Ex-GOP rep. says “something like January 6 could happen again” without probe

Former Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock is urging her former colleagues in Congress to support a 9/11 Commission-style inquiry into the deadly Capitol attack, warning that if they “don’t do this extensive investigation, something like January 6 could happen again.”

Comstock’s mission, as she wrote this week in a New York Times op-ed, is to get more of her fellow Republicans to support a January 6 commission and “stop fearing” the figure she blames for fueling the riots at the Capitol — former President Donald Trump. 

She said on CBSN on Thursday that Mr. Trump is “not the future of the party,” and believes that selecting him as the 2024 presidential candidate would mean Republicans “lose again.”

“Why invest in another loser? We need to turn the page. But the important part of turning the page isn’t a partisan reason, it is a public safety — it’s national security. And history deserves to know all of the involvement of all of the Trump White House,” Comstock said. “We don’t have a single document from the Trump White House that I am aware of, about what went on on January 6.”

Comstock, who was a vocal critic of the former president when she was in office until 2019, joined the family of fallen Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick in lobbying lawmakers to vote for a commission. 

“We have stories, we have things that have leaked out and continue to, but we need to get that whole documentary record — all the texts, all the phone records — that show what was going on in the weeks leading up to January 6,” she said.

Republican lawmakers who voted in favor of the commission, like Senator Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Liz Cheney, have been targets of criticism from their fellow party members and the president himself.

But Comstock believes support for Mr. Trump, including the Capitol rioters, comes from a small section of the party.

She blamed the former president and his allies for his supporters’ actions, and warned it could be worse down the line.

“Donald Trump is not letting go of November 3. They started this whole movement now — Steve Bannon and Mike Flynn. They are calling it the November 3 movement, claiming if you don’t subscribe to that this was a stolen election and all of these conspiracy theories, QAnon-type things, that you’re going to be wiped out of the party,” Comstock said. “This is very dangerous.”