Pelosi Says Creating Panel to Investigate Jan. 6 an ‘Option’ With Power as Speaker

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) holds her weekly press conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on May 20, 2021. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Forming a special committee to investigate the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol breach is an “option,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on June 13.

Senate Republicans blocked the upper chamber last month from advancing the House-passed bill that would create a commission to probe the Jan. 6 incident. Some Republicans stated that the commission, which would have subpoena power, isn’t necessary because of the probes already underway by the Department of Justice and other agencies, and they worried over whether such a commission would be fueled by politics.

The legislation fell short by six votes in the Senate, though several senators who missed the vote said they would have supported the bill.

Pelosi said there are senators working on drawing the additional votes needed to pass the bill if it were brought up for consideration again.

“A week ago, I was asked to give it another week. So I will see by Monday if the Senate believes that they could—those who are working the bipartisan way can get three more votes,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“It would have been 57 if everyone were present voting. Three more. I have yielded on every point, except scope, except scope. Number of people on the committee, subpoena power, timetable, you name it, we have yielded because of the value of the bipartisanship that would spring from that.

“But I would not—they want to say, well, if we’re going to investigate that, we should investigate Black Lives Matter and people who turned out after George Floyd was shot. No, that’s not what this—this is about an assault on our democracy, on our Capitol of the United States. The American people deserve and must have answers. We will seek the truth. We will find the truth. But we hope that we can do it with passing the commission.”

Protesters are seen inside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Among Republicans who were against the commission, several advocated for a devotion of resources to look into the riots that took place across America in the summer of 2020, in addition to the Capitol breach.

Pelosi was pressed on whether she would announce a select committee if senators didn’t reach an agreement by June 14.

“No, I’m not going to announce anything tomorrow. I want to see what their response is, and then review it with my colleagues,” she said.

“It’s an option. And everybody knows the power of the speaker to do that. So I would hope that that would motivate them to say, ‘Let’s go a different place.’”

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a member of the Senate GOP leadership who last month said that it was “too early” to create a commission, said on June 13 that a bipartisan report on what happened on Jan. 6 is due out next week.

The Rules Committee, led by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and on which Blunt is the ranking member, has been working on the report along with Senate Homeland Security Chairman Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Ranking Member Rob Portman (R-Ohio).

“A commission in my view, an immediate commission, would slow us up in saying: ‘Well, we need to wait until we know all the facts. We need to wait for the commission,’” Blunt said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“We’re going to have a pretty extensive report on what happened, over a hundred-page report with a significant number of recommendations, in my view, all of which could be put in place immediately. And my sense was it’s more important to act and get—and do what we know we need to do than to get in a position where we start waiting for a commission to come forth with a report that we, I think, are going to be happy—I think you’re going to be really pleased with the report you see. And we'll see then where we need to go next after that report’s out.”