Senate Republicans on Friday blocked legislation to form a commission to probe the January 6 attack on the Capitol, The Hill reported.
Senators voted 54-35 on the House-passed bill, falling short of the 10 GOP votes needed to get it over an initial hurdle.
GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Mitt Romney (Utah), Susan Collins (Maine), Bill Cassidy (La.), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Ben Sasse (Neb.) broke ranks, voting to advance the legislation.
The US House of Representatives passed the bill on Wednesday in a 252-175 vote, with 35 Republicans joining all Democrats in support.
Senate Republicans were widely expected to reject the legislation after days of publicly and privately warning that they believed the commission would damage them heading into the 2022 midterm election.
The House's bill would create a 10-member commission with the ability to appoint members evenly split between the two parties in a model based on the panel created after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Democrats argued that the investigation was needed to get to the bottom of the attack, but they faced almost impossible odds to getting the bill through the Senate as Republican opposition hardened.
Former President Donald Trump has been accused of inciting the January 6 riots on the Capitol, though the Senate acquitted Trump of charges of “inciting insurrection” leading to the riots.
The NAACP and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) recently sued Trump in connection with the riots. The lawsuit alleges that Trump incited the Capitol riot in violation of a Reconstruction Era law commonly referred to as the Ku Klux Klan Act.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)