The US Congress will establish an independent commission to look into the deadly insurrection that took place in January at the Capitol.
ADVERTISEMENTThe US Congress will establish an independent commission to look into the deadly insurrection that took place in January at the Capitol.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the commission will “investigate and report on the facts and causes relating to the January 6, 2021, domestic terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol Complex … and relating to the interference with the peaceful transfer of power."
There has been growing bipartisan support for an independent commission to examine the insurrection.
In a letter to Democratic colleagues, Pelosi said, “It is clear from his findings and from the impeachment trial that we must get to the truth of how this happened.”
She added that the House would put forth supplemental funding for Capitol security.
An independent commission along the lines of the one that investigated the September 11 attacks would probably require legislation to create.
Democrats just 10 votes short of conviction in the Senate
It comes after Donald Trump was acquitted in the Senate of inciting the insurrection, even as seven Republicans voted with Democrats to convict the former US president.
Investigations into the riot were already planned, with Senate hearings scheduled later this month in the Senate Rules Committee.
“There should be a complete investigation about what happened,” Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump, told ABC.
“What was known, who knew it and when they knew, all that, because that builds the basis so this never happens again.”
Cassidy said he was “attempting to hold President Trump accountable,” and added that as Americans hear all the facts, “more folks will move to where I was.” He was censured by his state’s party after the vote.
House prosecutors who argued for Trump's conviction of inciting the riot said on Sunday they had proved their case.
They also railed against the Senate’s Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, and others who they said were “trying to have it both ways” in finding the former president not guilty but criticising him at the same time.
McConnell told Republican senators shortly before the vote that he would vote to acquit Trump.
In a blistering speech after the vote, the Kentucky Republican said the president was “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day" but that the Senate's hands were tied to do anything about it because Trump was out of office.
But the Senate, in an earlier vote, had deemed the trial constitutional.