CNN "Anderson Cooper 360" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Jason Crow

Interview

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And for more on this, perspective now from Colorado Democratic Congressman and former Army Ranger, Jason Crow. You'll recall, he is one of a number of combat veterans called upon during the siege to lend their expertise and provide whatever comfort they could to people who have never faced this kind of danger before. We spoke just before airtime.

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COOPER: Congressman Crow, you see this change in strategy from House Republicans tonight. They are now actively whipping their members to vote against the January 6th Commission plus all these indications that Kevin McCarthy isn't just opposed to the commission, he is frankly worried about the commission and how it might impact him. Do you think he should be worried?

REP. JASON CROW (D-CO): Well, you know, if you're Kevin McCarthy and your only interest is becoming the Speaker of the House and you're not afraid of what you need to burn down in order to get that. Then, yes, he should be afraid of it because he has made the determination that it's not good to talk about January 6th, that he needs Donald Trump support regardless of Donald Trump's behavior and incitement of insurrection, and then he wants to sweep this under the rug.

Now he, you know, appointed one of his members to negotiate with Democrats in the House to come up with the compromise here. They did that. They came up with a bipartisan compromise. And now he is backing off of it.

So if I were him, yes, this is not in his political interest, but it is in the interest of the country. COOPER: There's also, of course, the question of, you know, and you

have talked about this in the past with me about were some members complicit in some way in what occurred before, you know, during or after, and that also needs to be investigated and this is the only way to really do that.

CROW: Well, in normal circumstances, if somebody has a conflict of interest, or if they were complicit in something, there would be recusal. That doesn't exist in the House.

So here you have Kevin McCarthy, I'm sure he's thinking to himself, I really don't want to be subpoenaed by this commission, and I really don't want to have to talk about under subpoena, under oath, my conversation with Donald Trump the night of January 6th. He doesn't want to talk about that and I understand why, of course, his reasoning is wrong, but there are other people who I do believe may have been complicit.

And I've always avoided jumping to conclusions here, but there needs to be an investigation that is impartial, hire experts to find the truth. And there, I think there are some folks that don't want us to get to that truth.

COOPER: Yes. I mean, I was really kind of stunned at, not really Kevin McCarthy, but just at the idea that we cannot even have a bipartisan commission to investigate the worst attack against America's democracy, probably since the Civil War; that we can't mount that is really incredible to me. I mean, that everybody would not want to know exactly what happened and how this happened.

CROW: Yes, you and me both, Anderson. It is incredible and here is the difference. I think we need to make a distinction between what America wants and knows that needs to happen because what America knows is that January 6th happened, it was a terrible day. This needs to happen.

There's a big difference between that and what's happening with Republicans in the House of Representatives and Kevin McCarthy, specifically.

COOPER: Also, on top of it, there are a number of Republicans in the House who are actively lying about what occurred on that day and portraying it while they were, you know, like everybody else, afraid for their lives, and understandably so, and barricading themselves, you know, barricaded behind closed doors during the attack.

They are now pretending like it wasn't an attack at all. That it was just like a bunch of tourists walking through taking pictures.

CROW: Well, let's take Kevin McCarthy, for example again. Here you have a man who hours after the January 6th attack, after we retook the Capitol and re-secured the seat of our democracy, we were all sitting on the floor of the House of Representatives and Kevin McCarthy himself, got up and gave a speech and called me out personally by name as one of the members that helped hold the breach and hold back the mob from taking the House floor. But now, you fast forward a couple of months and it didn't happen or

it didn't happen the way that we all remembered it happen or our eyes deceived us with a video footage showing something different.

You know, what we are seeing is just a really unprecedented attempt to try to change history here because they have determined it's in their political self-interest to do so.

I'm not going to allow them to do it. My colleagues are not going to let him do it, but we are going to preserve history and not just for the sake of integrity of history, but because we have a domestic violent extremist movement that has to be dealt with.

COOPER: The number two Republican in the Senate john Thune said say that McCarthy's opposition to the commission has made passage in the Senate a little more "uncertain," in his words. Democrats will need 10 Republican votes for it to pass. Are you confident those votes actually exist? Assuming -- that's assuming it passes in the House.

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CROW: I don't know. I haven't done a whip count in the Senate. But I will say this underscores once again, the need to end the filibuster in the Senate because if we can't do something like have a commission about an insurrection that our country faced just a couple of months ago, if we can't pass commonsense gun violence prevention, voting rights bills, it's time for this arcane Senate procedure to come to an end because our democracy, frankly, at this point depends on it.

COOPER: Congressman Crow, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

CROW: Thanks, Anderson.

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