Maryland’s GOP governor slams ‘whitewashing’ of Jan. 6 riot

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) slammed some in the Republican Party for “whitewashing” the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.

In an interview on “The Takeout Podcast,” CBS News’s Major Garrett asked the governor to weigh in on efforts within the GOP to “sanitize” the attack, which led to multiple deaths and hundreds of arrests.

“We have to get to the bottom of exactly what happened there, and there’s no whitewashing,” Hogan said.

“We need to get all the facts and find out exactly what happened. But there’s no way to just overlook this and say it didn’t happen. The nonsense about ‘these were just peaceful tourists’ is completely absurd. Talk about major disinformation and lies. That’s exactly what that is,” he continued.

Many Republicans, particularly allies of former President Trump, have been seeking to turn the page on Jan. 6, with some characterizing the riot as peaceful protests.

The drama erupted anew this week when Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) rejected two of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) GOP picks for the select committee to investigate the insurrection, Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio) and Jim Banks (Ind.), over their previous false claims about the 2020 election and votes not to certify the results. 

McCarthy then decided to yank all five of his appointments.

Hogan has said that Trump was responsible for inciting the crowd that attacked the Capitol in an effort to prevent the vote certification, and the governor has previously slammed GOP efforts to downplay the riot as “revisionist history.”

He told Garrett that while there needs to be a “fair and objective” investigation into the events of Jan. 6, he doesn’t want either side politicizing the attack.

“I don’t want the Republicans whitewashing what happened, I don’t want the Democrats trying to make political hay. I want to really have a real investigation into what happened,” he said.