Source: United States Senator for Nevada Cortez Masto
January 06, 2022
Full video can be found here.
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) today spoke on the Senate floor on the anniversary of the January 6th insurrection. In addition to discussing her personal experience that day, she emphasized her commitment to continuing to defend democracy and protecting voting rights.
Below are her remarks as delivered:
Mr. President, you know, this morning I’ve been listening to my colleagues, watching the news, watching our president, reflecting on this day a year ago and where I was during this incredible insurrection that we now know happened on the Capitol.
I was in my Capitol office here, as we all have an office here in the Capitol, and I was getting ready to come to the floor of the Senate and certify that Joe Biden had won the presidency in a free and fair election.
Senator [Klobuchar], senior senator from Minnesota, had organized many of us to stand in defense of that free and fair election, and I had been asked to stand in defense of the certified electoral votes in Arizona, and what I had been told, they were going to challenge Nevada.
It was a significant moment. Even before President Biden’s victory, people had been spreading lies about the election for political gain. And I had planned to deliver a speech to combat these lies and explain in detail that the 2020 vote count was fair and accurate.
And so as I left my Capitol office and was walking to the Senate to deliver that speech, it became clear that something unprecedented was happening. Because on my way out of my Capitol office, I came across two of my colleagues—one of them here today, Senator Smith—and Senator Murkowski. And they were standing outside an open door to a restroom that we share amongst our Capitol offices.
And I asked them what was going on.
And they said, “There’s a Capitol Police officer in there. He’s got something in his eyes, and he is flushing his eyes out with water.”
And I leaned in, and I saw the officer at the bathroom sink.
And I thought to myself—and I said aloud to my colleagues— “I think he’s been peppered spray.” And I asked him: “Had—has it been pepper sprayed? Have you been pepper sprayed?”
And he said, “Yes, but don’t worry. Everything’s fine. I am going to keep you all safe.” And with that, he dashed back out the door, up the stairs, and outside to protect all of us and everyone else in this building.
Now, I knew there had been a rally going on near the White House, and that there were protests. What I did not know that morning was just how close the protesters were to forcing their way into this Capitol.
Now, everyone knows what happened next: as we sat here—all of the senators, all of the staff that work with us day in and day out, our partners—the next thing we heard was this chamber being shut down by the Capitol Police claiming that the Capitol had been breached. They told us to stay in our seats. “This is the safest place where you can be right now, and we will protect you.”
And at that moment, we could all hear outside the doors. We didn’t know what was going on—because we can’t see beyond this room—what was happening outside, but we knew, we could hear the voices, and we could hear what was happening. And we also could hear—outside of the one set of double doors that we call the hallway with the Ohio Clock that leads to the Rotunda—a lot of noise.
And it was at that moment, as the noise was working its way towards the Rotunda, that the Capitol Police officers then told all of us to get up and move quickly. And we moved out these opposite doors right here. “Move as quickly as you possibly can.” And that’s when everybody came together. All of the senators. I don’t care whether you’re Republican or Democrat, our floor staff that was with us, grabbing those electoral votes. And we all started going up and down stairs, through hallways, up and down stairs, through hallways, until we could get to a secure location.
Now, as we were going through the hallways and when we got to the secure location, it was clear why this was happening. We were under attack because insurrectionists had been whipped into a frenzy by the false claim that the election in Nevada and in other states was fraudulent. That’s exactly what the speakers said during that rally, before the violence began!
And we saw the same false claims in Nevada, where extremists tried to challenge our election results in an effort to prevent Joe Biden from becoming president. The former president’s campaign and his supporters filed a total of five lawsuits challenging the security of the election system and targeting our state’s Secretary of State in Nevada.
Every one of those lawsuits was thrown out or failed. Every single one of them in Nevada.
And when the official tally was completed, President Biden won Nevada by 33,596 votes. The Nevada Secretary of State not only certified the election—she also investigated each and every claim of election fraud. And she made clear that her office found no evidence of widespread fraud.
Now, I was the Attorney General of the state of Nevada for eight years, and I can tell you from personal experience: when we find voter fraud, we prosecute it. And I also know, there was, again, no widespread voter fraud in Nevada in the year 2020.
