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As Congress looks to set up an independent outside panel to investigate the Capitol siege, Democrats and Republicans both have pointed to the 9/11 Commission as a model of bipartisan cooperation.

But 20 years later, veterans of the commission's investigation into the 2001 terror attacks worry that it will be challenging to keep politics out of an inquiry into the Jan. 6 attack that led to President Donald Trump's unprecedented second impeachment, on charges he incited the riot.

Trump was acquitted last week. His lawyers argued he wasn't responsible for the violence at the Capitol and against the propriety of convicting a former president. Seven Republicans joined all 50 Democrats in the 57-43 vote, short of the two-thirds majority needed for conviction.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has shared proposed legislation to set up the panel with Republicans after seeking input from lawmakers, relevant committees and leaders of the 9/11 Commission, including former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean, Lee Hamilton, the former Indiana congressman who served as co-chair, and Tim Roemer, another former Democratic congressman.

Security forces respond with tear gas after the US President Donald Trump's supporters breached the US Capitol security in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021.

In interviews with ABC News, Kean, Hamilton and Roemer said they told Pelosi a successful commission would require appointing members who can avoid the partisan fray, supplying them with adequate resources and providing enough time to investigate on their own timetable, rather than one laid out by Congress or the White House.

"You cannot have people on the commission whose job is to defend the president or defend the speaker," said Kean, a Republican, and chair of the 9/11 Commission. "You've got to have people who follow the facts."

To blunt partisanship on the panel, Kean established a strong relationship with Hamilton and didn't hire any staff who'd recently worked on a political campaign.

The composition of the committee is essential to its success, added Roemer, who has been consulting with Pelosi and her staff over the past two weeks on the drafting of the legislation. Roemer added that the commissioners must have experience in complex areas of policy, from cybersecurity and law enforcement to racial issues and disinformation campaigns.

"You need to pick people who have worked across the aisle and have deep experience in the issue areas involved. The commission will likely be 10 or 11 people, with the president getting to pick the chair and the leadership selecting other people," Roemer said.

The 9/11 Commission faced resistance from the Bush White House as it explored what intelligence was known about the plot before the attack, and it was pressured to conclude its investigation before the 2004 election, Kean recalled.

Pelosi, in a statement on Monday, said the commission would "investigate and report on the facts and causes relating to the January 6, 2021, domestic terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol Complex" relating to "the interference with the peaceful transfer of power, including facts and causes relating to the preparedness and response of the United States Capitol Police and other Federal, State, and local law enforcement in the National Capitol Region."

At an earlier press conference, Pelosi said the new panel would have "nothing to do with President Trump" but would focus on Capitol security, along with white supremacy and anti-Semitism.

"The mandate, the remit, the purpose section of the legislative needs to be specific, it needs to be precise and it needs to be crystal clear," Roemer said. "It should not be only about how to protect the Capitol complex or how high the walls should be, it should also include what led to attacks and how to strengthen the institutions of our representative democracy."

It's not yet clear whether Republicans will back the speaker's effort. At least 10 Republicans will need to support any proposal in the Senate to clear the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the chamber to pass the legislation.

Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi responds to questions on the creation of a commission to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol, during a news conference in Washington, Feb. 19, 2021.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was noncommittal in a statement to ABC News, and pointed to the commission legislation proposed by House Republicans several weeks ago.

"It is our responsibility to understand the security and intelligence breakdowns that led to the riots on January 6 so that we can better protect this institution and the men and women working inside it," his statement read. "A commission should follow the guidance of Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton to be 'both independent and bipartisan,' and to preserve that integrity it must be evenly split between both parties."

Some of Trump's top allies in Congress have tried to shift blame to Pelosi -- questioning her handling of Capitol security before the attack -- and could bristle at any closer examination of Trump.

"I want to look at what Pelosi knew, when she knew it, what President Trump did after the attack, and on the Senate side, was Senate leadership informed of a threat?" Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on "Fox News Sunday."

"For this to work," Pelosi said during a press conference on Thursday, "it really has to be strongly bipartisan. You have to have subpoena power."

"That is the solution to getting access to people and information in this case," Roemer told ABC News. "Getting access to the material that was out there when President Trump was in office and the cooperation of key witnesses subpoenaing those people who were there. Others may be absolutely willing to come in without a subpoena."

