SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Today, Representatives Hagedorn, Emmer, Fischbach, and Stauber voted against bipartisan legislation to establish a commission to investigate the January 6th assault on the United States Capitol.
In response, DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin released the following statement:
“It is disgraceful that Representatives Hagedorn, Emmer, Fischbach, and Stauber voted against a bipartisan commission to get to the bottom of the worst assault on American democracy in living memory. To make matters worse, Minnesota’s Republican members of Congress voted against the insurrection commission because they know they propped up the Big Lie that helped inspire the assault on the Capitol in the first place.
“Instead of forcefully pushing back against the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, Minnesota Republicans perpetuated that lie and allowed it to take root and grow within their party. Now, they are trying to block efforts to establish the truth of the January insurrection and leave our Capitol vulnerable to future attacks in a pathetic and cowardly attempt to avoid bad headlines.
“When the United States embassy in Benghazi was attacked, Republicans spent four years investigating it. Now, just four months after our Capitol was stormed, Republicans are ready to move on in a hypocritical bid to bury their complicity in that storming. It is astonishing that the same party which thought Secretary Clinton’s emails merited endless scrutiny and the wasting of millions of tax dollars is unwilling to get to the bottom of a violent attempt to overthrow an American election.
“When Representatives Hagedorn, Emmer, Fischbach, and Stauber were given the opportunity to defend American democracy, they chose to defend Donald Trump, the Republican Party, a violent, lawless mob instead.”
Background
One month after the 2020 presidential election, none of Minnesota’s Republican members of congress acknowledged President Biden’s victory and legitimacy. Representatives Hagedorn, Emmer, and Stauber alsojoined a Republican effort to overturn the presidential election in court.
Hagedorn and Fischbach both voted against certifying the results of the 2020 election immediately following the attack on the Capitol. Fischbach directly accused Democrats of rigging the presidential election. As late as December 17th, Emmer refused to call Biden the president-elect. Stauber claimed that there were “questions on the integrity of this presidential election” that needed to be addressed.