Jim Jordan, four other Republicans chosen by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to serve on panel investigating Jan. 6 riots
Jim Jordan #JimJordan
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) will recommend five Republicans to serve on the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, according to two House GOP aides.
The lawmakers are Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), Jim Banks (Ind.), Rodney Davis (Ill.), Kelly Armstrong (N.D.) and Troy Nehls (Texas), according to the aides, who were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.
The lawmakers were expected to meet with McCarthy in his office at the Capitol Monday evening.
McCarthy’s choices will need to be approved by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) before they can sit on the 13-member panel, according to the legislation passed by the House to establish the committee.
Pelosi moved to form the committee after Senate Republicans blocked an effort to create an independent, bipartisan commission.
Earlier this month, she tapped Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) to chair the panel and announced her other appointments, including one Republican, Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.).
McCarthy opposed the creation of the committee and had repeatedly declined to say whether he plans to appoint members; at a news conference last month, he dodged questions on the subject.
Cheney was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach former president Donald Trump for “incitement of insurrection” in the attack that resulted in five deaths, injured some 140 members of law enforcement and was the worst assault on the Capitol in more than two centuries.
McCarthy’s five chosen Republicans, meanwhile, all voted against impeaching Trump.
The committee plans to kick off its probe on July 27 by hearing from four police officers who responded to the rioting crowd, each of whom has already gone public with their account.
The four officers — Harry Dunn and Aquilino Gonell from the U.S. Capitol Police, and Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges from Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department — each experienced physical and verbal abuse from the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol. Each has also criticized those who have tried to downplay the seriousness of the attack and the objectives of rioters, who besieged Congress as lawmakers certified Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election.
“It was absolutely my pleasure to crush a white nationalist insurrection,” Hodges, who was pinned in a doorway during the attack, told D.C. NBC affiliate channel 4 in the aftermath of the insurrection.
The House GOP ranks cover a spectrum, from members who voted to impeach Trump for the events of Jan. 6 to those who helped fire up the angry crowd of his supporters. McCarthy himself is somewhere in the middle: despite saying early on that Trump “bears responsibility” for the Jan. 6 commission, he resisted efforts to establish a dedicated panel to investigate the causes of the riot.
That includes resisting the establishment of an independent commission, which 35 members of the House GOP voted in favor of this spring. But that venture failed in the Senate, and the House GOP has been almost universally opposed to the creation of the select committee in the aftermath.
