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Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, 5 years ago, our Nation and democracy experienced one of its darkest days when a violent mob--incited by President Trump--ransacked the Capitol.
Brave police officers were beaten, crushed, bear-sprayed, and maced while defending our democracy with their bare hands. The sacred Halls of Congress, including the Senate floor, where we are standing today, were desecrated. Symbols of hate were flown through these sacred halls. Worse, blood and more was smeared on the walls and floors. The certification of the election was delayed, and later that night, with blood still staining the Capitol Grounds, many of the President's allies still--still--voted against certifying the election.
I was in the House of Representatives on January 6. I was in the House of Representatives exactly 5 years ago. I was asked by Speaker Pelosi to be one of the managers of the floor debate that day, to be one of the managers opposing the efforts to decertify the electors, and I remember vividly what that day was like.
I remember being surprised to look up from my notes from where I was speaking and rebutting what others were saying to see that Speaker Pelosi was no longer presiding in the Chamber. She had been removed so quickly that I didn't even see her leave the Chamber. Then I saw the Capitol Police come back onto the floor, grab our No. 2, Steny Hoyer, and whisk him off the floor. I noticed only peripherally Members were on their phones and not in a way that they were texting but, rather, in that they were watching. What they were watching, of course, were hundreds and thousands of people outside the Capitol who were starting to beat their way into this building. Then I could hear them myself outside the Chamber as they were banging on doors and trying to get in. I remember Capitol Police officers coming back on the floor, making sequential and more serious statements about the emergency and that we needed to get out our gas masks. I remember grabbing one under my seat and the difficulty we all had in just opening them.
I remember when the Capitol Police came back on the floor and said: You need to get out. You need to get out now.
I remember waiting, as Members fled the floor, until two Republicans came up to me.
One said: You can't let them see you.
The other said: That's right. I know these people. I can talk to these people. I can talk my way through these people. You're in a whole different category.
At first, I was moved by their evident concern for my safety. Then my next thought was, if you hadn't been lying about the election, I wouldn't need to worry about my safety. None of us would.
As I walked off the floor and through the tunnels that day, I remember thinking back to when I had first been elected and how, a few months later, it was 9/11 and how we had gathered on the steps of the Capitol--Democrats and Republicans--to sing ``God Bless America.'' That tragedy had been unifying for the country, and I remember thinking, on January 6, as I walked through those tunnels, that this tragedy would not be unifying.
But little could I have imagined that the person who incited that attack on this building--the person who led that first effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power--would once again be President and that among his first acts in Congress would be to pardon hundreds and hundreds of violent attackers who beat the Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police who were defending us on that day or that we would hear the rampant kind of denials that we just heard from one of my Republican colleagues on this floor--this repugnant, this dangerous, this disgraceful effort to rewrite history; to pretend that this was somehow this misunderstood, peaceful gathering of tourists on January 6.
I was proud to serve on the January 6 Committee. What really came home to me while serving on that committee, more than anything else, was a large part of what saved us on that day--what saved our democracy on that day--which were Republicans of good faith who were willing to do their duty and uphold their oath: Brad Raffensperger, who said, when the President called him and berated him for an hour to find 11,780 votes that did not exist, that he would not do it; or Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker in Arizona, who said to Rudy Giuliani, when he was urging much the same, that what you are asking me to do is a violation of my oath, and he would not do it.
But now we are seeing a systematic effort to weed out anyone who defies the President's false narrative. In hearing after hearing on the Senate Judiciary Committee, candidates for high office and for the Federal bench cannot be confirmed if they admit that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and Donald Trump lost. It is a prerequisite to be nominated or confirmed that you must adhere to the Big Lie. This is where we are.
Most astonishing to me after January 6 is that I would find our democracy in more danger today than I did on that day. The danger has grown along with the denial. The danger has grown along with efforts by this administration to try to succeed next time where it failed in overturning the election by seating within local elections boards diehard partisans who will ignore the law in favor of their favored partisan candidate; by pushing out election workers; by trying to rewrite election laws; by trying to sow doubt in the election system so that, if necessary, if they lose the next election, they can try to deny and overturn that too. This is the danger that we face.
We thought democracy was inevitable. We were wrong. As it turns out, every generation has its own struggle for democracy.
Our parents' and grandparents' generations went off to world war to defend our democracy. What we have to do is by comparison so much less, but it is nevertheless so very important. We have the same obligation as those that went before us to preserve this incredible legacy we have been given by our Founders.
I am grateful to Senator Padilla for organizing this special order hour for us to remember the horrors of that day, and we dedicate ourselves to making sure that something like January 6 never happens in this country again.
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