And let me explain what widespread voter fraud means, because that is now being challenged by some of the former president’s supporters. Widespread means that there was not enough to have changed the results of the election, that it was still a safe and secure election, and Joe Biden is our president.
In fact, not only Nevada’s elections were safe, accessible, and secure, but across the country they have been proven to be safe, accessible, and secure.
I also want to share with the rest of the country that my state, in Nevada, we have enacted important protections for protecting voting rights, including automatic voter registration, vote by mail, early voting, and same-day registration. In the 2020 presidential elections, almost half of Nevadans—people from both parties—took advantage of our vote-by-mail laws.
But because the defeated former president and his supporters were upset that he lost the election, some of them publicized the lie that he had won. And that lie, in turn, spurred members of the public to violence that resulted in five deaths and countless injuries.
Now, we all know, after the Capitol Police helped us move to safety, my colleagues and I from both parties talked about what to do. We knew the insurrectionists were trying to stop us from certifying the election. And we knew that we had to finish our jobs, no matter how late it was.
And we all agreed that we had to go back to the Senate chamber so that we could show the rest of the country that we would not let our democracy be subverted by violence—that we would honor our Constitution and the peaceful transfer of power in this country.
And I want to make this clear: I would have stood up to certify the valid results of the 2020 election no matter who won. This isn’t about partisanship: it’s about patriotism. I took an oath to uphold the Constitution and protect it against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And nothing and no one will prevent me from doing that sworn duty.
So I walked back to the Senate floor on the evening of January 6 to finish my work. I’ll remember what I saw the rest of my life. As I walked back, furniture had been thrown everywhere, like matchsticks. Trash, broken glass littered the floor. It was like a war zone.
That night, I stood up and spoke in defense of our democracy, as I’d planned to do hours before. And at 3:42 a.m., Vice President Pence announced that Joe Biden was the president-elect. We honored the democratic transfer of power for the 59th time in American history.
But I’m here to tell you: there is so much to do to ensure that there will be a 60th time. Our democracy is more fragile than it has been in decades.
The same bad actors who fueled the violence in the first place, including the defeated former president and his supporters, continue to spread the Big Lie that the election was stolen. And they are using these false claims to pass legislation threatening our very democracy.
Around the country, more than 400 state laws were introduced to restrict voting last year alone. In Nevada, we expanded vote-by-mail dropbox locations, but in Florida, Georgia, Iowa, and Indiana, new laws make it harder to use those dropboxes. Nevada has same-day voter registration, but Texas just made it harder to register, not easier. And in Georgia, it’s now even illegal to give food or water to people waiting in long lines to vote. And the list goes on and on.
These are partisan laws—they’re designed to favor one group of voters over another. That’s not democracy. A real democracy honors everyone’s right to be heard. It makes sure that everyone gets a vote, and that every vote is counted.
Democracy is a remarkable thing—a system where the people get to choose their own leaders. And we all need to stand up for it, just as the countless heroes of our history have done, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King, Jr.
So I will not stop fighting to protect our country and our democracy. I will continue working with my colleagues to pass voting rights legislation. We need to follow Nevada’s lead and protect access to the polls. And we cannot let anyone silence Americans’ voice in their own government.
Now Mr. President, I also want to recognize many of the heroes who protected us that day, like that Capitol Police officer that I encountered that morning. After the attack was over, I learned that 140 of the police officers I pass in the halls of Congress every day had broken bones—or worse. Four of them later took their own lives.
These are brave men and women who put themselves at risk every day to protect not just the people’s elected representatives, but our dedicated staff and the hardworking people here at the Capitol, from the janitors to cafeteria workers to postal employees. All of these people carry their own memories of January 6th, and we need to make sure they never have to go through something like that again.
So many of them are still here at the Capitol, still doing their jobs—like that Capitol Police officer who I saw earlier who had been pepper-sprayed. But I’ll tell you what, they give me hope.
And they remind me that all of us have a job to do, just like we did on January 6. One year later, it’s clear that we all must stand united in defense of our democracy. And Mr. President, I hope we can do just that.
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