John,
It looks like this is the week that the House of Representatives will finally vote to create a commission to investigate the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol.
This is an important step, but it comes months late. In the aftermath of a deadly insurrection, what we should have seen was a repudiation of the lies that fed the riot and a strong, bipartisan response. Instead, it took months for a House Committee to even reach a deal about the scope and powers of the commission.
We also can’t ignore the fact that Representative Liz Cheney was recently ousted from her Republican leadership position for telling the truth about the Big Lie that the 2020 election was somehow stolen from Donald Trump. If our country is going to move forward, we need our elected leaders to come together to put this lie and the violence of January 6th in the past.
When the creation of an insurrection commission comes up for a vote, every member of Congress should vote in favor.
That it has taken so long for even this very basic and straightforward measure of accountability to be put in place is deeply troubling, and it echoes the slow response by law enforcement to the rioters storming the Capitol.
It also stands in stark contrast to the extreme response we saw from the Trump administration to peaceful racial justice protests last summer. There was a pretty clear difference between the muted response to insurrectionists and the violent clearing of protestors from Lafayette Park for Trump’s photo-op last summer. Now, we’re also getting a clearer picture of the true cost of the response to those protests: The Secret Service recently turned over records to CREW that reveal that the temporary fencing put up around the White House at the time cost $1.5 million.
We’re going to continue pushing for accountability both for the insurrection and for the violent response to peaceful protests last summer, and we will keep you updated as we learn more.
Thank you for standing with us,
Noah Bookbinder
President, CREW