Initial Democratic and Republican proposals for the commission differ on the scope of the inquiry, whether members of Congress could serve on the panel, and whether it would explore issues like online disinformation.

Police clash with supporters of President Donald Trump who breached security and entered the Capitol building in Washington Jan. 06, 2021.

Philip Zelikow, a professor at the University of Virginia who served as the executive director of the 9/11 Commission and helped author its bestselling report, told ABC News that the ongoing FBI investigations into Capitol rioters could create "lots of hindrances and potential delays" along with any investigations into Trump's phone call with Georgia's secretary of state.

At least 237 people are facing federal charges stemming from the Capitol riot, according to an ABC News review of charging documents.

"We did mutually benefit from a colossal FBI investigation," he said of the 9/11 Commission. "But the FBI investigation was not in the process of being presented to a grand jury."

John Farmer, a former attorney general of New Jersey who served as senior counsel on the 9/11 Commission, told ABC News that the panel should be able to confer immunity to witnesses in exchange for help, to incentivize cooperation, although that could complicate ongoing criminal investigations and future inquiries into holding people accountable for the attack.

"A judgment will have to be made in some cases whether a full account of what happened on Jan. 6 is more important than individual culpability," Farmer said.

At least seven House and Senate committees also are conducting their own investigations into the attack, seeking records and testimony from senior congressional security officials, the FBI and social media platforms, such as Parler, that authorities say were used by rioters to communicate ahead of the siege.

On Friday, the FBI and National Counterterrorism Center produced records to the House panels as part of their inquiry into what federal intelligence agencies knew about the potential for an attack ahead of Jan. 6, a House committee official told ABC News. The Department of Homeland Security is expected to produce records for the committees in the coming weeks.

Several House and Senate panels plan to hold the first public hearings on the Jan. 6 attack, featuring current and former congressional security officials, next week.

Hamilton, the 9/11 Commission co-chair, said the most difficult work will be making sure that any recommendations the commission ends up making are passed into law.

"There isn't any magic here, no formula, just common sense and the political will to do it," he told ABC News.

Original post:
Congress aims to avoid politics with independent Jan. 6 investigation - ABC News

It started with a ride down an escalator in 2015, and escalated rapidly. From the first cries of "rapists" invading our country to dog whistles like "Stand back, stand by," Donald Trump's dangerous delusions of power and control brought this country to the brink of collapse, and everyone who allowed that to happen is an enabler and a collaborator.

From White House cronies and sycophants who shared in Trump's power fantasies and deep contempt for large swaths of Americans, to his equally evil children and Republicans in the Senate led by Mitch McConnell, to America's attorney general, to the doctors at Walter Reed who agreed to lie for the president and to sign non-disclosure agreements, thereby violating their Hippocratic oath, to the ICE bullies who separated infants and children from their parents and incarcerated them in cold, filthy camps, to the former heads of the CDC and FDA who caved after White House pressure, to irresponsible media moguls, they are all responsible for the terrifying threat of autocracy we faced, and the increase in violence that culminated at the U.S. Capitol on Jan.6.

Together, they are responsible for militias that felt emboldened in their militarism and for bad cops who mercilessly shoot to death Black and brown men and women. They are responsible for the resurgent KKK and groups like the Proud Boys. They are responsible for federal courts being packed with ultra-conservative lifetime judges, and a Supreme Court that saw the demure but deadly Any Comey Barrett added to its ranks. In short, they are responsible for the near-demise of democracy.

Adding to why we are on the edge of another Great Depression, and responsible for America's damaged standing in the world, Donald Trump's enablers and collaborators aided and abetted the disasters in our health, educationand infrastructure systems, the filth in our water and the comeback of chemicals in our food. They are responsible for the deaths of almost half a million Americans who died needlessly because the super-spreader in chief just didn't give a damn.

Indeed, they are responsible for the Mussolini moment" we witnessed on the balcony of our dictator's palace, and they, like him, bear the guilt of negligent homicide and crimes against humanity.

They also exemplify the "banality of evil" that philosopher Hannah Arendt warned us about when she reported on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a major architect of theHolocaust. Eichmann was, he insisted to the court in Jerusalem, simply following orders.

