Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said Friday that he intends to vote no on the partisan January 6 commission, saying it is “designed to be used as partisan political weapon.”
“Last night I read the bill creating a January 6th commission,” Rubio wrote in a tweet, which included a video message from the Florida senator. “It isn’t designed to produce a serious inquiry; it’s designed to be used as partisan political weapon. I am a no.”
In reading the bill, Rubio said it “became apparent pretty quickly what it is all about.”
“We already know who happened January 6, it was a horrifying day that should never happen again,” Rubio said, noting the Department of Justice’s efforts in prosecuting the “hundreds of people responsible for what happened that day.”
Rubio continued, highlighting the fact that “there’s already plenty of attention being paid to this.”
“Not to mention that the media doesn’t stop talking about it,” Rubio said. “They’re looking at it, so everyone’s looking at it. There’s no coverup here.” He continued:
It’s about politics, here’s how. They have this thing that says in order to issue a subpoena, you need both the Republican and Democratic side evenly divided to agree. But that’s not the point for politics. You don’t actually need the subpoena. What you need is a story out there saying Congressman so and so, they want to subpoena him, but they can’t because the Republicans are blocking it. And then the stories… number one may create the impression maybe Congressman so and so did something wrong, why would they want to subpoena him? Number two the story would be Republicans are covering up the investigation into so and so. So that’s what this is about. It’s about damaging Republicans. You don’t even need the subpoena. You just need the request for subpoena to damage Republicans for blocking it and damage that member of Congress, whoever it is because you want to look at them. Why would you want to look at them unless they did something wrong? That’s what this is about. it’s about keeping the House majority in 2022 and winning elections and keeping this in the headlines.
Rubio concluded his message by telling Americans that it is not “evenly divided because the chairman of this commission has the power to hire all the senior staff and has special powers to overrule decisions made by the other side and the vice-chair. This is a partisan joke.”
Thirty-five Republicans sided with Democrats in the House to establish the January 6 commission in a vote of 252-175 on Wednesday evening.
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