Capitol riot: 'Too early' to start Jan. 6 commission, Republicans will likely block, Sen. Blunt says

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Sen. Roy Blunt: ‘Too early’ to create Jan. 6 commission

Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt joins ‘Fox News Sunday’ to discuss the Jan. 6 bipartisan commission to investigate the Capitol riot.

As Senate Democrats push for a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, Sen. Roy Blunt said he believes it’s "too early" to start such a probe and that Republicans will likely vote against it.

Blunt, R-Mo., told "Fox News Sunday" anchor Chris Wallace that "commissions often don’t work at all" and that it "would take months just to get a staff ready to look at things."

The House approved a bill to form a commission last week, but some Senate Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, oppose the measure.

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Blunt argued that there isn't enough information known about the insurrection to create a bipartisan commission, unlike the commission set up in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"I do think that the 9/11 commission had a lot more information available to it when it started than this one would have," the senator said. "And we made a lot of decisions before the 9/11 commission started that were important to further secure the Capitol and further look at our intelligence failures."

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The priority on Congress, he said, should be to secure the Capitol, rather than answer lingering questions about what was going on inside then-President Donald Trump's White House at the time.

"Is the priority to secure the Capitol, to do what we need to do to better train, better prepare Capitol Police, decide what we want to do in the future?" Blunt said. "Or is the priority to take, what will be a couple of years in my view, to decide what happened inside the White House?"

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Blunt said the Senate is working on its own bipartisan report that will look to answer unresolved questions, including the National Guard’s slow response time, and provide a timeline of how the events that day unfolded.

That report could be released as early as next month.