House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Congress has no further plans to punish former President Donald Trump after he was acquitted on im...
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Congress has no further plans to punish former President Donald Trump after he was acquitted on impeachment charges by the Senate earlier this month.
'He's gone,' she told reporters Thursday at her weekly press conference. 'What we need is the truth. And that's what we want to find out.'
She then lashed out at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said Wednesday that an investigation into the January 6 insurrection should include a look at broader political violence, which would allow Republicans to point fingers at Black Lives Matter and Antifa.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Congress would not take additional steps to punish former President Donald Trump. 'He's gone,' she said during her weekly press conference on Thursday
Pelosi said that Congress would not pursue additional action against former President Donald Trump (left), and then lashed out at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (right) for indicating that a 9/11 style commission looking into January 6 should probe 'political violence' allowing for the inclusion of Black Lives Matter and Antifa
'We could do something narrow that looks at the Capitol, or we could potentially do something broader to analyze the full scope of the political violence problem in this country,' McConnell said. 'We cannot land at some artificial, politicized halfway point.'
Pelosi read a portion of McConnell's comments during her press conference.
'It was really quite stunning because in my brief conversation with him on this subject, I had the impression that he wanted to have a January 6, similar to 9/11, commission, but what he said on the floor was really a departure from that,' Pelosi remarked.
'It seemed when he spoke that he was taking a page out of the book of Sen. Johnson. It was really disappointing,' she added.
During a Tuesday Senate hearing on the insurrection, Sen. Ron Johnson suggested the violent factions of the crowd were not supporters of President Donald Trump but 'agents provocateur' and also floated that the police had attacked the mostly jovial crowd.
Pelosi accidentally called him 'Don Johnson,' asking reporters the Wisconsin Republican's first name. 'Not Miami vice or anything like that,' she laughed when told it was Ron Johnson and not 'Don.'
'Ron Johnson seems to be taking the lead on what the scope would be of how we look at protecting our country from domestic terrorism,' she then said.
Pelosi was also asked about the make-up of the commission, as her proposal has House and Senate leadership from both parties picking two members each and then the president, Democrat Joe Biden, picking three individuals including the chair.
This could lead to it being lopsided politically - with just four Republicans and seven Democrats.
Pelosi countered that the number could be 'easily negotiated.' And she said Biden and Congressional leaders have the option of picking independents.
'The point is the scope,' she argued. 'If you don't know your why, if you don't know your purpose ... then the rest of it is not the important part of the conversation,' Pelosi said.
The House speaker argued, 'we have a domestic terrorism challenge in this country.'
'The biggest buckets under that category of domestic violence were white supremacy, anti-Semitism, and the other list of xenophobia, Islamophobia, etc.,' she said.
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