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FINALLY, SOME ANSWERS ABOUT THE CAPITOL RIOT? Today the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs will hold a hearing with four witnesses who played a key role in securing — or failing to secure — the Capitol when it was stormed by pro-Trump protesters on January 6. Testifying will be Paul Irving, the former House Sergeant at Arms; Michael Stenger, the former Senate Sergeant at Arms; Steven Sund, the former chief of Capitol Police; and Robert Contee, the current chief of Washington DC’s Metropolitan Police Department. All but Contee lost their jobs in the aftermath of January 6.
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One key question: Why were Capitol Hill authorities so unprepared for the assault? Why weren’t they ready, or at least more ready than they were?
Today’s hearing will undoubtedly include statements from the recently-completed second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump. During the trial, Democratic House managers repeatedly told the Senate that the FBI and other agencies had warned top Capitol Hill officials that there would be trouble on January 6.
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Here is the lead House manager, Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, telling senators what they would hear in the trial: “In the days leading up to the attack, you will learn that there were countless social media posts, news stories, and, most importantly, credible reports from the FBI and Capitol Police that the thousands gathering for the president’s Save America March were violent, organized with weapons, and were targeting the Capitol.” (Here is the Congressional Record with Raskin’s and other quotes.)
A few moments later, Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse told the Senate, “You will learn that Capitol Police and the FBI reported in the days leading up to the attack that thousands in the crowd would be targeting the Capitol specifically.”
Later in the same presentation, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell referred to the president’s “thousands of supporters, whom you will see that the FBI had warned were armed and targeting the Capitol.”
Still later, Democratic Del. Stacey Plaskett told the Senate that Washington DC officials had warned about the potential for violence. And then: “On January 3, a Capitol Police intelligence report warned of a violent scenario in which ‘Congress itself’ could be the target of the angry supporters of President Trump.” Plaskett continued: “The day before the rioters stormed the Congress, an FBI office in Virginia also issued an explicit warning that extremists were preparing to travel to Washington to commit violence and ‘war.'” “These threat warnings were not just hypothetical,” Plaskett concluded.
How could the top authorities in the House and Senate ignore all those warnings? The witnesses at today’s hearings, especially the former Capitol Police chief and two former sergeants at arms, will know what happened. They should tell the Senate, and the public, their stories. Americans should not have to wait until some sort of blue-ribbon commission has been appointed to learn the key events leading up to the January 6 riot.
Finally, some will say that the public should focus on Trump’s alleged incitement of the riot. But does anyone believe that issue has been ignored? The nation just had a five-day trial about that very question. The House managers made their best case against the former president. Now, there are other things to learn about what happened, and it is time Congress started to learn them.
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