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Floor Speech
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, today is a difficult day particularly for our Capitol Police officers. This is the fifth anniversary of the day when a violent mob attacked this building and attacked them. It did a lot of injury and a lot of harm to Capitol Police officers--in some cases, as they say in the law, death resulting. Today, pardoned criminals who participated in that riot are on the streets of Washington, and if they come back to this Capitol, our police officers are going to have to treat them professionally.
And what support are they getting from all of us? In a better world, this would be a bipartisan showing of respect and gratitude for the police officers who suffered and fought that day to protect this building and an expression of bipartisan gratitude. But that is not where we are as a country right now.
One of the symptoms of Trumpism--frankly, of authoritarianism generally--is the obligation to lie. You are not on the team, you are not in the club, you are not part of the movement if you are not willing to lie for it. So you are constantly tested with the obligation to lie--little ones and then big ones. It tests the loyalty and gradually erodes personal virtue of the person who is increasingly obliged to lie.
So, instead of this being a bipartisan expression of gratitude and appreciation, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle seem to be away today, and it is left to us to remember and honor the brave law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol that day.
The MAGA world has decided that no crimes were committed that day. Well, that is new.
At the time, Senator Ted Cruz described those crimes as a ``violent terrorist attack on the Capitol.''
At the time, Senator John Cornyn said, ``Those who planned & participated in the violence that day should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.''
At that time, Senator Josh Hawley said that ``those who attacked police and broke the law must be prosecuted.''
Those are only a few of the expressions that we heard from our Republican colleagues at the time.
Republican colleagues also once denounced pardoning rioters, particularly violent rioters.
Vice President Vance and the President of the Senate said:
If you committed violence on [January 6], obviously, you shouldn't be pardoned.
Secretary Kristi Noem said:
We can't have a blanket approach. I would say each one of those cases needs to be looked at specifically.
Senator Hawley again:
I'm against it for people who assaulted cops, threw stuff at cops, broke down doors, broke windows.
Well, Trump came in, and he issued that blanket pardon virtually right away--nearly 1,600 rioters--and he commuted the sentence of 14 members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militia. These were not great people. At least 33 of them have already been rearrested, charged, or sentenced for other crimes since that day. Four pardoned insurrectionists have already allegedly reoffended since receiving their pardons. One insurrectionist was charged with a felony for threatening to murder the House minority leader.
Now some of them are so emboldened that they are demanding a reward for having been prosecuted for the crimes that they committed that day and convicted in a court of law. That is an injury to them, in their view.
So, today, Senator Padilla and I have introduced two bills to make clear that no one who stormed the Capitol should get any kind of payment, even from this MAGA Department of Justice--no taxpayer-funded cash giveaways, which, by the way, echoes that we should not be giving taxpayer-funded cash giveaways to our colleagues because their names came up in the investigation of the crimes of that day because they were called by the instigators of the crimes of that day.
So I urge my colleagues to support these bills. Let us not reward the violence that was done that day. Too many are trying to turn that day into a payday for themselves. It is beneath us, and I urge support for those two pieces of legislation.
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