Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) gave a lengthy speech on Thursday while speaking at the GOP’s “Obamagate” hearing.
Harris slammed the GOP for holding a hearing about a conspiracy theory while a nation is fighting for racial justice.
She called for the Judiciary Committee to look into why Attorney General Bill Barr issued a demand for law enforcement to gas, beat, and shoot protesters in Lafayette Square so that Donald Trump could do a photo-op in front of St. John’s Church.
Speaking in the committee hearing Thursday, Harris demanded the committee “think of its relevance” in the wake of the slaying of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“I would dare say the conversation we are having today is irrelevant to what we are — what is happening on the streets of America today,” Harris said, attacking the hearing Republicans designed to investigate President Barack Obama three years after he left office.
“We are looking at people in pain,” she continued. “People by the thousands of every race, age, and geographic location shouting for justice in America. Yet, this committee, [doth] protest too much, as Shakespeare might say, on an issue that is not relevant to the people and the pain that America is feeling today. The women that we are feeling are deepened by a president of the United States who has fanned the flames of hurt and pain. Civil rights and matters involving law enforcement are this committee’s responsibility. This committee alone. Instead of engaging in partisan political gains on behalf of this president, what the American people need this committee to do is be relevant to why they are shouting and marching and crying in the streets of our country. they need us to address the real issue of police brutality and implicit bias.”
She went on to say that it is needed along with the committee needing to address Trump and Barr’s “assault on this country’s constitutional rights of free expression and peaceful assembly.”
Harris then said that the American people deserve to know why Gen. James Mattis expressed such “disbelief” in the White House’s actions.
“They need us to talk about the lives that have been taken from us,” Harris continued. “George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, and so many others. This committee meeting today sent a message to millions of Americans that have taken to the streets to protest this violence. But in this Judiciary Committee doesn’t care. This committee has a duty to confront these issues, Mr. Chairman, and an obligation to address the pain that people are feeling. The suffering they feel, by shying away from this responsibility, this committee will not only dishonor the body that we serve, it will dishonor the very memory of those we should be naming today. Mr. Chairman.”
Take a look at her speech in the video clip below:
