January 6 Attack

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding. He and I have known each other for some 60 years. We have served in this body for a very long time.

I can remember two events. One was on September 11, 2001, and we were, as the gentleman observed, attacked by an enemy from without. That was horrific. America lost thousands of lives that day. We stood on the steps of the United States Senate that evening and sang ``God Bless America.''

On January 6, I was sitting where the gentleman from South Carolina now stands. I saw an officer, a detail officer from the Capitol Police, come in and take Speaker Pelosi from the rostrum. Then, the Capitol Policeman assigned to my detail, as we call it, came up to me, took me by the arm, and said: We have to get out of here.

I got to that door. We went through that door, and I said to him: What has happened?

The stunning words of his reply were: The Capitol has been breached.

Mr. Speaker, I observed, and I don't know whether the cameras are panning this House, but the other side of the aisle is empty, failing to recognize one of the most grievous, criminal, treasonous events that has happened during the 44-plus years that I have been in this House.

It is as if it were not a historic event, where every Member of this House, 435 of us, ought to be rising today and saying that, America, we will not survive that kind of conduct; that is not America; and urging every one of our constituents, as I am going to quote George Washington in just a minute, to honor democracy in victory and in defeat.

Al Gore lost a Presidential election 5-4. When the Supreme Court said that the election was over, by a vote of 5-4, Al Gore did what real patriots do. He said that the Court has declared the election ended, and because of his love of America and democracy, and because that is how our system works, as a nation of laws, not of men and women.

Mr. Speaker, my favorite painting in the Capitol hangs in the rotunda. It was painted by John Trumbull. It depicts George Washington in the Maryland State Senate Chamber as he resigns his commission as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army at the end of the Revolutionary War.

That painting, Mr. Speaker, is a testament to a man who so eagerly relinquished his power and who only reluctantly reclaimed it when the American people called him to serve as their first President.

It is a symbol of the peaceful transition of power upon which our democracy depends.

Mr. Speaker, 5 years ago today, that painting towered over the swarm of insurrectionists Donald Trump sent to this Capitol. That is why he was deemed to be, as the whip said, the most culpable of the figures involved in this insurrection.

What did he say? He told the mob to ``stop the steal'' and to ``fight like hell.'' Then, he deployed them to the Capitol of the United States of America, the beacon of democracy, freedom, and liberty for all the world, and the Capitol was breached.

There, of course, was no steal, and the courts said so in court after court after court after court. However, unlike Al Gore, President Trump did not honor the courts. Rather, he deployed an army to come to the Capitol, breach it, and stop democratic proceedings.

The army he deployed maimed some 140 of our brave U.S. Capitol Police officers, several of whom lost their lives. They paraded Confederate and Nazi symbols through these Halls, as the whip observed as well. They erected gallows. They erected gallows on the Capitol lawn to hang the Republican Vice President of the United States, and so stated.

Unlike the past few months, the National Guard was nowhere to be found. Donald Trump had every opportunity to restore order. The Republican leader of this House, Mr. McCarthy, called the White House and said: Mr. President, you need to stop this violence.

Nothing happened. Instead, the President played the figurative fiddle as the Capitol was sieged and our Constitution was challenged.

The same man responsible for the violence that day is now trying to distort it and erase it. Perhaps, Mr. Speaker, that is why there is no other Republican on the floor, to try to forget what happened, erase it from the minds of Americans, and erase it from the history books. It was just a group of tourists taking an amble through the Capitol.

Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States inexplicably has described January 6 as ``a day of love.'' Mr. Speaker, I call it what it was: a day of violence, sedition, and treason.

Trump has called those who stormed the Capitol ``unbelievable patriots.'' Mr. Speaker, 435 of us ought to be on this floor saying: No, sir. It was unbelievable violence and sedition.

I call those unbelievable patriots what they are: criminals convicted of such, insurrectionists, cop killers, cop beaters, and democracy destroyers.

