Rep. Jeffries On The Politics Of A Jan. 6 Commission

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. You've probably been hearing in the news today that Senate Republican Leader, Mitch McConnell, is now blocking formation of a bipartisan commission to study the causes of and events during the January 6 Capitol Riot and insurrection. The news today is full of all kinds of theories about why McConnell is blocking it, keeping his party from looking bad or hurting them in next year's midterm elections, things like that. Here's another theory. Mitch McConnell doesn't need an investigation, because he already knows what happened.

Mitch McConnell: American citizens attacked their own government. They use terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of domestic business they did not like.

Brian: Remember that from McConnell's speech at Trump's impeachment trial in February? He called it terrorism in that clip. Did you hear that? He already says that. He also used the word murder and called it anti-police.

Mitch: Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the speaker of the House. They built gallows and chanted about murdering the vice president.

Brian: Maybe Mitch McConnell doesn't need a January 6 commission because he already knows what happened. He also seems to know why those terrorists did what they did.

Mitch: They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth because he was angry he'd lost an election.

Bria: Because he was angry he lost an election, the most powerful man on earth. The most powerful man on earth? You mean, the President of the United States was responsible for this?

Mitch: There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.

Brian: Anti-police terrorism at the instructions of their president, and what?

Mitch: Having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.

Brian: You're kidding me, Mitch, right? False conspiracy theories from the President himself to overturn a democratic election. Wow. The issue is the incitement to insurrection that he gave in that speech on January 6th?

Mitch: The issue is not only the president's intemperate language on January 6, it is not just his endorsement of remarks in which an associate urged, "trial by combat." It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe, the increasingly wild myth about a reverse landslide election that was somehow being stolen from secret coup by our now president.

Brian: Holy moly, Mitch, that sound story. Maybe Mitch McConnell doesn't need an investigation into the causes and events of January 6, because he already knows the answers. He said them all there back on February 13. Well, case closed, I guess. With me now, anyway, is Brooklyn and Queens Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, a member of the House Judiciary Committee and chair of the House Democratic Caucus. Always good to have you on, Congressman, welcome back to WNYC.

Hakeem Jeffries: Good morning, Brian, great to be with you.

Brian: Who needs a condition to study January 6, when Mitch McConnell already said what happened and why and it can't really get any worse than that?

Rep. Jeffries: Well, Mitch McConnell has certainly laid things out in a clear, compelling, comprehensive, and concise fashion in terms of what occurred on January 6. We do think that as has been the case in the past, whenever you have a dramatic attack on the United States, in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, and that attack on December 7, 1941, America had a bipartisan commission. In the aftermath of the terrorist strikes on September 11, America had a bipartisan commission.

In the aftermath of the January 6 violent insurrection and attack on the Capitol, America should also have a bipartisan commission to determine what happened. McConnell laid that out. Why it happened. McConnell also laid that out, but perhaps most importantly, how do we prevent a violent insurrection, the type of radicalization that we've seen, the big lie being perpetrated? How do we prevent those things from ever happening again? That, in many ways, was the critically important piece of the efforts to look at Pearl Harbor, and that successful attack against us, and the efforts to look at what happened connected to September 11.

Brian: Well, maybe it's hard to put together a bipartisan commission when this attack, unlike those from history, was explicitly partisan. In all seriousness, McConnell says the commission, I was obviously doing a little theater there with those McConnell clips, but he says in all seriousness, the commission would be duplicative because there are already criminal investigations being conducted by the FBI, which there are, people are being arrested and charged, which they are, and Congress is already investigating too. Would this be duplicative of the investigations already taking place, and maybe even get in law enforcement way?

Rep. Jeffries: [unintelligible 00:07:02] Everybody has their particular lane. Law enforcement has a lane. Homeland Security has a lane as it relates to the domestic terrorism aspect of this. The Capitol Police will have its particular lane in terms of securing the Capitol grounds, and how do you stop this type of breach from happening again, but the January 6 commission would be all-encompassing, and it would look at everything, to really just get at the truth of what occurred, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, of course, but to be prescriptive in terms of how we move forward.

