a real surprise that this is where we have now ended up? reporter: in some ways it is, because in the immediate aftermath of january 6th, republicans themselves suggested an openness to coming forward with an outside commission to investigate what happened here, something designed after the 9/11 commission after the attack on the united states. even senators like john cornyn said he d support an outside commission. it devolved into partisan back and forth about what that would look like. most agreed to a lot of what the republicans wanted, but the republicans made clear they viewed any investigation going forward as hurting their chances politically. they wanted to focus ongoing after joe biden, joe biden s agenda, spending, deficit spending, the border as their fight to take back the house and senate majority. they did not want to make it an
investigation about january 6th, so they blocked that outside commission in the senate. that forced nancy pelosi s hand to move forward with the select committee. ever since she moved forward with this select committee, which will by its nature be more partisan than an outside commission because it will be led by democrats, republicans had no interest in that investigation. in some ways, we saw how this has been a trajectory where this started. at the beginning of this, it was going to be a bipartisan look into what happened. now it s a democratic look with one republican, liz cheney, participating. what s the impact? reporter: the impact could be significant. regardless of what happens come november it really depends on what they ultimately find out here. the democrats say that donald
their political games. so i applaud leader mccarthy forring a we re going to continue to work and get to the bottom and answer the questions that the leader raised. the questions that frankly the american people want answers to. on the evening of january 6 when we reconvened to take the certification of the election results from our states, i actually spoke with speaker pelosi on the dais and she brought up a bipartisan, bicameral commission at that time. i introduced a bill. we had some questions about how this would be implemented and speaker pelosi decided instead to put forth her own select committee that we now know was a completely partisan process. it s very disappointing because i think all of us were looking forward to our first hearing next week to be able to get
commission made up of independent members no, i didn t. equal number of republicans and democrats. your conference voted against that, a majority voted against it and it was blocked in the senate. why did you not allow that to go forward if what you say you want is a bipartisan investigation into what happened on january 6th? for the same politics pelosi played then. at the same time she used the scope of that. remember how long it took. on january 13th, rodney davis and myself both requested a 9/11 commission. even those who ran the 9/11 commission criticized nancy pelosi for what she wanted to do. we had officer evans killed on good friday. but she said you couldn t look at that. if you study the 9/11 commission, they didn t study what happened on just september 11th, they studied what built up to it, but she said no, you could not do that. why would she make a scope that you couldn t get the answers to?
hol holland. good to have you with us. can we get your reaction to the news from spoeaker pelosi and kevin mccarthy, threatening there will be an investigation by republicans. aspeaker pelosi made exactly the right call. this is a special committee that s designed to get at the truth and the facts of what happened during the attack on the capitol on january 6th and all the events leading up to it. you can t get to the truth when you have people on the committee who are just spreading the big lie and who have demonstrated time and again that they re only interested in spreading false information. so she made the right call. she tried, of course, to establish a bipartisan commission. that was shot down here in the senate by senator mcconnell and others. i m glad she s proceeding as she