you. what more do we know about the addition of kinzinger to this committee? this was a big move by speaker nancy pelosi adding kinzinger to the select panel and making him now the second republican to join the investigation. we at cnn reported first that pelosi was considering this idea as a way to bring even more legitimacy to an already bipartisan investigation. she made it official today, however. kevin mccarthy, the gop leader, wasting no time weighing in. he is saying that pelosi s structuring the committee around her own political needs. he said in a statement, quote, speaker pelosi s rejection of the republican nominees to serve on the committee and self-appointment of members who share her preconceived narrative will not yield a serious investigation. of course, kinzinger is likely to face a lot of blowback from his own party, just like cheney did. but he s brushing these concerns aside and making clear that he is ready to embrace this assignment head on. he said that he agr
believe it. but, as you know, there is no facts that goes with the lie up to this point. the difference is our committee is tasked with coming up with the facts to prove whatever positions we take. and that s the commitment that i give the public as well as the other members of this committee will give also that nothing we present will be anything other than the truth. congressman bennie thompson, thank you so much for being with us, and thanks for working through the computer gremlins to get you on the air and back with us. appreciate it. and of course cnn will be having special live coverage of tuesday s hearings beginning at 9:00 a.m. with wolf blitzer leading. we ll be right back. yep, so let me finish this. there s new hickory-smoked bacon, fresh mozzarella, smashed avocado.you know what, there s a lot! but it all makes a better footlong. can i get a word, in? sure, take the tagline. because you gotta.
so, we just learned that republican adam kinzinger has in fact accepted the house minority leader kevin mccarthy has already responded saying that this is not going to be a serious investigation and that in his view this is now in step with what he calls the house speaker s plan as a preconceived narrative, the selection of these two. what s your response to that? well, obviously, minority leader mccarthy had an opportunity to do another way. as you know, i negotiated a 5-5 no member of congress committee with subpoena power and everything. he turned it down. today is 200 days from january 6th. congress has to do something. speaker pelosi is absolutely correct in doing what she s doing. if republicans want to fix what occurred on january 6th, they ll
join the select committee. congressman kinzinger is a good person. he comes with excellent credentials. i look forward to working with him. and mccarthy had selected five, house speaker pelosi, you know, cited two of them, jordan and banks, not being appropriate on the committee, particularly because they did not want to certify the election. mccarthy baulked at that, saying that pelosi wants to hand-pick people who are all trying to meet the same objective. what do you say to him in terms of what the objective is, is fairness about trying to find the truth, or is fairness about fin finding allegiance to the former president? well, the charge for the
this of course comes two days before the committee is scheduled to hold its first hearing featuring testimony from police officers who responded to the attack on january 6th, some of whom were beaten, tazed, and maced by the pro-trump mob. we are also expecting the committee to play video clips of the attack that day and body-worn camera footage from some of these officers. but, look, more broadly, the members that i spoke to said the mission here is to establish what happened that day. eventually, they re going to get into the facts of why this happened, but for now they are very much focused on countering the whitewash that s going on in the republican party and really just putting a set of facts on the table about what happened that day. fred? all right, melanie, thank you so much for that. joining me right now, the chairman of the u.s. house select committee on the insurrection, democrat congressman betty thompson of mississippi. i hope we really didn t lose