Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), one of the few GOP senators who supports the proposed bipartisan commission to study the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, criticized Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) late Thursday night for obstructing the commission.
Murkowski hit at McConnell for doing so for the sake of political optics ahead of the 2022 midterms. After a hold-up on unrelated legislation Thursday, the Senate is expected to vote on the bill creating the commission on Friday. Republicans are expected to block the bill through the filibuster at McConnell’s urging.
“To be making a decision for the short-term political gain at the expense of understanding and acknowledging what was in front of us on Jan. 6, I think we need to look at that critically,” the Alaska senator said of McConnell, per HuffPost. “Is that really what this is about, one election cycle after another?”
She asserted that “it’s important for the country that there be an independent evaluation” of the attack carried out by a mob of ex-President Donald Trump’s supporters.
“If you want to make this an independent commission, then, Leader, this is your opportunity. Pick the right people,” Murkowski said in response to McConnell’s earlier claims that the commission was a partisan scheme by Democrats.
McConnell has been pushing hard for his GOP colleagues to kill the commission, even to the point of privately asking them to do it as “a personal favor” to him, according to CNN.
Only Murkowski and two other GOP senators have publicly backed the legislation, which would require support from ten Republicans to overcome the filibuster, and the commission looks likely to be quashed in the chamber.
