New Jersey Rep. Andy Kim is donating the suit he wore during the US Capitol riot to The Smithsonian, he announced on Tuesday — on the six month anniversary of the attack.
The Democrat explained in a lengthy Twitter thread that he agreed to bestow the blue J. Crew suit to the institution because the events of Jan. 6. “must never be forgotten.”
“While some try to erase history, I will fight to tell the story so it never happens again,” Kim wrote.
A photo of the congressman wearing the suit while cleaning up litter left behind by the Jan. 6 mayhem at the Capitol was shared widely at the time.
“It really broke my heart and I just felt compelled to do something … What else could I do?,” Kim told the Associated Press then.
On Tuesday, Kim said that like his suit, what he did on Jan. 6, was “unremarkable.”
“I saw a mess and cleaned it. I wanted to right the wrongs of that day as quickly and as tangibly as I could,” he wrote on Twitter.
He added: “Neither my suit nor my actions are on their own worthy of memory, but the story didn’t end there.”
The lawmaker said he last wore the outfit was on Jan. 13, when he voted to impeach former President Donald Trump on the House floor.
“The suit still had dust on the knees from Jan 6. I wore it so I would have no doubt about the truth of what happened,” he tweeted.
Kim ultimately decided never to don the suit again, and hid it in his closet because, “It only brought back terrible memories.”
But Kim said he later received thousands of cards and letters from across the country mentioning the suit and the viral photo of him cleaning debris in the Capitol.
“People wrote saying the blue suit gave them a sense of resilience and hope,” he wrote.
“I told the Smithsonian yes to donating the blue suit because the telling of the story of Jan6 isn’t optional, it is necessary,” Kim continued.
“There are many stories of Jan 6. Mine is just one. We cannot heal as a nation unless we have truth. Let truth be truth.”