Report: Pelosi to Blame for Jan. 6 Capitol Security Failures

Washington, D.C. – Outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., should be held responsible for the U.S. Capitol having been left unprepared for the assault on the building by protestors trying to stop the counting of the votes of presidential electors on Jan. 6, 2021, a report issued Wednesday says.

A key finding of the inquiry conducted by Republican members of Congress who were originally chosen to serve on the 82-year-old Pelosi's select committee looking into the events of that day says the Speaker and other members of the Democratic leadership forced then-House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving to bow to political pressure and leave the building in a vulnerable state despite widespread suspicion that some kind of trouble was in the offing.

“Leadership and law enforcement failures within the U.S. Capitol left the complex vulnerable on January 6, 2021,” says the report, compiled from what the New York Post, which broke the story, said was called “a trove of texts and email messages, and testimony from Capitol Police leaders and rank-and-file officers.”

The charge that Pelosi and other members of the Democratic congressional leadership and staff left the U.S. Capitol deliberately unprepared for a worst-case scenario event is serious and likely to be revisited in the new Congress

The report, released by Republicans Jim Banks of Indiana, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Illinois' Rodney Davis, North Dakota's Kelly Armstrong, and Troy Nehls of Texas, says Pelosi and her staff “coordinated closely” with Irving on security plans for the Jan. 6 Joint Session of Congress while the GOP was deliberately left out of “important discussions related to security.” 

The Post's Miranda Devine, who published the story as an exclusive, characterized this as “an apparent attempt to hide from Republicans the fact that they were being excluded from discussions” and wrote that Irving, who was forced to step down in the aftermath of the unrest, “was asked a senior Democratic staffer to ‘act surprised' when he sent ‘key information about plans for the Joint Session on Jan. 6, 2021, to him and his Republican counterpart.'”

The five Republicans who authored the report were all chosen by House GOP  leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to serve on Pelosi's Jan. 6 committee. None did, after she personally vetoed the appointments of Banks and Jordan, calling them election deniers. Instead, she picked anti-Trump Republicans Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Illinois' Adam Kinzinger to serve on the panel, which they used as a forum to bash former President Donald J. Trump for instigating what is now being referred to by many as “an insurrection.”

Cheney's participation in the investigation is cited by political analysts as the primary reason she was defeated in her 2022 bid for re-nomination to a seat in Congress she seemingly could have held for life. The panel's report accuses Trump of committing several acts the select committee suggests are criminal and has forwarded its findings to the U.S. Department of Justice with a recommendation the former president be indicted.

That takes much of the attention off Pelosi, who, as No. 2 in the line of succession to the presidency, is considered the third most powerful official in the U.S. government. Nevertheless, the GOP-authored report can be read to suggest she left the Capitol and its occupants dangerously under-protected out of  “widespread concern from Democratic leadership over ‘optics' in the aftermath of the Summer 2020 ‘Black Lives Matter' protests prevented (the) early deployment of the National Guard,” wrote Devine in the Post.

While Pelosi has repeatedly said she has “no power over the Capitol Police,” the GOP members' report says otherwise.  “The Speaker's office was heavily involved in planning and decision-making before and during the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and micromanaged the Sergeant at Arms.”

“Documents provided by [current] House Sergeant at Arms show how then-House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving carried out his duties in clear deference to the Speaker, her staff, and other Democratic staff….” Indeed, the rules of the chamber are clear that the Sergeant at Arms reports directly to the Speaker.

The report makes clear through examples that Pelosi opted regularly to involve herself in matters related to security as when she directed the installation of magnetometers through which members must pass when entering the House chamber and by ordering that masks be worn on the House floor. Indeed, the U.S. Capitol is still on partial lockdown due to orders she issued.

Also coming in for criticism is the U.S. Capitol Police Intelligence Division which, the report says, “failed to warn USCP leadership and line officers about the threat of violence,” despite having “obtained sufficient information from an array of channels to anticipate and prepare for the violence.”

“In fact, the final intelligence threat assessment three days before the riot did warn of a violent scenario in which ‘Congress itself' could be attacked by armed Trump supporters. But the warning was buried towards the end of the 15-page document and was not included in the up-front summary, so it was overlooked. Nor was the warning mentioned in three subsequent daily intelligence reports,” Divine wrote.

The blame for this, the report said, should be placed on the shoulders of the assistant director of the USCP intelligence division, Julie Farnam, a former employee of the Department of Homeland Security who had only been on the job for a few months when the riot occurred.

According to the Post, testimony taken during the investigation revealed her section became “nonfunctional” immediately upon Farnam's arrival as the Post put it,  as she tried to “consolidate power for herself to the detriment of the safety and security of the Capitol.”

“Information about planned protests and threats of violence were siloed and not properly analyzed and disseminated during this key period because of Farnam's misplaced priorities,” says the report. Nonetheless, Farnam told CBS in a 2022 interview cited by the paper that her team did not bear any responsibility for the attack on the Capitol and did in fact provide adequate threat assessments to police leadership before the riot.

The debate over who is to blame for what happened on Jan. 6 will not end when Pelosi relinquishes the speakership on Jan. 3, 2023. McCarthy, who is widely presumed to be the incoming speaker, will face considerable pressure from the right-wing rank and file to continue looking into what happened on Capitol Hill in the days leading up to the counting of the electoral votes to leave the building and its occupants in such a vulnerable position. The GOP-authored report will serve, say several Congress watchers who have been able to review it, as the basis for an official inquiry into what happened before, during and after the riot. The Capitol was not adequately protected, even as some members of the U.S. Capitol Police opened doors to allow demonstrators into the building while others were trying to prevent doors and windows from being breached. The security was not adequate, even though many, including some of the most vocal of the Democrats on Capitol Hill, say the events of the day were easy to foresee. Some people still want to know who did – or didn't do anything about it and why.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

READ NEXT: The Secret Sauce in the Schumer-Manchin Monstrosity >>