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Sarbanes Renews Calls for Independent January 6 Commission

May 12, 2021

“We Need to Get Solid, Cogent Answers to Questions about What Happened at the Capitol and How It Happened”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – During a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing today, Congressman John Sarbanes (D-Md.) called on Congressional Republicans to join Democrats in establishing an independent commission to examine the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and to strengthen America's national security by deterring future attacks.

"In February … Speaker Pelosi proposed an independent commission – which was modeled after the 9/11 Commission – to study the January attack and the factors that led to it," said Congressman Sarbanes. "Unfortunately, with a few exceptions, Republicans have opposed this commission – even as the Speaker has indicated her openness to compromise by proposing that the commission, for example, have an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, and that the Chair and the Ranking Member share subpoena authority. So, she's made a good-faith effort to try to construct this in a way that is non-partisan."

Sarbanes continued: "We need to get solid, cogent answers to questions about what happened at the Capitol and how it happened. In April, a coalition of 140 national security leaders who served under Democratic and Republican administrations sent a letter to Congress urging us to create a 9/11-style commission to provide a ‘full picture of events and an analysis of the causes.'"

Sarbanes concluded: "If you look back at the 9/11 Commission, not only did it produce – in a bipartisan fashion – an analysis of what occurred then, it became kind of the gold standard for how we respond to traumatic events. It's the natural place to go to construct something of that kind in response to what happened on January 6, and I think that's why there's such a strong case to be made there. And it helped the country and the American people."

See below for a video of the Congressman's remarks.

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