58 percent say Jan. 6 House committee is biased: poll

A majority of voters say they believe the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is biased, according to a new Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey. 

Fifty-eight percent of voters polled said they believed the committee set up by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was biased, while 42 percent said they thought it was fair. 

“Americans want an examination of the riots over the summer and the origins of the virus over investigating Jan. 6th,” said  Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey. “The voters reject the Pelosi move to toss Republicans off of the committee and see it now as just a partisan exercise.”

Last month Pelosi, tapped Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) to serve alongside fellow GOP Trump critic Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) on the committee after she blocked pro-Trump Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jim Banks (R-Ind.) from serving on the panel. Jordan and Banks both voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results hours after a pro-Trump mob violently breached the Capitol during the election certification process. 

Jordan acknowledged that he spoke with Trump on Jan. 6 during an interview last week. 

“With respect for the integrity of the investigation, with an insistence on the truth and with concern about statements made and actions taken by these Members, I must reject the recommendations of Representatives Banks and Jordan to the Select Committee,” Pelosi said in a statement last month. 

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) hit back in a separate statement, calling Pelosi’s move “an egregious abuse of power.”  

The Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey of 1,788 registered voters was conducted from July 28 to 29. It is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and The Harris Poll.

Full poll results will be posted online later this week. Respondents are recruited via voter panel providers on a randomized basis, and their responses are then weighted to reflect known demographics. As a representative poll conducted online, it does not report a probability confidence interval.