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Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, as we all remember if we were here 5 years ago, this building was attacked. The Capitol was stormed. Democracy was under siege, not just the physical structure, but our lives, literally. Each of us had a memory of that moment.

And I will never forget, I am sure most of my colleagues won't either, how we left this Chamber, without panic, but certainly in a surge of emotion as we heard the pounding at the doors as we were told to move quickly.

Senators were ordered to move out of harm's way, and we saw through the windows or the doors--or face-to-face some of us--the pipes and baseball bats. It was a moment that nobody who went through it can ever forget because insurrectionists scaled the walls; they smashed windows; they forced their way through the doors into this Chamber and the House. They broke into the legislative branch of government.

And it wasn't simply a symbolic move; it was literally to stop the counting of the electoral votes, to halt the peaceful transition of power, which is the trademark of our democracy.

Five years ago, Capitol Police and other law enforcement stood between these attackers and ourselves, Members of this body. They resisted the insurrectionists trying to scale these walls with their own bodies, and they were hurt. One hundred forty officers were injured, several died--five perished.

And in that terrible moment, one of the darkest times in the history of our democracy, we came together. We joined arms, maybe not literally, but we were together in that undisclosed location-- Republicans and Democrats--who had walked at a pretty good pace through the halls and then confined together, guarded by members of law enforcement as well as the military.

We were together, and we felt under threat together, but we decided, when we were asked, that we would stay. We would not go home for the night, as some of the security wanted us to do. We would stay to count the votes. As dark as that moment was in the history of the United States of America, we can be proud, as a body, of that decision to count the votes and do our duty, rather than shirk it in the midst of that continuing unknown and potential danger as the security literally went through the broken glass and the desecrated offices and this very Chamber to make sure that there were no bombs or rioters left and we could come back with some assurance of safety. That moment, we came together, 5 years ago--5 years ago.

And what a difference 5 years makes. In the past 5 years, segments of society have latched onto baseless and harmful conspiracy theories about the attack. There are January 6 deniers, just as there are election deniers and there are Holocaust deniers. We live in an era when conspiracy theorists can spread falsehoods through social media and other means around the globe, certainly around our country.

And these baseless and harmful conspiracy theories are, by now, in a book by the current FBI Director, Kash Patel, who claims that the January 6 attack was ``the insurrection that never was'' and was encouraged by ``deep state'' agitators as a pretext to persecute Trump supporters.

Well, we know who incited the January 6 insurrection. It is on tape. It can be seen. In a speech outside the White House on January 6, Donald J. Trump claimed to a crowd of thousands of Trump supporters that ``we won this election and we won it by a landslide.''

He promised to ``stop the steal.'' He vowed that ``we will never give up, we will never concede.''

And, most damningly, he told that crowd:

[I]f you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

And that is when the crowd marched down the National Mall to this building, which they stormed, to the police officers whom they attacked, and the doors that they knocked down.

They entered the Capitol at 2 p.m. Not until 4:17 p.m. did Donald Trump call those supporters to go home--2 hours after people were injured and some died.

So we shouldn't be surprised, perhaps, that Donald Trump, in one of his first acts of office, pardoned all of those rioters--blanket pardon, even the ones who hit and caused the deaths of the Capitol Police.

And maybe we shouldn't be surprised that just several weeks ago, when I asked three judicial nominees--three lawyers nominated to be Federal district judges by Donald Trump--``Was the Capitol attacked on January 6,'' they refused to answer, each of them parroting a standard remark to the effect of: President Biden was certified as the winner.

They refused to tell the truth about January 6. That is how history is degraded. That is how history is rewritten. That is how the truth is suppressed. That is why we are here today. That is why I am standing here to make sure that history is preserved.

You know, we say often we want to speak truth to power. We need to speak history to authority. We need to speak the truth to America about what happened on January 6.

Notwithstanding all of those conspiracy theorists, the Department of Justice inspector general reported there is ``no evidence . . . that the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds, or at the Capitol, on January 6. No FBI CHS [confidential human source] was authorized to enter the Capitol or restricted area, or to otherwise break the law on January 6.''

I am under no illusion. I know this speech is not going to talk any of those conspiracy theorists out of their deep-seated beliefs, but we owe it to our children--and I owe it to two grandchildren born within the last 6 months--that we preserve history, despite the blanket pardon, despite the distortion of history that has occurred.

So we are here today to say to our Republican colleagues: Join us in preserving that history. Join us in making sure the truth is told from this Chamber to America, to all of our country. Do not forget, 5 years ago, rioters, incited by President Trump, tried to destroy our democracy.

Trump pardoned, glorified them, even empowering some of them in key administration offices. We cannot allow him to rewrite history.

Do not forget. Police were brutally attacked, injured, and killed for doing their job to enable a peaceful democratic transition of power. They still bear the scars. So does our democracy.

Do not forget democracy is not guaranteed. It cannot be taken for granted. Do not forget it is our duty to remember the truth.

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