- The police will testify at a congressional hearing on January 6.
- The Republican leadership criticized the hearing.
- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi selected two Republicans as part of the panel.
The police officer who was attacked during the US Capitol Rebellion on January 6 will testify on Tuesday because a congressional team investigating the deadly attack will operate in a fierce partisan environment in Washington.
Since the war of 1812, a group of Donald Trump supporters stormed into the seat of American democracy. This is the most serious attack on the legislature. Six months later, the American public will learn about it at the first hearing of a special committee. To the challenges faced by law enforcement agencies. Become a political hotspot.
“Nothing is forbidden. We will take the necessary measures to understand what happened, why and how it happened,” Benny Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the group, wrote in an opinion piece in the Washington Post.
“The committee will give a final explanation for one of the darkest days in our history.”
Read | As Trump’s legal dilemma intensifies, an investigation into the US Capitol riots is planned
Legislators will receive first-hand information from the police that they were attacked by mobs who broke into the building, hunted down House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others, and tried to prevent proof of Joe Biden’s victory in the November presidential election.
“Cruel, savage hand-to-hand combat”
Trump on Monday dismissed the investigation as “false and highly partisan” and tried to accuse Pelosi of allegedly failing to protect the Capitol from supporters.
Four police officers will testify at the hearing at 09:30 (13:30 GMT), including Washington police officer Michael Fanone, who was electrocuted and beaten by the mob.
Read | The first U.S. Congress mob escaped jail, expressing remorse
Fanone, who suffered a heart attack in the chaos, told the American media that the conflict was “the cruelest and most brutal hand-to-hand combat” in his life.
Also testifying was Harry Dunn, a U.S. congressional police officer, who spoke of racial discrimination against him and other police officers by the mob, many of whom were related to ultra-nationalist and white supremacist groups.
During or shortly after the uprising, five people were killed and dozens of policemen were injured.
After Pelosi took unprecedented action to reject two candidates for minority leader Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leadership basically boycotted the select committee and cancelled its five appointments.
Pelosi did not leave the group with only Democrats, but unilaterally appointed two Republicans: Liz Cheney and Adam Kinsinger.
Both are powerful critics of Trump. They voted to impeach him in January, and both were condemned by the Republican Party for refusing to support Trump’s baseless claim that the election was stolen.
Pelosi and others hope to form a bipartisan 9/11 committee to investigate the riots and their origins. Even McCarthy expressed support in January.
Partisan tension
But as Republicans became increasingly worried that the January 6 investigation might cause political damage to their party before the 2022 midterm elections, the party began to unite to oppose an in-depth investigation.
Senate Republicans blocked the committee in May, arguing that multiple investigations had concluded on the riots and that hundreds of people had been arrested and had obtained extensive data on what happened.
The party tried to undermine the credibility of Pelosi’s subsequent committee, and McCarthy accused her of “playing politics” as partisan tensions increased.
McCarthy told reporters on Monday: “In the history of the United States, there has never been a spokesperson who has chosen the other party, so they are pre-determining the results of the investigation.”
He also mocked the conservatives Cheney and Kinsinger as “Pelosi Republicans”, which they thought was “naive.”
The spokesperson insisted that the committee will continue to move forward-with or without more Republican participation.
“We must once again ignore the antics of those who don’t want to find the truth,” she told ABC on Sunday.
Democrats like committee member Adam Schiff said they are eager to understand the behavior of Trump and some Republican lawmakers before and during the riots.
Schiff said he hopes the panel will use the power of subpoenas to force witnesses who do not want to testify to appear in court.
“Now that people are trying to whitewash history, this has become even more important,” Schiff told CNN.
At the same time, Biden supports Pelosi’s strategy to “track the truth about what has happened and prevent it from happening in the future,” White House Press Secretary Jane Passaki said.
Do you know you can listen to the article? Subscribe to news 24 Access this exciting feature and more.
