Senator Marco Rubio trashed Congress’ committee to investigate the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021 in an interview on Sunday, decrying its turn toward rank partisanship.
Rubio, speaking on CBS’ Face the Nation, said that the panel has gone beyond representing people like him, Republicans who want anyone involved with the events of that day imprisoned.
‘That commission is a scam,’ Rubio said. ‘I think it’s a complete partisan scam. And I think anyone who committed a crime on January 6 should be prosecuted and if convicted, put in jail,’
‘I do not believe that we need a congressional committee to harass Americans that weren’t even in Washington on January 6, that were not in favor of what happened on that day, have condemned what happened on that day, but they want to smear them anyway,’ he added.
Rubio believes that the panel’s goal – despite the inclusion of Never Trump Republican Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger – is to bother anyone connected to the GOP.
‘The purpose of that commission is to try to embarrass and smear and harass as many Republicans as they can get their hands on,’ he said.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida lambasted the House committee examining the January 6 riots in an interview on Face the Nation Sunday
The committee has interviewed nearly 500 witnesses and been given access to over 60,000 pages of records.
Cheney and Kinzinger were some of the only Republicans in favor of the commission and the RNC censured the two of them Friday.
The censure rebuked the representatives of Wyoming and Illinois for ‘participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.’
Over 700 people have been charged by the Department of Justice for alleged criminal actions in the riot.
Rubio still maintains, however, that those who committed crimes on January 6 should be charged.
U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol members Vice-chairperson U.S. Representative U.S. Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) and U.S. Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), the lone Republicans in favor of the committee
Cheney and Kinzinger, who were censured for their participation in the committee, sit next to Chairman Bennie Thompson
Trump supporters near the US Capitol following a ‘Stop the Steal’ rally on January 06, 2021
‘If you entered the Capitol and you committed acts of violence and you were there to hurt people, you should be prosecuted and they are being prosecuted,’ he said. ‘But the January 6 commission is not the place to do this.’
The Florida Senator told CBS that he did agree with Mike Pence’s remarks Friday, in which he rebuked Trump for saying the ex-vice president had the authority to overturn the election results in 2020.
‘If President Trump runs for reelection, I believe he would defeat Joe Biden, and I don’t want Kamala Harris to have the power as vice president to overturn that election, and that’s the same thing that I concluded back in January of 2021,’ Rubio said. ‘You know, when that issue was raised, I looked at it, had analyzed it and came to the same conclusion that vice presidents can’t simply decide not to certify an election.’
Former President Trump lashed out at his vice president for saying he had ‘no right’ to overturn Biden’s 2020 win, claiming he is ‘right and everyone knows it.’
Trump, 75, bashed Mike Pence, 62, in another political row over the 2020 election results, calling the former VP an ‘automatic conveyor belt for the Old Crow Mitch McConnell.’
‘Just saw Mike Pence’s statement on the fact that he had no right to do anything with respect to the Electoral Vote Count, other than being an automatic conveyor belt for the Old Crow Mitch McConnell to get Biden elected President as quickly as possible,’ Trump wrote in a statement.
McConnell has recently denounced Trump’s plan to pardon or shorten the sentences of the January 6 rioters.
The President continued: ‘Well, the Vice President’s position is not an automatic conveyor if obvious signs of voter fraud or irregularities exist. I was right and everyone knows it. If there is fraud or large-scale irregularities, it would have been appropriate to send those votes back to the legislatures to figure it out.
‘A great opportunity lost, but not forever, in the meantime our Country is going to hell!’
Former President Donald Trump, 75, attacked his former VP Mike Pence, 62, for saying he had ‘no right’ to overturn Biden’s 2020 presidential win
He claimed he was ‘right and everyone knows it’ in a statement on Friday and claimed Pence was a ‘conveyor belt for the Old Crow Mitch McConnell’ when he didn’t intercept the electoral college vote
Trump continues to insist that Pence could have overturned the election, despite the vice president’s presiding over the certification of the vote is largely ceremonial. The Constitution does give the VP the power to overturn the results.
Lawmakers are trying to change the Electoral Count Act to clarify the language, but Trump claimed in his statement ‘that’s why the Democrats and RINOs [Republicans in Name Only] are working feverishly together to change the very law that Mike Pence and his unwitting advisors used on January 6 to say he had no choice.’
‘The reason they want it changed is because they now say they don’t want the Vice President to have the right to ensure an honest vote,’ he said.
‘I had no right to overturn the election,’ former Vice President Mike Pence said in a speech Friday, where he said former President Donald Trump was ‘wrong’ in his assessment
Earlier, Pence delivered his most direct and public rebuke of Trump on Friday – saying he had ‘no right’ to overturn the 2020 election as Trump demanded.
Pence made the statement in a defiant speech to the Federalist Society in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.
He directly took on Trump’s claim – which the president voiced in an extraordinary statement Sunday – that Pence had the authority to ‘overturn’ the election.
‘But there are those in our party who believe that as the presiding officer of the Joint Session of Congress, that I possessed unilateral authority to reject Electoral College votes,’ Pence said, speaking to his own constitutional role overseeing the vote count on Jan. 6th, 2020.
‘And I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election. President Trump is wrong,’ Pence said. ‘I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone.’
Pence was speaking in lay terms to make the same point he made on January 6th, 2020, when he put out a detailed letter to lawmakers explaining why he did not have the authority Trump claimed, and that any such ‘unilateral’ authority would be ‘antithetical’ to the balance of powers envisioned by the Founders.