So were White House staff, Secret Service officers who vowed to give their life for the president (but not in a hermetically sealed vehicle),employees of government agencies who didn't speak up or quit their jobs in order to save the country, business moguls who didn't end their major donations to a corrupt fraud, and Fox News, which wouldn't stand up to a lunatic when he blamed everyone else for our disasters and incited violence. So too are the voters who inexplicably still stood with their man in greater numbers the second time around even though everything he does hurts them the most.

Every one of these people is the banality of evil personified. Every one of them became what Arendt called a "leaf blowing in the whirlwind of time." Now every one of them bears responsibility for what could lie ahead.

Of course, some brave souls did stand up to the president. And every one of them did it knowing that they would be punished mightily.Think about those who gave testimony beforeCongress, the lawyers and doctors who wrote letters and petitions, the activists who marched and were willing to suffer the consequences, including injury, arrest and jail time, the Capitol Police who tried to stop a violent coup. They are our national heroes, the ones for whom new monuments should be built.

As for the rest of us, we must remember and own the fact that a great malignancy metastasized within our national body and many of us let it happen. We watched it ravageus and slowly terrorize us. We let it kill people we knew and loved. We looked the other way, always sure that it couldn't get worse.

Now we need to understand that the "silence of one good man" can spell disaster for all good people. Each of us who remained passive as our impending disaster continued might have been the one "good man" who didn't act, didn't speak out, didn't resist, while men like Jeff Sessions, Stephen Millerand Donald Trump insisted that infants be ripped from their mothers' breasts. Men who didn't care that innocent people were dying from gun violence, a plague, hungerand violence, which they fostered. Men who didn't care about pre-existing conditions or elders who rely on Social Security to survive. Men who didn't care that women would be catapulted back to the Dark Ages.

The question is: Why didn't we stop them? Why didn't we act in larger, more effective, timely ways? Why did we let them continue for four devastating years, like the blind, chained inhabitants of Plato's allegorical cave, unable to escape their isolation because, trapped by ignorance and darkness, they couldn't know the truth?

Can we now remove our blinders and see clearly the dawning truth in time to break our silence, reject the banality of evil, refuse to be a leaf blowing in the whirlwind of time?

What awaits us if we do not?

Continue reading here:
Escaping the "Mussolini moment": Trump's enablers and the banality of evil - Salon

Black Lives Matter UK have supported the claim made by Crystal Palace forward Wilfried Zaha that taking a knee before each football match is losing its impact.

Most players across all divisions in England have taken a knee since football's return post-coronavirus lockdown in an attempt to show solidarity with the fight against racism and discrimination.

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Zaha had said he felt the gesture was "degrading" and that it was being done to "tick boxes," while Brentford's Ivan Toney has said players are being "used as puppets" in taking a knee and that the gesture allows "people at the top" to rest on the subject.

A tweet from the Black Lives Matter UK page read: "We think Wilfried Zaha has a point. Taking the knee without political action is not enough.

"We are grateful for the symbolic gestures of solidarity but let's not mistake them for real change.

"That is why we are distributing 600,000 ($840,000) to organisations that will fight racism."

There has been an increase in racist abuse received by Premier League footballers on social media in the past months. In fact on Friday, Arsenal issued statement condemning online abuse aimed at midfielder Willian, calling it "another depressing example of what is sadly happening to our players and many others on a regular basis."

"The whole kneeling down -- why must I kneel down for you to show that we matter," Zaha had said on Thursday. "Why must I even wear Black Lives Matter on the back of my top to show you that we matter? This is all degrading stuff.

"When people constantly want to get me to do Black Lives Matter talks and racial talks and I'm like, I'm not doing it just so you can put 'Zaha spoke for us.' Like a tick box, basically.

"I'm not doing any more because unless things change, I'm not coming to chat to you just for the sake of it, like all the interviews I've done.

"All these platforms -- you see what's happening, you see people making fake accounts to abuse Black people constantly, but you don't change it.

"So don't tell me to come and chat about stuff that's not going to change. Change it. All that stuff that you lot are doing, all these charades mean nothing."

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Black Lives Matter UK back Wilfried Zaha comments on taking a knee - ESPN

Its an image many in Rip City are familiar with: Portland Trail Blazers star point guard Damian Lillard arm in arm with protestors, crossing the Morrison Bridge, standing up for Black lives. In a recent episode of the Talkin Blazers podcast, Lillard spoke with Dan Sheldon regarding his experience, according to Lindsey Wisniewski of NBC Sports Northwest.

