Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., gave a closing statement on July 12 as the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack presented its findings to the public. The focus of the hearing was on extremist far-right groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and the role they played in the Capitol insurrection.
Murphy shared that she was born in Vietnam, where her family eventually fled after the Vietnam War, and were given sanctuary in the United States. She said that during the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 – four decades after Murphy and her family “fled a place where political power was seized through violence” – she was in the U.S. Capitol “fleeing [her] fellow Americans.”
Murphy noted that members of the mob that stormed the Capitol on that day were lied to by former President Donald Trump and his allies, and some of those insurrectionists tried to use violence to “overturn a free and fair election.”
“Our committee’s overriding objective is to fight fiction with facts, to create a full account for the American people and for the historical record, to tell the truth of what happened and why it happened, to make recommendations so it never happens again, [and] to defend our democracy,” Murphy said. “To me, there’s nothing more patriotic than that.”
In the year since its creation, the committee has conducted more than 1,000 interviews, seeking critical information and documents from people witness to, or involved in, the violence that day.
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