Moderate GOP Sen. Susan Collins on Sunday ripped House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “partisan” committee tasked with investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
“I fought very hard to have an independent, bipartisan, non-partisan outside commission to look at all the events of that day, and I’m very disappointed that it was not approved,” Collins of Maine said Sunday morning on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“I think it would have had far more credibility than Speaker Pelosi’s partisan committee that she has set up,” Collins said of the California Democrat.
“We should have had a 9/11-style commission, to fully look at what happened,” Collins said.
The Republican lawmaker lamented that the House Speaker hand-picked GOP members of the panel rather than allowing House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to choose them, though Collins said she has “respect” for the two members of her party who are on it.
“I do not think it was right for the Speaker to decide which Republicans should be on the committee,” Collins said.
Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney are the pair of Republicans on the panel.
Collins’ criticism of Pelosi came after McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Wednesday pulled all six of the Republican politicians who were on the Democrats’ committee on economic disparities, because Pelosi prevented a prominent former President Donald Trump-supporting lawmaker from serving on the Jan. 6 select committee.
McCarthy had nominated Trump-ally Jim Jordan of Ohio — along with Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana, Rodney Davis of Illinois, T. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota and Troy Nehls of Texas — to serve on the riot investigation committee.
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But Pelosi balked at Jordan and Banks, prompting McCarthy to pull all his nominations. She then appointed GOPer Adam Kinzinger, an outspoken critic of Trump, who joined the already-named Cheney.
In June, Pelosi announced that she would establish a select body of lawmakers to investigate the riot at the Capitol in January after the Senate blocked the creation of a bipartisan commission to investigate the attempted coup.
On Jan. 6, Congress’ attempt to certify the results of November’s presidential election was thrown into chaos, when Trump-supporting rioters stormed the US Capitol building, in an attempt of overturning the results of November’s matchup between President Joe Biden and Trump.