January 6 Commission

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, I also want to call the Presiding Officer's attention to news reports this afternoon that say that our colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle have decided they are going to block this bipartisan Commission to examine what happened on January 6 and that they are going to use the filibuster here to block a Commission that some of them actually called for and a Commission that, I think, 35 Republican Members of the House of Representatives supported.

I wanted to come to the floor to appeal to their conscience and to ask them to consider the damage that it will do to our democracy to not have this Commission, as we have done at other important moments in the country's history.

And, Mr. President, you were here on January 6. I was here on January 6. We had been sent here--we came here--to accomplish the ministerial task that we are required after a Presidential election is concluded, to certify the results of that election, to certify the ballots of millions and millions and millions of Americans who voted in the last election. That is why we were here.

Unfortunately, we had a President at that time who denied that the election had actually happened.

The President will remember that we also had colleagues that came to this floor and said that we were disrespecting the President's base or their base because we were certifying the election, instead of having enough respect for their base to tell them the truth, which was that the election had been decided by millions of voters, and by every court that looked at it and by incredibly brave local officials, many of them Republicans, who wouldn't allow the President to push them around.

The 6th was a terrible day here. The people who invaded this Capitol, the people who stormed the platform that had been set up for the peaceful transfer of power on January 20, when Joe Biden took the oath of office--the people who came here on January 6 cursed the Capitol Police. They bludgeoned the Capitol Police. They speared them. They hurled racial epithets, leading some of our African-American police officers here to ask what had happened to America. They broke windows in the Capitol. They looted the Parliamentarian's office--the people who would bravely carry the ballots out of this Chamber, when we were led to the Hart building, and protect those ballots that could have ended up getting burned out on the National Mall, if they hadn't had the presence of mind to do their job--just like the Capitol Police, who were in mortal danger that day doing their job.

And I remember, when we were all together in one of the Senate office buildings, after they had rushed us out of here, we would later see that the mob was just a hallway away from here, and, actually, they were misdirected by another Capitol Police officer, who put his life in jeopardy to move them out of the way.

We were taken to another building, a Senate office building, and it was in that room--we were crowded in that room. It was in that room that I saw a scene that I never thought I would ever see as an American, on the TV sets that were on the walls of that room. While we were inside the room, we were watching the scene that everyone else in the country and everyone else across the world was watching of the U.S. Capitol being invaded by our own people.

I know the President will remember that when he was growing up, when I was growing up, that was not an uncommon sight to see in countries all over the world. There are a lot of countries that have had events like January 6 over the world, especially when there have been transitions of power or a tyrant unwilling to give up their power.

But in a million years, I would never have imagined that it would happen here. And it did happen, and it sent a message all over the planet.

While we were in that room, unable to certify this election, the Chinese Government had the greatest propaganda win that you could imagine, and in the weeks that followed, they have said democracy is in decline, democracy is failing. That is what the Russians are saying. That is what the Iranians are saying.

And when I was there in that room that day, I thought a lot about my mom and her parents, who were Polish Jews, who survived the Holocaust. The whole family was killed except for them and an aunt, and they were lucky enough that, after the war was over, they went to Stockholm, Sweden, for a year. They went to Mexico City for a year, and then they came here to the only country in the world where they thought they could rebuild their shattered lives. And they did.

And so even worse for me than the thought of our adversaries using this to undermine democracy was the understanding that people all over the world situated just like my mom and her parents would lose hope in the American ideal, would lose hope in democracy and in the rule of law.

Now, the good news is we actually had a January 20. A lot of countries that go through January 6 never get to January 20, and we had that, and Joe Biden took the oath of office and he became President of the United States, and Kamala Harris became the Vice President of the United States. We had, notwithstanding all of the prior President's efforts to the contrary and the efforts of some of his allies in Congress to the contrary--we had--a peaceful transfer of power.

But consider how close we came, not just on the 6th, but consider what would have happened if elected officials, many of them Republicans in Georgia and in Arizona and in Michigan hadn't fulfilled their obligations to the rule of law, hadn't lived up to their oath of office, bent to the will of a President who didn't want to relinquish power. Where would we be then?

Imagine if the Democrats, instead of winning a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, had lost the majority in the House of Representatives, and 140 or more--148--Republican votes to decertify the election, to overturn the will of the voters, to disenfranchise millions and millions and millions of Americans all of a sudden was a majority doing that, as the former President would have wanted.

Imagine if 60 judges, many of them Republicans, appointed by President Trump, who howled the President's lawyers out of courtroom after courtroom, after courtroom because, instead of doing what the President wanted them to do, instead of finding them ``a few more votes,'' as he said to the secretary of state in Georgia, recorded on the phone, they did their job as judges and they withstood the pressure. They swore an oath, and they fulfilled their oath, and that is the only way democracy can actually work. It is when elected officials and judicial officials apply the rule of law, fulfill their oath and their obligation.

And what I want to say to my colleagues today, I want to implore them and appeal to their conscience, because the responsibility to the democracy is not over. The democracy is still at risk. We still have a President of the United States--a former President--who refuses to concede the election, who, on a daily basis almost, says that the election was stolen. We still have Members of Congress who are saying the election was stolen. We still have Members of Congress who won't face the facts and tell their constituents the truth.

I want to say again: Respect your constituents enough that you are going to tell them the truth, and that is why, at difficult moments in our history, like after President Kennedy was killed or the Challenger exploded or 9/11 happened, we have had a bipartisan Commission to make sure we understood what led us here and how we can do better coming out of this.

It has never been perfect, but it has worked pretty well, and that is what we need here. We need to understand what led millions of Americans to believe conspiracy theories about our own country and what led thousands of people to storm the Capitol of the United States, to attack police officers, to attack police officers, leading to their death.

From all over the country, they came to invade this Capitol, and if we don't want it to happen again or we want to be able to protect ourselves, and I am not just talking about the poor Capitol Police, although that, at a bare minimum, ought to be enough to warrant a Commission. I am talking about the danger of political violence in this Nation going forward if we don't address this and the American people don't have the chance to understand what happened.

As I mentioned, that night on January 6, standing at this desk on the floor, political violence is what brings these republics to an end.

I am going to finish because I know there are others who want to speak, but let me just finish by saying how agonizing it was to watch Officer Sicknick's mom here today, going door to door to door, to ask people: Please vote for this Commission.

I hope that people will reconsider. I hope they will search their conscience. The people around the world who watched January 6 are watching us today, and they want to know if democracy is up to the challenges of the 21st century.

I believe it is. I believe it is. I think democracy is the highest expression of humanity on Earth, and we are being tested in all kinds of ways right now, externally and internally. This would give us the chance to at least deal with the internal question. And I think at a moment like this it is important for us not to stand for a party or for a President but for the truth and for common sense and for our exercise in self-government.

For all of those reasons, I hope that when we have the vote tonight, that it will succeed and the American people will have the benefit of a bipartisan Commission to examine what happened on January 6 and help us understand how we can strengthen our democracy.

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