Bluegrass Times

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday questioned the legitimacy of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) proposed commission to investigate the Jan. 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol, calling its composition “partisan by design.”

The commission will be modeled just like the one established by President George W. Bush to examine the Sep. 11 terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, Pelosi said, according to The Epoch Times. Congress has not finalized it yet.

McConnell is concerned about the unequal representation and unbalanced subpoena power in the selection of panelist. Reports say Democrats will select seven panelists, while Republicans will appoint four. Three of the seven Democrats will be selected by President Joe Biden with his subpoena authority. McConnell said the panel will be illegitimate. 

"An inquiry with a hard-wired partisan slant would never be legitimate in the eyes of the American people,” McConnell said on the Senate floor last Wednesday, the Epoch Times reported. “An undertaking that is uneven or unjust would not help our country.”

McConnell compared the commission to the 9/11 one which was bipartisan with five commissioners from each side. Both Democrats and Republican commissioners had the authority to subpoena witnesses and documents.

“The 9/11 Commission was intentionally built to be bipartisan,” McConnell said as reported by The Epoch Times. “Fifty-fifty bipartisan split of the commissioners was a key feature. It both helped the effectiveness of the investigation itself, and help give the whole country confidence in its work."

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) agreed with the Kentucky senator. 

“Speaker Pelosi is doing it all wrong,” McCarthy said. “First, it’s not bipartisan, 7-4. Secondly, they don’t allow subpoena power for the minority and the majority to work together.”

Former 9/11 commissioners have also questioned the effectiveness of the partisan commission. 

“That does not sound to me like a good start; it sounds like a partisan beginning,” said former Indiana Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, a Democrat who vice-chaired the 9/11 commission, as reported by TheEpoch Times.

The argument is that the public will not have confidence in the commission if there is unequal representation.