Ranger took charge during the attack and helped members in the gallery put on their gas masks, instructed them to talk off their member pins, and stay calm.
All agreed that Capitol and DC Metro police are the reason they are all still alive today.
“Those of us trapped in the gallery, we lived it,” Lisa Blunt Rochester said. “Ducking and crawling over and under railings, hands, knees, the sounds, the smells, we had a front row seat to what lies, hate, or plain old misinformation conjures. We went from victims to witnesses and today we are messengers.”
Rep. Dan Kildee held up a piece of broken glass he found on Jan. 6 during the attack that he says he has carried with him every day since to remind him of the “brutality” of that day” and the need for truth about what happened.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal recounted how she was prepared to use her cane, which she had as the result of knee replacement surgery, as a weapon against the rioters.
Rep. Sara Jacobs, who had only been in Congress for four days and did not even know how to get to the House floor, talked about how she still hears the buzzing of the gas masks.
Rep. Colin Allred said he took off his suit jacket on the House floor, the first time he had ever done that, was “ready to try and defend our colleagues from whatever was going to come through those doors.” He talked about how he was afraid he was never going to meet his son, who was not due to be born for another few months.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro choked up when she shared how she called her husband while lying on the House floor after hearing a gunshot. She said she lied and told him she was okay instead of saying I love you “because it harkened back to September 11 and those last calls.”
“Trapped in the gallery, with my colleagues so many of them here today, we held onto one another. We watched out for one another. We made sure that we could get over the railings, or under the railings” DeLauro said, recalling that fellow Democrat Marcy Kaptur made a joke that it was a little like doing the limbo.
Many members reflected on how the threat to democracy has still not subsided.
“Jan. 6 is not over. Jan. 6 is not behind us. The threat and the lie that fuels that threat continues to rear its head in other forms” Kildee said.
“The challenge with today for me is that we are not marking something that is over and done with. The danger is still clear and it is still present” Jayapal said.
Hinting that she believes there is more to be revealed about what happened that day, Rep. Annie Kuster said, “America does not yet know just how close we, the members here in this room today, our nation, and our democracy came to our demise that terrifying day.”
Rep. Crow shared that growing up he felt “that democracy was inevitable” but “we’ve now all learned that that is not true.”
While much of the event was focused on somber reflections, members also shared how this horrific experience brought them together. The members who were in the gallery on Jan. 6 have formed a group that they call the gallery group which has become very tight knit over the last year. And many talked about how despite what they experienced, Congress still persevered to certify the election.
“I don’t think people will remember that we had to evacuate the House floor. I hope they won’t. Or not only that maybe. I hope they’ll remember that we came back,” Allred said.
A prayer vigil is being held on the Capitol’s steps
A prayer vigil is being held on the center steps of the Capitol, with members of the House and Senate expected to join to commemorate the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“We come before you because we need your help. We need your help in these troubled times. We need your help for this beloved nation. We need your help for those who have been traumatized and troubled by the painful events of one year ago and all that has continued since.,” Presiding Bishop Michael Curry of the Episcopal Church said.
“We need your help, Lord, now to be the democracy you would have us to be. To be the nation you would have us to be. One nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all,” he continued.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a moment of silence, and then “God Bless America” was sung.
“We prayerfully mark one year since the insurrection and patriotically honor the heroes who defended the Capitol and our democracy that day. Let us all here join in a moment of silence in memory of those who lost their lives and sacrificed so much for our democracy that day,” Pelosi said.
Earlier in the day, House Democrats were invited to share their reflections and accounts of the day, and a prayer and moment of silence was held on the House floor.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/january-6-capitol-insurrection-anniversary/h_088964c45a2f5be82423a44d1738cadd
