Republican leaders are looking for any excuse possible to block creation of a congressional commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy says he opposes it because it won't include a probe into last summer's Black Lives Matter protests. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says the commission wouldn't add new facts to what federal investigators have already gathered.

What Republican leaders can't bring themselves to say is that the commission would revive national attention to their party's role in the most cataclysmic single event in American history since the 9/11 attacks. A congressional probe of the 2001 attacks won full-throated bipartisan support at the time, and the public learned valuable details about major intelligence failures ahead of the attacks.

McConnell is speaking nonsense if he thinks a commission investigation is unnecessary or that the public has nothing to gain from knowing how the insurrection happened, who was behind it — possibly including members of Congress — and why it wasn't stopped. The public deserves to know if President Donald Trump encouraged the riot and deliberately delayed deployment of extra security forces to oust the insurrectionists.

Law enforcers have their own investigation, of course, just as they did after 9/11. But they are not obligated to hold public hearings or share their findings publicly. Only Congress can use its extensive subpoena power to compel testimony and obtain a global view of what happened and what could have been done to prevent the insurrection.

Such details are the last thing GOP leaders want Americans to learn because of the irreparable damage each revelation could deliver to their party. Trump, whose big lie about a stolen presidential election prompted the insurrection, predictably denounced the Jan. 6 commission as a "Democrat trap." McCarthy and McConnell, who initially expressed outrage at the attack and Trump's role in it, now don't dare repeat such denunciations for fear of angering Trump and his base. McCarthy stated on the House floor after the attack: "The President bears responsibility for (the Jan. 6) attack on Congress by mob rioters."

This entire scenario reeks of cowardice, evasion and wishful thinking that Americans would somehow forget what really happened: the deaths, the violent invasion, the ransacking of offices, the theft of secure documents and computers, and the intention of some insurrectionists to put members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence on trial for daring to certify Joe Biden's election as president.

Democrats and the few ethical Republicans willing to stand on principle must not let McConnell, McCarthy and their minions continue to deflect and distract. This was an insurrection designed to overthrow a presidential election and keep Trump, who lost by 7 million votes, in the White House. True patriots embrace the truth, warts and all. Cowards run from it.

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