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Floor Speech

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Mr. KELLY. Mr. President, exactly 5 years ago today, I, as well, was in this Chamber, listening to my colleagues debate something that never should have been in question--the validity of the electoral votes from my State of Arizona. We had just returned from the House Chamber, where we were supposed to be carrying out one of the most basic responsibilities of our democracy, and that is certifying the results of a free and fair election. Then, with no evidence and no shame, Republican Members of Congress challenged Arizona's votes. They were trying to discard the will of voters in my State because they just didn't like the outcome.

I was sitting right here in this seat, next to my friend Cory Booker. We knew it wasn't a typical day. We had seen the large protests gathering outside the Capitol, and we knew the President was holding a rally and repeating his lies that, by the way, he still continues to repeat today--his lies that the election was stolen from him. But here in the Senate we were just doing our jobs in following the Constitution and participating in the peaceful transfer of power. Then things started to change. Information came in pieces, and we could hear noise building outside the building. It became clear very quickly that something was wrong.

Vice President Pence was sitting where the Presiding Officer is sitting, and he was quickly ushered out of the room. It happened very fast. Staff began to come in from outside the Chamber while a Senator was still speaking. I was sitting right here, speaking to an intern who was shaking uncontrollably with fear. It was unusual and concerning, but we still did not understand the scale of what was happening beyond these walls.

(Mr. CURTIS assumed the Chair.)

At 1:56 p.m., my brother, Scott, texted me two words: ``chaos outside''--no explanation, no context.

I texted him back: ``What is going on out there?''

He asked whether I was safe and where my car was parked.

Then the messages kept coming from my brother: ``Protesters climbing the walls of the Capitol. Protesters fighting with police inside.''

He used the word ``protesters.'' We would all come to later learn that maybe ``rioters'' or ``insurrectionists'' would have been more accurate.

I have to say, I could not believe what my brother was saying. So I asked him to clarify. I said, ``At the Capitol?'' because after everything I have seen in my life, the idea that a mob could breach the U.S. Capitol was something I never thought I would ever witness in our country.

This situation was escalating very fast. Capitol Police made the call to evacuate, and we trusted them with our safety. Only later did we fully understand how close this came to something far worse. We didn't know that our colleague, the man who formerly had the Presiding Officer's seat in the Senate, Mitt Romney, was literally running for his life. He was a target because he had the courage--he had the courage--to speak the truth about the results of an election.

We didn't know that, at that very moment, Capitol Police officers were being pinned in doors, being beaten with flagpoles, and being attacked with bear spray. We didn't know that Officer Eugene Goodman was making a split-second decision to lead a group of the rioters away from the doors of this very Chamber, and we had seen that video from Igor Bobic of the Huffington Post that he had taken of that chase at great risk to his own personal safety.

I am going to read you a quote here:

The doors that lead into the Senate . . . are made of nothing but glass, mostly glass. So they're easily breachable. And if those doors had been breached, more than likely there would have been gunfire at that point.

This is a quote. These are the words of Inspector Thomas Lloyd of the U.S. Capitol Police, as reported in a new book by Mary Jalonick of the Associated Press. Gunfire--in this room--to protect Senators from getting hurt or worse. That is how close we were. Let's call it what it was. This was an insurrection--an insurrection aimed at stopping the peaceful transfer of power, an insurrection aimed at overturning a free and fair election.

Five years ago on January 6, this did not happen spontaneously. It did not happen by accident. It happened because the current President of the United States and former President Donald Trump refused to accept that he had lost. So when people minimize January 6 or try to rewrite what happened, I cannot accept that, and neither should any of us.

No one has done more than Donald Trump. He has used the powers of his office to hand out pardons--pardons to let people off who attacked police officers. I am the son of two cops. He pardoned over 1,000 individuals. Many of them attacked cops in and around this building. It is insulting to me and to law enforcement officers across our Nation.

These pardons, by the way, they do not just erase sentences; they send a message. And the message is: It is OK for you to commit violent acts as long as they are to support Donald Trump.

And in the years since these pardons, we have now seen exactly who these people are. Christopher Moynihan, who breached the Capitol 5 years ago today and came into this very room, he later threatened to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

John Banuelos, who fired a gun during the insurrection, was later arrested for kidnapping in the Presiding Officer's State of Utah.

Edward Kelley is serving a prison term through 2061 for developing a plan to murder law enforcement officers while he was being investigated for his role on January 6.

And many more have gone on to commit new and violent crimes.

These are the people that Donald Trump pardoned. We know who Donald Trump is. We know he won't take responsibility for this. I am under no illusion. We also know that he is not the man to unite our country, and I do not expect him to change.

We also can't expect these challenges to our democracy to be solved by somebody else or just go away with time. So we have to start being honest about what happened and clear about who caused it, which I think is why we are here today--because this insurrection didn't happen far away. An election wasn't almost overturned on another continent. Police officers weren't beaten in a foreign capital, and guns weren't drawn in some other senate somewhere else.

It all happened right here. It happened in the United States of America. It happened in this room. And fortunately, it failed here. But don't forget why this failed. This failed because of patriotic police officers. It failed because the will of the American people was stronger than an angry mob and stronger than Donald Trump.

But now the question is: If this happens again, will this fail? Democracy is not self-executing. It depends on leaders who tell the truth, respect the will of the people and the rule of law, and put the Constitution ahead of their own ambition. And it depends on every American being involved and holding their elected leaders accountable.

If we do that, if all of us do that, I know that our democracy can remain strong. We can get through this.

This year, we celebrate 250 years of American democracy. What a remarkable achievement. There is nothing our country can't do when we work together. I know that the future of this country and our democracy is bright, but all of us--every single one of us in this Chamber on both sides of the aisle--have to remain committed to it.

Mr. President, I know you are, and so many of us are as well.

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