In one of the first actions in his second term--the whip has mentioned this, and others will mention it. I use the word ``inexplicable.'' In his first days in office, some 1,600 insurrectionists who stormed this Capitol, who breached this Capitol, and who tried to stop democracy from working were pardoned by the President of the United States, Mr. Donald J. Trump.

David Dempsey was sentenced to 20 years. He viciously assaulted and injured police officers defending the lower west terrace, at the lower west terrace tunnel, using weapons made from broken furniture, pepper spray, and flagpoles.

Daniel Joseph Rodriguez was sentenced to 12\1/2\ years after being found guilty. He was filmed deploying fire extinguishers and dragging Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone and repeatedly shocked Fanone in the neck with a taser. He was pardoned.

The chief of the Capitol Police, when asked about those pardons, said that it was deeply troubling to the Capitol Police, as well it should be.

Patrick McCaughey, sentenced to 7\1/2\ years, used a stolen riot shield to pin Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges to a metal door frame while another assailant beat Hodges in the face with a stolen baton. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden described McCaughey as the poster child of all that was dangerous and appalling about January 6.

Peter Francis Stager, sentenced to 4 years and 4 months, wielded a flagpole and repeatedly struck a defenseless officer who was lying face down.

I would ask any member of the President's party or our party to come to this floor and defend pardoning somebody who perpetrated a crime on a police officer.

Stewart Rhodes, sentenced to 18 years, said this: ``Patriots,'' using Donald Trump's word for them, ``it was a long day but a day when patriots began to stand. Stand now or kneel forever. Honor your oaths. Remember your legacy.'' That is what he said.

It is pride in assaulting the officers, pride in assaulting democracy, pride in driving the Congress, thankfully for just hours, out of this Capitol so they could not proceed in doing their constitutional duty.

That pardon list included 600 who were charged with assaulting or obstructing law enforcement. Mr. Speaker, so much for supporting the thin blue line, so much for supporting the brave men and women of law enforcement.

Mr. Speaker, we cannot afford to forget January 6. We cannot afford to be absent, Mr. Speaker, to take a walk, to turn our backs on what happened on January 6. To do so is to risk its repeated actions.

It did not end when a bipartisan majority in this House impeached Trump the following week, and it still has not ended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask this House now, as I did on January 6, standing where the gentleman from South Carolina is standing now: Do we have the courage to stand up to a President who violates our Constitution, our laws, and our norms?

Will enough of my colleagues across the aisle find that courage? Liz Cheney found that courage. Liz Cheney--the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, Liz Cheney, the daughter of Vice President Cheney--found that courage to recognize that day for the tragedy it was. I pray others will do the same.

General Washington, whom I mentioned earlier, would do the same. He would tell them what he told his own officers when he learned they were conspiring to overthrow the Continental Congress just a few months before he resigned his commission.

He said this: Express your utmost horror and detestation of the man who wishes, under any specious pretenses, to overturn the liberties of our country and who wickedly attempts to open the floodgates of civil discord and deluge our rising Nation in blood.

That is what happened on January 6. On January 6, we saw the floodgates of insurrection open. If we forget that, if we gloss over that fact of history, if we ignore it, if we diminish its venality or glorify the actions of the mob as Trump does, we risk letting that dream of liberty for which our Founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor be swept away.

Let us remember January 6, lest it be repeated.

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I won't take 3 minutes. This Chamber should be full. I said that earlier because this was not an attack on Democrats. It is not an attack on Republicans. It was an attack on our country, on our democracy, and on our Constitution. That is why every Member of this House ought to be on this floor, urging Americans to do what democracy demands, solving our differences peacefully through elections, through debate, through votes on this floor.

We have as a centralized premise that might does not make right. The people who stormed up Constitution Avenue coming straight from in front of the White House and a speech by the President of the United States have said they were doing what they thought the President wanted them to do. We ask God to bless America. If we do not speak, we ask God to save America.

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