It was a physical attack on the Capitol, they were there, of course, to stop us from undertaking our constitutional responsibilities. They wanted to assassinate the speaker, "Hang Mike Pence." Hunting down members of Congress. That's egregious, and we have to figure out how to deal with that physical attack and the breach that occurred on that day, but it was more. It was an attack on the Constitution, it was an attack on the principle of the peaceful transfer of power, and an effort really to strip away democracy in an extraordinary way.

It seems to me, that's not the job of the FBI, or the Department of Justice to figure out what's happening within the fabric of our society that you can have, of course, a president like Donald Trump elected and then on his way out of the door, really tried to take down democracy with him. That is why I think doing it in a bipartisan way, not through the form, for instance, of a congressional investigation, so that it has the same type of credibility that commissions have had in the past is important, because this gets to the heart and soul of who we are as America.

Brian: Now, we should tell our listeners who haven't followed the tik-tok of this over the last 24 hours, that the bill to create the commission that you in the House passed last night and now is doubtful in the senate because McConnell says he'll block it. The bill to create the commission was written by a bipartisan group. It's not just democrats calling for bipartisanship, because it'll make the Republicans look bad, it was written by a bipartisan group.

I want to play a clip of one House Republican, one of your New York colleagues, in fact, who led the writing of the bill, John Katko, from the Syracuse area, who's also I believe, the top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, so extremely relevant. He sees the bill not as being anti-Republican, but as being pro-cop.

John Katko: I want these officers and their families to know that we are doing it not for us and not for politics. We are doing it for them.

Brian: That's pretty interesting, dilemma the republicans have, they're always saying how pro-law enforcement they are. They also don't want to label their anti-cop supporters as being anti-cop, sympathy for that conundrum they have?

Rep. Jeffries: Well, it's an astute observation, Brian. I think they're [unintelligible 00:10:14] is the most eloquent way that I can say it. In that lives were lost, including amongst the Capitol Police officers who were defending us engaged in hand-to-hand combat hour after hour after hour. They were assaulted, they were beaten, they were hit with bear spray, they had their own weapons, in some cases used against them after they were seized by these Capitol rioters, more than 140 police officers were seriously injured, one officer lost three fingers, another had his eye gouged out, some are going to suffer permanent injury and that has become clear and will become clearer as years pass by.

This is an extraordinary situation but as you've indicated, Brian, you've got these so-called pro-police Republicans who have turned a blind eye to it. Why? Because they are bending the knee to Donald Trump and they have in many ways become a full-blown cop. Now with respect to our capacity to pass it in the Senate, I'm optimistic for at least two reasons. One, as you indicated, John Katko, negotiated this, he's the lead Republican on the Homeland Security Committee with Bennie Thompson, the Chair of the Homeland Security Committee and we found common ground in several areas where Republicans wanted us to yield.

We yielded, for instance, on the question of the makeup of the Commission. Originally, there was going to be three presidential appointments, they were concerned that that would then lead to Democrats being able to appoint eight commissioners, and Republicans could only appoint five. We changed that so it's going to be five appointments by Democratic legislative leaders, five appointments by Republican legislative leaders, an even split in terms of the Commission.

Then they wanted to deal with the issue of subpoena power, Brian, which, traditionally, in the congressional majority, the majority has subpoena power, not the minority, but in this particular case, the commission will be able to issue subpoenas upon only the agreement of either a majority, which means it has to be bipartisan or the agreement of the Democratic-appointed chair and the republican appointed Vice-Chair, we yield it on that.

We also yield it on the notion of putting findings in the legislation about the run-up to the event, which we were never intending to do but they were concerned about things that could be perceived as biasing the scope of the inquiry and investigation that will be made so we yield it on that language as well, but as you pointed out, Brian, last point, Mitch McConnell has done a pretty good job of laying out the findings themselves on the floor of the Senate. They're just phoneys. 35 republicans did vote for it. I think that means we can find 10 Republicans in the Senate, even over the objection of Mitch McConnell.

