Nancy Pelosi
Nancy PelosiReuters

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Monday that a 9/11-style commission to investigate the riots on the Capitol on January 6 is the “next step” after former President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial concluded.

Pelosi wrote in a Dear Colleague letter quoted by The Hill that the impeachment trial and Ret. Gen. Russel Honoré’s initial security review into how to prevent a similar incident make it “clear” that “we must get to the truth of how this happened.”

“To protect our security, our security, our security, our next step will be to establish an outside, independent 9/11-type Commission,” she wrote.

The commission would “‘investigate and report on the facts and causes relating to the January 6, 2021 domestic terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol Complex'" as well as "'relating to the interference with the peaceful transfer of power, including facts and causes relating to the preparedness and response of the United States Capitol Police and other Federal, State, and local law enforcement in the National Capitol Region,’” added Pelosi.

Requests for a commission similar to the one formed post-9/11 have picked up in the weeks since the breach at the Capitol led to the deaths of five people, including a Capitol Police officer, and scores of law enforcement injuries.

Lawmakers who have called for such an investigation want to learn more about why law enforcement agencies were not more prepared to respond to the riot.

Pelosi’s letter comes two days after the Senate acquitted Trump on charges of “inciting insurrection” in his impeachment trial.

While the vote was 57-43 in favor of conviction, it was 10 votes shy of the supermajority needed.

Pelosi later blasted Senate Republicans as cowards, saying, "What we saw in that Senate today was a cowardly group of Republicans.”