Tell your Members of Congress: Never again! There must be accountability for January 6th!

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Call Script

Short Phone Version:

Hi, my name is _____ and I live in ZIP code _____ and I’m a member of Indivisible SF.

The attack on our Capitol on January 6, 2021 was driven by a Big Lie that is still being promoted to this day. A full investigation and accountability for those who orchestrated, participated in, or supported the “Stop The Steal” deadly mob attack on Congress is necessary to ensure the future of our democracy. Republican Congressional leaders have been stalling on establishing an Independent January 6 Commission so we need you to keep up the pressure for a complete investigation.

Longer Email/ResistBot Version:

Hi, my name is _____ and I live in ZIP code _____ and I’m a member of Indivisible SF.

The attack on our Capitol on January 6, 2021, was driven by a Big Lie that is still being promoted to this day. A full investigation and accountability for those who orchestrated, participated in, or supported the “Stop The Steal” deadly mob attack on Congress is necessary to ensure the future of our democracy. Republican Congressional leaders have been stalling on establishing an Independent January 6 Commission or a Select Committee, so we need you to keep up the pressure for a complete investigation.

We can see benefits in either approach.

An Independent Commission with no sitting Members of Congress (MOCs) participating would reduce suggestions of bias and ideally reduce polarization. However, sometimes these commissions get less national attention and result in reference reports with less immediate impact.
Select Committees with televised hearings would draw more public attention to this critical attack on our government. Because they are based in Congress, Select Committees have led to significant new legislation in the past, but they are also vulnerable to partisan grandstanding.

For either approach, we demand that Congress do the following:

Give the Commission or Select Committee the powers of subpoenas, civil contempt lawsuits, criminal contempt referrals to the Department of Justice (DOJ), inherent contempt enforcement, and criminal referrals to DOJ.
Disallow from the Committees or Commission anyone who voted to overturn election results or signed any amicus court briefs to overturn election results.
Declare the theme of the Committees or Commission to be rooting out white nationalist despotism in American government.

Background

The Trump Team probably anticipated that he was likely to lose the election, so Trump began repeating his expectation that the vote would be rigged.⁹ He also admitted that he under-funded the USPS to handicap voting by mail,¹⁰ which would also enable a “red mirage,”¹¹ claiming victory on election night based on in-person Republican turnout and creating suspicions as Democratic votes rolled in later by delayed mail.

President Biden had won 306 Electoral College votes to Donald Trump’s 232 by November 13, 2020. On December 12, 2020, the Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit backed by Team Trump to overturn Biden’s victory. On December 13, 2020, The Proud Boys flocked to Washington DC to protest in advance of the national electoral college voting. By 5:30pm EST, all 538 electors had voted, giving Joe Biden his 306 vote victory to Trump’s 232. By December 14, 2020, Team Trump had lost 59 court challenges to the 2020 election results.¹³ And yet Team Trump’s “Stop The Steal” campaign raged on.

We know what happened, minute by minute, on January 6, 2021, when Congress was scheduled to count and certify the Electoral College votes. Donald Trump was impeached for inciting that violent attack on our Capitol.

On February 15, 2021, the establishment of a January 6 Independent Commission was first proposed by Speaker Pelosi. She released her draft proposal on March 18, 2021. Republicans protested that she wanted more Democrats than Republicans on the Committee, so she adjusted that. Republicans then tried to broaden the commission’s scope to include other protests, such as Black Lives Matter or those mischaracterized as “Antifa.” Speaker Pelosi then expressed openness to setting up a Select Committee in Congress¹ and then returned to the Commission concept² when the idea of Special Committees didn’t suit the Republicans either. The attempt to create an Independent January 6 Commission was renewed on May 11, 2021, when Speaker Pelosi asked Homeland Security Committee Chair Bennie G. Thompson and his Republican counterpart, John Ratko, to come up with a plan that the House could vote on next week.²²

Whichever approach is chosen, we demand that a coordinated national investigation begin at once. There are pros and cons to both approaches.

Independent Commissions:

Membership does not include any sitting Member of Congress, so it avoids accusations of bias. “Elder statesperson”-type Republicans who endorse the legitimacy of the election and who reject “Trumpism” could be suitable minority-party members.
Membership does not include any sitting MOCs so it avoids the thorny issue of complicity among participants.
A commission produces serious documentation for the historical record, just as the independent Kerner Commission of 1968 documented and exposed the systemic institutional racism that was poisoning American society. (Had its recommendations been acted on we would be a more just and equal nation today.)
A commission’s reports are more likely to be reported on in the printed press, with fewer highlights on televised media.
Appointment of commission members could be made by an MOC who did very little to oppose the promotion of lies about the election.

Select Committees:

Televised public hearings would draw national attention to the origins, planning, scope and complicity in the attack on our Capitol and the effort to overturn the 2020 election.
A Congressional Committee would unite the ongoing efforts of disparate House Committees into one centralized effort. House Committees have already done some excellent work, but their investigations are being done separately, so they lack a concentrated national focus.
Because they are based in Congress, Select Committees can lead to significant legislation. For example, campaign finance and ethical reforms followed on the Watergate Committee,⁶ and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was enacted after the Church & Pike Committees.²¹
A committee could be utilized by hyper-partisan Republicans to further their lies about the 2020 election and cast doubt upon voting itself.
While Republican grandstanding is problematic, televised hearings would also produce unforgettable moments like Rep Adam Schiff’s closing statement during the First Impeachment of Donald John Trump.

Whatever approach is taken, we need to begin now, to prevent future attempts to attack the foundations of our democracy.

References

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