Brian: A few more minutes with Brooklyn and Queens Congressman, Hakeem Jeffries, I want to finish up on this and if we have time, touch one other issue. Another theory that I read when you talk about, it's all about fealty to Donald Trump, is that McConnell and we see from those clips how he really feels about Donald Trump doesn't want this investigation, not because he's soft on Donald Trump, but because as that February speech indicates, he wants his party to be done with Donald Trump.

Having this investigation go on for months and then release a report and the whole new round of his colleagues defending Trump and putting the spotlight back on Trump actually empowers Donald Trump and keeps him as the centerpiece of their party and of the news. Now, you obviously don't want Trumpism to flourish anymore, either. Could this condition backfire, and have that effect?

Rep. Jeffries: Well, I think that Mitch McConnell is probably looking at it through a political lens and is trying to move on, but you can't move on from a violent insurrection and attack on the Capitol that, as you pointed out, Brian, at the top was a partisan attack in many ways, although it was really a Trumpist attack, but by individuals who continue to be loyal to an individual, not to a principle. That's problematic, and we just have to deal with it because at the heart and soul of our democracy is that peaceful transfer of power, and that was violently interrupted on January 6, and we almost lost our democracy, I think it's reasonably fair to say, because of a totally out-of-control president.

If it's inconvenient politically to Mitch McConnell, then that's not a legitimate reason for Senate Republicans not to proceed but that is also why, Brian, we work hard to make it as bipartisan as possible and why we yielded in areas that John Katko was able to successfully negotiate, which is why he strongly supports the bill, and while at least a substantial number of moderate Republicans, who I left in the house saw fit, to support it, even over the objection of Kevin McCarthy, their leader, which is what gives me hope, that in the Senate, you'll see a similar dynamic unfold over the objection of Mitch McConnell.

Brian: All right. Before you go, tell me one other thing. How's the American family's plan coming? President Biden's new deal like legislation to create a support system for a childcare and paid family leave. I was surprised to see an argument against this childcare plan on the conservative site, the signal, listen to the specific language, and listeners, listen closely to the specific language the writer uses to oppose the plan, "Such a program isn't needed.

After the 2017 tax cuts, more money was left in the coffers of private-sector employers and many use those dollars to provide family leave to employees. In fact, the percentage of companies offering paid leave has more than doubled to 55%, offering maternity leave, and 45% providing paternity leave." Congressman, I was astonished that those numbers were used to argue against the bill, do you think 55% of employers offering paid maternity leave makes it mission accomplished?

Rep. Jeffries: They've been close to being Mission accomplished and it basically suggests that half the American people have been left out. The other reality is that those numbers, based on just the actual companies, doesn't mean that you're reaching the majority of employees. That, in fact, we believe is the case, because we need to bolster the ability of small and medium-sized companies who were not the beneficiaries of the GOP tax scam, where 83% of the benefits went to the wealthiest 1%, they're not in a position to be able to provide any real family leave support, we have to step in.

Joe Biden has proposed a visionary program in the context of the American family's plan. Now we're working on the American jobs plan, and that is front and center and we hope to be able to get that done in the next few months, and then we'll move to the American families plan. We do expect significant Republican opposition, but we also believe that we will have the tool of reconciliation available to us and one of the obstacles of a fully restarted economy is the lack of family support, the lack of childcare availability, its inaccessibility, and Joe Biden promised that he was going to build back better.

He's just leaning into a campaign promise that he made to the American people and because of his election, he has a mandate to do it, not to go back to normal because normal prior to pandemic was problematic when half the American people said they couldn't afford a sudden unexpected $400 expenses. This is in the wealthiest country in the history of the world. We got the American rescue plan done. We're working on the American jobs plan. As soon as we get that done, we'll pivot to the American family's plan, and we've got a real pathway to do it through reconciliation in order to bring to life President Biden's promise of building back better.

Brian: Brooklyn, Queens Congressman, Hakeem Jeffries, who's on the Judiciary Committee and is the Chair of the House Democratic Caucus. We always appreciate you coming on with us. Thanks a lot.

Rep. Jeffries: Thanks so much, Brian.

 

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