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Floor Speech

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Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, today we mark the fifth anniversary of one of the most shocking attacks on our Nation and on our democracy. For the first time in our Nation's history, our longstanding tradition of the peaceful transfer of power was disrupted in a violent and deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol.

I remember that day vividly, sitting in this Chamber, conducting the ceremonial certification of our election before our proceedings were abruptly stopped.

In the hours that followed, thousands of our brave law enforcement officers, first responders, and National Guard members took swift action to protect every Member of Congress. They put their lives on the line to fend off the violent insurrectionists.

Those U.S. Capitol officers, the DC Metropolitan Police, the National Guard, and all who stepped in deserve our deepest gratitude and recognition for their valiant efforts to defend democracy on that infamous day.

We must also remember the legacy of the five heroic officers who lost their lives in the aftermath of that attack. The attack took an unimaginable toll on the first responders. It also deeply affected the Capitol Hill community and Americans all across our Nation who witnessed the assault on the heart of our democracy with their own eyes on television. We saw the images of officers engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the rioters. We saw pictures and videos of attackers with zip ties in the Senate Chamber and rioters with nooses on the Capitol grounds. To this day, those images are absolutely shocking.

But I have been astonished how quickly so many of my colleagues seem to have forgotten about the events of that day.

Following the horrific attack, as chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, I joined with then-Ranking Member Portman, Rules Committee Chairwoman Klobuchar, and Ranking Member Blunt to lead the first bipartisan oversight hearings, investigations, and report on the immediate changes needed to secure the Capitol and prevent a future attack.

This bipartisan effort evaluated the security, planning, and response failures related to the January 6 attack, which resulted in the implementation of significant recommendations that I am proud to say have strengthened security here at the Capitol and has better prepared us for any future attack.

I also led investigations into the failures of our Federal law enforcement and intelligence Agencies to prevent and respond to January 6 and the threat of domestic terrorism more broadly.

Both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security missed warning signs that could have prevented that day's attack. This was both a failure of imagination and a failure of leadership during the first Trump administration as they directed resources away--away--from the threat of domestic terrorism.

Five years later, I fear that, despite these efforts, our Nation has not learned, and the right lessons from this attack are being forgotten. Instead of confronting the dangerous threat of domestic terrorism head-on, the current administration has spent the last year dismantling the counterterrorism infrastructure meant to keep us safe.

President Trump has also twisted the meaning of the domestic terrorism threat beyond recognition, using it to label and target political speech and groups that he does not like and in ways that threaten all of us in this country.

President Trump has also made major cuts to key components of both the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, and he has diverted resources from our law enforcement and intelligence communities that should be focused on addressing terrorist threats to bolster--the reason for this is to bolster his political priorities.

Instead of condemning the violent attack and holding the attackers accountable, President Trump called them ``patriots.'' And he pardoned nearly 1,500 individuals who were found guilty of assaulting the very same law enforcement officers that we are honoring today--found them guilty in the court of law. Let us be clear, they were found guilty in the court of law because this Nation is a rule of law. But he pardoned them because the views of these rioters and attackers were his political supporters, rather than offenders who should be held accountable for breaking the law.

There is no question that President Trump prizes loyalty over the law, but he has taken that favoritism too far. Not only did he pardon people responsible for those heinous crimes on that day 5 years ago, he also targeted and fired the Justice Department experts who investigated and prosecuted the cases holding the January 6 attackers accountable for their crimes.

But the most concerning outcome in the 5 years since this attack is how quickly many of our elected leaders have helped to rewrite history and minimize the danger that our democracy faced on that day. Instead of uniting to condemn the attack--and the effort to overturn a free and fair election--too many of our Nation's political leaders were cowed by President Trump and repeated his lies and his conspiracies. Those actions have directly contributed to rising climate of political violence that we see today all across the political spectrum.

And finally, I was furious to see some of my colleagues not only fall in line to rewrite the history of this attack, but to insert a provision in recent legislation to give Senators a special payday because they were part of the criminal investigation into President Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, the effort that led directly to the January 6 attack.

For the past 5 years, so many of my Democratic colleagues have joined me in calling for all Americans to put our country before our party and to commit to upholding our most cherished democratic principles before we lose them forever. It has been disheartening that many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are not joining us in those full-throated calls to defend our system of government that makes our Nation so unique.

If we, as the U.S. Senate or as a country, cannot agree on the lessons of the past, I fear that we are setting ourselves up to repeat them. Over the past year, in particular, it has never been clearer that our democratic institutions--our standards and our traditions--and the rights of every American are still under attack.

We can still come together and stand up for the Constitution, and we can stand up for the rule of law. We could still come together and use our authority as a coequal branch of government to hold this administration accountable for these ongoing attacks and actions that risk making our Nation less safe. And we can still come together to protect the promise of our democracy for generations to come.

So today I implore my colleagues to join me in unequivocally condemning the attack on our democracy on January 6 in 2021, and I urge all of them to help us protect our most treasured democratic principles. We have a chance to restore faith in our democratic way of life, but our democracy and our institutions can only endure as long as our elected leaders have the fortitude and the strength to protect and to defend them against all threats, no matter their origin.

In the 5 years since January 6, we have fallen short of that responsibility. In the darkest times of our Nation's nearly 250-year history, we have always found a way to come together to protect our democracy. And if we continue down this current path that we are on now, I am concerned that we are losing our most cherished freedoms for good. We cannot and must not ever let that happen.

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