We were in quarantine and we were just in the house, Lillard told Dan Sheldon on the Talkin Blazers podcast. And you know it was viral, it was protests all over the country, and I was aware of the protests in Portland. Someone invited me to a protest in Lake Oswego, but I think it was like quiet. Nobody was really there, but it was really going down in Portland. Those people have been out there everyday marching. There was hundreds of people...

They were really standing their ground on it.

Lillard knew he had to use his platform to draw attention to the protests, which swept the country following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police.

Obviously being in the house all day, Im really keeping up with on Twitter and Instagram and Im seeing it, Lillard said. It just got to the point where I didnt want to be another person saying Im using my platform to bring awareness, speaking from the sideline. I wanted to be out there and be present. When I did go and protest, I was proud to be there. I was out there and everyone out there they didnt look at it like Damian Lillard is here. It wasnt an appearance. I think that I was a part of that movement...

There was tension in the air, and I was just proud to be a part of something that was beyond myself.

In a reflection of the moment, the Trail Blazers have expanded their programming around Black History Month. You can read more about that here.

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Blazers Damian Lillard Reflects on Participating in Black Lives Matter Protests - Blazer's Edge

For many Americans, the Black Lives Matter movement nearly eight years since it was founded has become the political, spiritual and cultural apex of the unheard.

The power of Black Lives Matter has really been about being able to both be a protest movement and a movement thats deeply involved in politics, Patrisse Cullors, one of the movements co-founders, told Yahoo News in an interview this month.

Following the acquittal in July 2013 of George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin after a brief altercation in Sanford, Fla., three Black women Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Cullors created a movement to combat violence and systemic racism they called Black Lives Matter.

Today it continues to be a voice and vehicle for Black liberation worldwide. In 2020, demonstrations in the name of Black Lives Matter were held in more than 60 countries and six continents to protest the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. In January, the movement was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Black Lives Matter means something different to me every single day, Cullors said. I'm working towards a world that my child can live in freely, that he can feel all his imagination and his dreams that are at his feet. And he won't feel crushed by racism or crushed by the pressures of patriarchy.

For more than seven years, Black Lives Matter has mobilized in the aftermath of the killings of hundreds of Black men, women and transgender people alike.

But with its increasingly elevated profile, Black Lives Matter has also sparked a backlash from politicians and others who consider it a terrorist organization with aims to overthrow the U.S. government.

They called the Black Panther Party and SNCC [the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] a terrorist organization, Nse Ufot, CEO of the New Georgia Project and an organizer with the Frontline and the Movement for Black Lives, told Yahoo News. They called the Black radical feminists enemies of the state. Any time you challenge the power structure there is pushback.

Story continues

One of the rising stars of the movement is Democratic Rep. Cori Bush, the first Black congresswoman from Missouri, who came to prominence while protesting in Ferguson, Mo., following the killing of Michael Brown Jr. by police in 2014. The first Black Lives Matter protester to be elected to Congress, Bush says one of her biggest goals is to help defeat the ideology of white supremacy.

Even though I understand that it is not on me nor the Black and brown community to dismantle white supremacy, Bush told Yahoo News in an interview this month. The white community, that's their work, but because we're here, we're going to fight it tooth and nail.

Embraced by much of corporate America IBM, Uber and the NBA are among those that have shown their support Black Lives Matter has become more than a protest movement. Its also an aspirational rallying cry.

The power of this movement is helping young people develop an analysis to name the things that are hurting us, Ufot said. People are learning how to organize and not just be activists. There is a discipline of organizing that is being developed.

The following timeline charts the emergence and development of Black Lives Matter:

2012

On Feb. 26, 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by Neighborhood Watch volunteer George Zimmerman after a brief altercation in Sanford, Fla. Zimmerman had called police and described Martin, who was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and carrying a bag of Skittles, as a real suspicious guy, but the police dispatcher told him not to approach. Zimmerman, who was carrying a handgun, ignored the instruction and a scuffle broke out with Martin, who was unarmed.

2013

On July 13, 2013, following Zimmermans acquittal, three Black female organizers Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi launched a protest movement they dubbed Black Lives Matter to combat violence and systemic racism. The phrase "Black lives matter" was first used in a Facebook post by Garza after the acquittal; Cullors recognized the power of Garza's words and created the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. Thus a campaign was born. The movement, according to its website, is an affirmation of the humanity and historical and societal contributions from Black people. The goal of Black Lives Matter, the website states, is to support the development of new Black leaders, as well as create a network where Black people feel empowered to determine our destinies in our communities.

