Two Michigan democrats are now calling for a state investigation into the January 6th riots at the U.S. Capitol. The democratic leaders in both the State House and State Senate are behind a push to create a bipartisan state committee. They want to investigate Michigan’s ties to the storming of the Capitol.
Senate Democratic Leader Jim Ananich and House Democratic Leader Donna Lasinski are calling for answers. “Five months ago our US capitol was violently attacked. The attempted insurrection was one of the ugliest and darkest moments in our nation’s history,” Lasinski says.
“We cannot turn a blind eye to history because we may not like what we find out,” Ananich adds.
The two held a press conference via zoom on Tuesday. Lasinski says, “As leaders we must learn from this incident and seek accountability to protect our democracy and prevent future attacks on our institutions.” The two democratic leaders want a formal, bipartisan committee to look into Michigan’s ties to the storming of the U.S. Capitol in January. “Let’s identify and hold accountable those responsible for instigating, inciting, and carrying out the capitol attack.”
Lasinski says the investigation, though, should go back further – to April of 2020. “As we now know, Michigan’s capitol served as a dress rehearsal for this attack, when an armed mob entered our building – our Capitol – on April 30, 2020.”
Representative Lasinski says the state has an obligation to investigate if Congress won’t. ‘At the federal level, Congress has failed to create a bipartisan national
commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack despite widespread public support.” She continued, “We have an obligation here to continue that work at the state level if congress cannot. We must come together in a bi-partisan fashion to investigate exactly what role Michiganders played … in the lead up to, and execution of the January 6th insurrection.”
Sen. Ananich says constituents deserve answers. “I think it’s critical to ask the questions to get to the facts.” He adds, “I think the citizens deserve to understand the importance of what happened, and to really have faith in the democratic institutions that we’ve cared about and fostered about for hundreds of years.”
The democrats say they are hoping for cooperation and participation from Republicans, but they don’t expect to get. Lasinski says, “This is an opportunity to transcend partisan squabbles, and it is my hope that it is truly bipartisan.” And Ananich adds, “We would not have a predetermined outcome. We would open with the idea that we’re going to get to the bottoms of this to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
9&10 reached out to Republican lawmaker Michele Hoitenga, who hadn’t heard of the proposal yet when reached by phone Tuesday morning. She wanted time to review the proposal but was unavailable for comment Tuesday afternoon. Representative John Roth was also unavailable.
Representative Lasinski says she planned to introduce a resolution on the House floor Tuesday, formally calling for the creation of the joint select committee – with six Republicans and six Democrats involved.
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