In an interview with Hillary Clinton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi detailed her experiences during and in the wake of the Capitol Hill riot and expressed her support for 9/11 commission-style investigation into what occurred during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6.
Pelosi said Monday on Clinton’s “You and Me Both” podcast that such a commission has “strong support” in Congress, but this type of investigation cannot be initiated without legislation and the Senate is out until later this week.
The Speaker pointed to the review being led by retired Lt. General Russel Honoré of the “security infrastructure” of Capitol Hill as an example of an ongoing probe.
She also hinted at suspicions raised by other lawmakers that some of their colleagues and members of law enforcement could be either directly or indirectly involved in the insurrection, saying it would be part of a potential commission’s inquiry.
“We’re not waiting for the commission, but the commission will have a bigger agenda and will get to the bottom of what complicity members of Congress have in all of this. And if they did, they should be prosecuted, as well as others – whether it’s in security….anybody who has anything to do with the Capitol could have been a resource for whose offices were here,” Pelosi said.
As for President Trump, Clinton quipped that she would love to see her formal political rival’s phone records from Jan. 6 “to see whether he was talking to Putin the day that the insurgents invaded our Capitol,” referencing the Russian President.
Pelosi repeated her line on Trump that “all roads lead to Putin,” saying “I don’t know what Putin has on him politically, financially, or personally, but what happened last week was a gift to Putin” and calling the rioters unwitting “Putin puppets” because “they were doing Putin’s business when they did that at the incitement of an insurrection by the president of the United States.”
Sharing her experiences of being rushed from the House chamber amid the threat, Pelosi emphasized “it wasn’t about me, because I had security; it was about my members,” who she said were “traumatized” by what they had to endure that day.
Pelosi said she has asked all of her members to record in a journal what they saw on Jan. 6, and then to write another entry in a month “because this is a pain that people will carry.” She says she told them that “this is history. Your perspective, your individual perspectives are a very important part of that.”
Clinton noted that she and Pelosi will both attend President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday, saying, “I know that it’s not going to be like any inauguration we’ve ever attended.”
Pelosi expressed hope that Congress can find common ground in passing Biden’s agenda.