2014

As a slogan, Black Lives Matter grew steadily on social media. As a movement, activists continued to amplify their voices on the streets of America, protesting the police killings of several Black Americans, including John Crawford III, Ezell Ford, Laquan McDonald, Akai Gurley and Tamir Rice. In 2014, two more deaths captured the attention of the country and the world, those of Eric Garner and Michael Brown Jr. In July of that year, Garner, who was accused of selling loose cigarettes, was put in an illegal chokehold by a New York City police officer that killed him. A month later, on Aug. 9, 18-year-old Brown was shot and killed by Ferguson, Mo., police Officer Darren Wilson after Wilson responded to reports of a robbery and assault at a nearby convenience store. Several months of nationwide unrest and protests followed both deaths as BLM activists called on the officers involved to be held accountable. Cori Bush, a registered nurse and a pastor in a community near Ferguson, attended BLM demonstrations that lasted for more than a year.

2015

On June 17, 2015, nine Black church worshippers were killed during a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., by 21-year-old white supremacist Dylann Roof. On July 13, Sandra Bland, a Black woman, was found hanging in her jail cell in Texas, just three days after she had been stopped and arrested following a traffic stop. With the horror of the Charleston massacre still fresh, an investigation into Blands death left more questions than answers. BLM continued to organize demonstrations throughout the year, specifically drawing attention to the plight of Black women and Black transgender women, who were increasingly becoming victims of deadly violence. By the end of the year, 21 transgender people had been killed in 2015 in the U.S., a record number at the time, and 13 of the victims were Black.

2016

In July 2016, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, two Black men, were shot at point-blank range by police officers in separate incidents. Sterling was killed in Baton Rouge, La., by two white officers as they pinned him down. Castile, a licensed gun owner, was killed by an officer in a suburb outside St. Paul, Minn., as he raised his hands after the officer allegedly told him not to move. More than 100 protests around the country followed these killings. Professional athletes also began to speak out. During the ESPY Awards in July 2016, NBA superstars LeBron James, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade and Carmelo Anthony delivered a joint statement about the killings of African Americans by police. In August, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick became the first NFL athlete to protest systemic racism and police brutality by taking a knee during the national anthem. Other NFL players would later follow his example.

2017

In February 2017, Black Lives Matter put on its first art exhibition. It was held at the Museum of the City of New York and featured work from more than 30 artists to celebrate Black History Month. That August, BLM activists protested at a white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in which Heather Heyer was killed when a man ran her over with his car. Several others were injured in the clashes between white supremacists and counterprotesters.

2018

Black Lives Matter marked five years of fighting systemic racism in 2018 and continued to protest in various cities across America. A Pew study published that year found that by May, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter had been used nearly 30 million times on Twitter since the first instance in 2013.

2019

On Feb. 3, 2019, rapper 21 Savage, whose real name is Shyaa Bin Abraham-Joseph, was arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors convened a group of more than 60 high-profile celebrities to advocate for him, and the rapper was released on bond 10 days later.

2020

Following the 2020 killings of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Black Lives Matter became a household phrase. Arbery was shot and killed by three white men while jogging in Brunswick, Ga. Floyd was pinned to the ground and had a knee pressed into his neck for more than seven minutes by a Minneapolis police officer for allegedly attempting to use a counterfeit $20 bill. Taylor, an EMT, was killed when officers serving a no-knock warrant in Louisville, Ky., broke into the apartment she shared with her boyfriend and opened fire. Each of these deaths sparked international BLM marches. Corporations and elected officials, many for the first time, began to promote the term Black Lives Matter, and murals featuring the slogan began appearing all over the globe.

2021

On Jan. 4, 2021, Rep. Cori Bush was sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first Black woman to represent Missouri in that chamber. Bush, who went from an activist in the streets to an activist in Congress, helped bring Black Lives Matter into the mainstream. Later that month, the BLM movement was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for its work in helping rid the world of systemic racism.

Full interview with Rep. Cori Bush and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors right here on Yahoo News

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A brief history of the Black Lives Matter movement from Trayvon Martin to Nobel Prize nomination - Yahoo Sports