Bennie Thompson:
Well, we will work as expeditiously as we possibly can.
As you know, I have said we are several weeks late from the original start. Our projected date was December 31 of this year. I would just say, I don’t think we can get it by that time. But I can say that we will go and get the facts.
Some of the facts, we have already collected. But I don’t want to limit it to what other committees have collected. We want to hire the best professionals out here, the best legal minds, the best investigators, and turn them loose.
But I also want to hear from witnesses. We are yet to talk to enter the rank and file of the Capitol Police. We have always talked to the brass, but we haven’t talked to those men and women who were being assaulted on that day. We need to hear from them what occurred, so make sure that we can protect them, as they protect us.
So, we have a fiduciary responsibility to get this right. As chair, we will work — I will work just as hard as I can. My colleagues who have been appointed so far, we have had one meeting. It was a good meeting. But we are in the embryonic stage of putting it together.
I hope Leader McCarthy gives us individuals who love this country, and not individuals who want to tear it up. The spirit of this committee is, we want to protect this democracy and the people who work in it every day.
