The role House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was to have played in obtaining sufficient security to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6 would have most likely come out through questions that would have been posed to her by GOP Reps. Jim Jordan and Jim Banks had they been on the select committee investigating the incidents, and she rejected them because she "got spooked," Rep. Mike Johnson said Tuesday on Newsmax.
"They were rejected because they were already beginning to ask those very important ultimate questions in the media," the Louisiana Republican said on Newsmax's "National Report." "Frankly, she doesn't want those questions to be answered, and we have a theory as to why."
Pelosi, he said, is "ultimately at the top of the chain of authority," but those who respond to her "did not apparently have the personnel, the equipment, and the backup necessary on this day to prevent this terrible tragedy."
But with the select committee having just two Republicans on it, Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger — both selected by Pelosi, not House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy — Johnson said that the speaker's role won't be examined.
"That's why we may have to do our own report, our own hearings, to try to answer that question," Johnson said.
Johnson, vice chairman of the House Republican Conference, made his comments while four police officers who had been attacked at the Capitol on Jan. 6 offered sometimes emotional testimony at the select committee's first hearing.
"We heard some harrowing testimony this morning," Johnson said. "We are on the side of the Capitol Police and the brave officers who put their lives on the line to protect this place every day, to protect all of us.
''Obviously, it was, as Kevin McCarthy said that day, the saddest day of his time he served in Congress. It was for me as well. And I'm sure almost every one of my colleagues would attest to the same thing. We are grateful for these heroes. We applaud them for their service, and we honor the testimony."
He added that he hopes Cheney and Kinzinger, as the committee's only Republicans, will be objective voices on the committee, but he doesn't expect it.
"Liz Cheney has been working with the Democrats in preparations for these hearings and setting up their strategy as it were," Johnson said. "We all would like to believe that this would be an objective search for truth, but just call me jaded. I don't think that's what's going to happen here."
Instead, he said he thinks that once the "terrible testimony" being offered by the police officers concludes, the hearings will turn political and that Democrats "will try to use it as a wedge issue going into the election cycle."
"They know that historical trends show that the Republicans should and are expected to win," Johnson said. "We'll regain the House majority here. They have a very limited time, and this is their last issue to use [it], and I'm afraid they're going to use it. It will divide the country. It will be a terrible season for us, and we'll all get through it. "
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.