Pelosi appoints Rep. Adam Kinzinger as second Republican member of January 6 investigation
Another Republican member has been added to the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. Rep. Adam Kinzinger announced in a Sunday press release that he had been asked to serve on the committee by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and has accepted her request. In her own statement, Pelosi said Kinzinger “brings great patriotism to the Committee’s mission: to find the facts and protect our Democracy.”
In an interview on ABC’s This Week hours before Kinzinger’s announcement, Pelosi indicated her “plan” was to appoint Kinzinger if he was willing. Last week Pelosi announced her rejection of two proposed Republican members proposed by House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy; Rep. Jim Jordan, a participant in the pro-Trump demonstrations that immediately preceded the Capitol attack, and Rep. Jim Banks, who upon being nominated to the committee made public statements indicating he intended to disrupt the committee’s work by demanding it probe Black Lives Matter and other political demonstrations not related to the day’s violence.
Pelosi also again indicated that she would be willing to seat the other three Republican members proposed by McCarthy. McCarthy pulled those nominations in protest after Banks and Jordan were rejected. House and Senate Republicans have rejected all attempts to create a bipartisan probe of the violence on January 6, instead framing any such probe as an attempt to pin blame on Republicans.
From November until the January 6 attack, Republican lawmakers, party officers, pundits and top members of Trump’s inner circle all spread false propaganda to claim that Trump’s November election loss was the result of unidentified “fraud” by non-Republican conspirators. All of it was false. Attackers used those same propaganda claims to justify their violent attacks on Capitol police, the storming of the Capitol during a joint session of Congress, and attempts to find and capture anti-Trump lawmakers and public officials during the riot.
The select committee’s first hearing is scheduled for this Tuesday.