Former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean listening to witness testimony during a 9/11 Commission hearing in 2004.
By Dan Balz Washington Post
With the second acquittal of former President Donald Trump by the Senate, the two leaders of the commission that examined the 9/11 attacks are looking ahead to the next possible chapter, lending their influence to calls for a commission with a mandate to investigate fully the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
As the impeachment trial was proceeding Friday, Tom Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, and Lee Hamilton, the former Democratic House member from Indiana, sent a letter to President Joe Biden and to the bipartisan leaders in the House and Senate urging the establishment of a commission that would be both independent and bipartisan. That alone points to the challenges such a commission would face.
In the letter, the two wrote, “The shocking and tragic assault of Jan. 6th on the U.S. Capitol requires thorough investigation, to ensure that the American people learn the truth of what happened that day. An investigation should establish a single narrative and set of facts to identify how the Capitol was left vulnerable, as well as corrective actions to make the institution safe again.”
Police try to hold back rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021
Neither Kean nor Hamilton sought to make a direct comparison with the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and those of Jan. 6. But as Kean put it in an interview: The Capitol attack “was a wound to democracy itself. … If the people we elect cannot be safe when they’re trying to do their work, then the country’s in trouble and will remain in trouble, and we’ve got to therefore get to the bottom of it.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) already has raised the idea of creating such a commission, as have some other members of Congress. Kean and Hamilton said that each had received a call from the speaker on Friday, following up on their letter and plumbing their expertise. But is there the will in Congress as a whole to go ahead with such an investigation after the Senate trial?
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In their letter, sent under the auspices of the Bipartisan Policy Commission, Kean and Hamilton acknowledged that it is the role and responsibility of Congress to decide whether to establish such a commission and how to structure it. As such, they did not mention the name of Trump or note that it was his followers who invaded the Capitol after having been called to Washington by the former president after being “fed lies” for weeks about a stolen election, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) put it.
But there is no question that any such commission would inevitably be confronted by the causes of this act of domestic terrorism, of insurrection, and presumably how Trump empowered those who put the lives of lawmakers and Capitol Hill staff in danger.
In an interview, neither Kean nor Hamilton directly addressed whether a new commission examining what happened on Jan. 6 could avoid dealing with the former president’s role. Instead, they said the key to a successful investigation, particularly in these fraught times, begins with the selection of the right people, both as commission members and as the commission staff, to lead it.
“[You] want to avoid the trap of partisanship,” Hamilton said. “You want to make sure you appoint high-quality people who have the good of the country at heart, are serious about it and honest about it, people with integrity who will examine the facts and not be swayed by ideology or partisanship.”
Yet both acknowledged that any commission appointed to investigate the attacks on the Capitol would be doing so in a far different environment than existed when they did their work. The attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, rallied the country in unity against international terrorism. Not so the attacks on the Capitol, though deplored by vast majorities of the country.
“I think it’s more difficult,” Kean said, “not only because of the former president, but because the time is different. … It’s very hard to get people to talk about politics in a way that gives decent respect to points of view on all sides. … That doesn’t mean you can’t do it [establish a commission]. I mean, you still have to do it.”
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