Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ) announced Tuesday that he is donating the blue suit he wore while cleaning up the Capitol on January 6 after the insurrection, CNN reports.
Kim was pictured in the suit around 11 p.m. sweeping up broken glass in the Capitol building. According to CBS Philadelphia Kim had planned to wear the suit to President Joe Biden’s inauguration but opted instead to wear it to the Electoral College vote certification that day.
“It was a suit that every time I saw it in my closet, it reminded me of Jan. 6,” he told CBS Philadelphia. “It was something that I didn’t want to think about.”
Kim said he was unsure initially when the Smithsonian approached him.
“It was tough for me to think through this in terms of saving items from that day for history’s sake. I wasn’t quite there yet in my mind because I was trying to deal with moving forward,” Kim told CNN.
He hopes that the Smithsonian display will show a different side of the Capitol insurrection.
“They want to be able to tell the different sides, not just the destruction and the tragic aspect of it, the recovery,” he told CBS Philadelphia. “I think that that’s a part of the story that needs to be told.”
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