Why We Need a January 6 Commission
Remarks on the Senate floor.
I come to the floor tonight — by the way I’m thrilled that we’re passing this legislation and it’s amazing to be, I’m sure you would agree, in a Senate that’s actually returned to regular order. And we’re passing amendments on both sides of the aisle, and I think we have a big bipartisan vote here in the Senate. And having been here for a number of years when the Senate did not operate that way was incredibly dysfunctional.
It is a great, great privilege to be here in a moment when it is working, so I want to express my sincere gratitude that Mr. President, but I also want to call the President’s attention to news reports this afternoon that say that our colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle have decided they’re gonna block this bipartisan commission to examine what happened on January 6th, that they’re gonna use a filibuster here to block a commission that some of them actually called for and a commission that, I think, Mr. President, 35 Republican members of the House of Representatives supported. And I wanted to come to the floor to appeal to their conscience and to ask them to consider the damage that it will do to our democracy to not have this commission as we’ve done at other important moments in the country’s history.
And, Mr. President, you were here on January 6, I was here on January 6. We had been sent here, we came here to accomplish the ministerial tasks that we are required [to do] after a presidential election is concluded, to certify the results of that election, to certify the ballots of millions and millions and millions of Americans who voted in the last election. That’s why we were here. Unfortunately, we had a President at that time who denied that the election had actually happened. The President will remember that we also had colleagues that came to this floor and said that we were disrespecting the President’s base or their base because we were certifying the election, instead of having enough respect for their base to tell them the truth, which was that the election had been decided by millions of voters. And by every court that looked at it. And by incredibly brave local officials, many of them Republicans, who wouldn’t allow the President to push them around.
The 6th was a terrible day here. The people that invaded this Capitol stormed the platform that had been set up for the peaceful transfer of power on January 20 when Joe Biden took the oath of office. The people that came here on January 6th cursed the Capitol Police. They bludgeoned the Capitol Police. They speared them. They hurled racial epithets, leading some of our African American police officers here to ask what had happened to America. They broke windows in the Capitol. They looted the Parliamentarian’s office.
The people who would gravely carry the ballots out of this chamber when we were led to the Hart building and protect those ballots — they could have ended up getting burned out on the National Mall, if they hadn’t had the presence of mind to do their job. The Capitol Police were in mortal danger that day, doing their job. And I remember when we were all together in one of the Senate office buildings they had rushed out of here. We later heard that the mob was just a hallway away from here, and actually, they were misdirected by another Capitol police officer who put his life in jeopardy to move that out of the way.
And we were taken to another building, a Senate office building, and it was in that room, Mr. President — we were crowded in that room — it was in that room that I saw a scene that I never thought I would ever see as an American on the TV sets that were on the walls of that room. While we were inside the room, we were watching the scene that everyone else in the country and everyone else across the world was watching the United States Capitol being invaded by our own people. I know the President will remember that when he was growing up, when I was growing up, that was not an uncommon sight to see in countries all over the world. There are a lot of countries that have had events like January 6th all over the world, especially when there’s been transitions of power or a tyrant unwilling to give up their power. But in a million years, I would never have imagined that it would happen here.
And it did happen, and it sent a message all over the planet. While we were in that room unable to certify this election, the Chinese government had the greatest propaganda win you could imagine. And in the weeks that followed, they said democracy is in decline, democracy is failing. That’s what the Russians are saying, that’s what Iranians are saying.
When I was there in that room that day, I thought a lot about my mom and her parents who were Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust. The whole family was killed except for them in the end, and they were lucky enough after the war is over, they went to Stockholm, Sweden for a year, they went to Mexico City for a year, and then they came here, the only country in the world where they thought they could rebuild their shattered lives, and they did. And so, even worse for me than the thought of our adversaries using this to undermine democracy was the understanding that people all over the world situated just like my mom and her parents would lose hope in the American ideal, would lose hope in democracy and in the rule of law.
Now, the good news is, we actually had a January 20th, Mr. President. A lot of countries that go through January 6th never get to January 20, and we had, and Joe Biden took the oath of office, and became the United States and Kamala Harris became the Vice President of the United States and we had — notwithstanding all of the prior president’s efforts to the contrary and someone’s allies in Congress’ ever to the contrary — we had a peaceful transfer of power.
But consider how close we came, not just on the 6th, but consider what would have happened if elected officials — many of them Republicans in Georgia and in Arizona and in Michigan — hadn’t fulfilled their obligations to the rule of law, hadn’t lived up to their oath of office, bent to the will of a president who didn’t want relinquish power. Where would we be then? Imagine, Mr. President, if the Democrats, instead of winning a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, lost the majority the House of Representatives, and 140 or more, 148 Republican votes to decertify the election, to overturn the will of the voters, to disenfranchise millions and millions and millions of Americans, all of a sudden was the majority doing that as the former president would have wanted. Imagine, Mr President, if 60 judges, many of them Republicans appointed by President Trump, who helped the president’s lawyers out of courtroom after courtroom every courtroom, because instead of doing what the President wanted them to do, instead of finding them a few more votes, as he said to the secretary of State in Georgia, they did their job as judges. And they withstood the pressure.
They swore an oath and they fulfilled their oath. That’s the only way democracy can actually work, is when elected officials and judicial officials apply the rule of law, fulfill their oath and their obligation. And Mr. President, what I want to say to my colleagues today is, I want to implore them and appeal to their conscience, because the responsibility to the democracy is not over. The democracy is still at risk. We still have a President of the United States — a former president — who refuses to concede the election, who, on a daily basis almost, says the election was stolen. We still have members of Congress who are saying the election was stolen. We still have members of Congress who won’t face the facts and tell their constituents the truth. I want to say again: respect your constituents enough that you’re gonna tell them the truth.
And that’s why, at difficult moments in our history like after President Kennedy was killed, or the Challenger exploded, or 9/11 happened, we’ve had a bipartisan commission to make sure we understood what led us here, and how we can do better, coming out of this. It’s never been perfect, but it went pretty well, and that’s what we need here. We need to understand what led millions of Americans to believe conspiracy theories about our own country, and what led 1000s of people to swarm the Capitol of the United States to attack police officers, to kill, to attack police officers, leading to their death.
From all over the country, they came to invade this Capitol. And if we don’t want it to happen again, or we want to be able to protect ourselves. And I’m not just talking about the poor Capitol Police, although that, at a bare minimum, [they] ought to be enough to warrant admission. I’m talking about the danger of political violence in this nation going forward. If we don’t address this, the American people don’t have a chance to understand what happened. As I mentioned that night on January 6th, standing at this desk on the floor, political violence is what brings these republics to an end.
I’m gonna finish this because because I know there are others that want to speak, but let me just finish by saying how agonizing it was to watch Officer Sicknick’s mom here today, going door to door to door to ask people to please vote for this commission, and I hope that people will reconsider, I hope that serves their conscience.
The people around the world who watched January 6th are watching us today, and they want to know democracy is up to the challenges of the 21st century, and I believe it is, I believe it is. I think democracy is the highest expression of humanity on Earth, and we’ll be tested in all kinds of ways right externally and internally. This will give us the chance to deal with the internal questions. And I think, in a moment like this, it’s important for us not to stand for a party or for a president, but for the truth. And for common sense. And for our exercise in self government. Mr. President, for all those reasons, I hope that we have the vote tonight, that it will succeed and the American people have the benefit of a bipartisan commission to examine what happened on January 6th and help us understand how we can strengthen our democracy.
And with that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
