WASHINGTON — Lawmakers who served on the House committee tasked with investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol are vowing that they won’t be silenced after President Donald Trump suggested the pardons his predecessor issued to them are void.
In a post on X, the chairman of the now-disbanded committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., responded by writing that Trump was responsible for Jan. 6, adding that the panel — launched by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in the wake of the attack — has “lived rent free in his mind since.”
“He knows his guilt,” Thompson continued. “I am not afraid of his rant that has no basis in reality.”
“The members of the January 6 Select Committee did our legislative work uncovering the role Trump played in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election,” committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., wrote in a post on X. “He should be ashamed, & he is trying to erase the truth.”
“Yet, the truth remains, & we won't be intimidated or silenced,” she added.
Fellow panel member and California lawmaker, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., added in his own post on X that the committee members are “proud of their work.”
“Your threats will not intimidate us,” Schiff wrote in a post that included a picture of Trump’s statement. “Or silence us.”
Former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who was one of only two Republicans to serve on the committee and has since left Congress, put his thoughts bluntly.
“Fine. Do it. Or shut up,” he wrote in a post on Substack.
Kinzinger also went on to argue that Trump would not follow up on his threats, calling his latest assertion on the pardons “just another attempt to stoke fear.”
In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump claimed that some of former President Joe Biden’s eleventh-hour pardons, including of those who served on the Jan. 6 committee, are invalid because they were signed using an autopen.
The assertion came despite a memorandum from the Justice Department published two decades ago declaring that the president does not need to personally sign bills.
“The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post just after midnight Monday.
In the post, Trump went on to issue a warning specifically to those who served on the Jan. 6 committee, writing that they should be aware that they are “subject to investigation at the highest level.”
The comment, perhaps signaling the president intends to pursue action against members, follows Speaker Mike Johnson in January declaring that House Republicans will seek to investigate the now-disbanded committee.
In his final hours in office, Biden pardoned members of his family and others who have been at points in Trump's crosshairs, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and members of the Jan. 6 investigative panel. At the time, Biden issued a statement arguing that "alarmingly, public servants have been subjected to ongoing threats and intimidation for faithfully discharging their duties. In certain cases, some have even been threatened with criminal prosecutions."
In an interview with The Hill, another committee member, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said no one on the panel “committed any kind of infraction” amid their investigation, adding that they stand by their work.
In the lead-up to Biden’s final decision to issue them, some panel members had said they didn’t want a preemptive pardon from the then president. Schiff argued at the time that it was “unnecessary” and would set a negative precedent.
Thompson was one member who said he welcomed one.
