Jan. 6 investigators needed round-the-clock home protection from 'ongoing threats': Committee chair

The members of Congress investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol needed round-the-clock security protection at their homes to safeguard them from "ongoing threats," said former House January 6 Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) in an interview with POLITICO released on Friday.

"Thompson acknowledged challenges throughout the process. Members required security and their homes needed 24/7 protection from ongoing threats, he said," POLITICO reported.

This comes after reports last year that the committee was granting security detail to all its members. Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), one of two Republicans who sat on the committee, detailed some of the "foul and graphic" threats he received, including calls to his office saying the caller was "gonna get your wife, gonna get your kids," and another saying he would "swing for f**king treason."

In the same interview, Thompson reflected at length on the impact of his committee, and what it meant to him, as a Black man from Mississippi, to be at the helm of an effort investigating a once-in-a-generation threat to American democracy, after the brutality Black civil rights activists endured to fight for the civil rights to be included in public society and in the electoral process at all.

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"If I told you there weren't some moments along the way during that two-year stretch that I questioned whether I could get across the finish line [that'd be false]," said Thompson. "But then I look back on my ancestors and say, you know, what would Martin [Luther King Jr.] have done? What would Medgar [Evers] have done? What would Fannie Lou [Hamer] have done? They'd say they would have done the best they could, and so that's what I did."

"To be in that role and be able to make it work, I think says to Black boys and Black girls all over America that we all have our role to play and we can make it work," Thompson added. "It can't be done overnight. We have got to roll up our sleeves and participate in it."