Former President Donald Trump has long maintained that much of the failure to secure the Capitol during the fateful events of Jan. 6, 2021, was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s fault. Now it looks like Trump was right, again.
This week, five House Republicans released a trove of text and email messages that the Democrats have gone to great lengths to ignore showing that Pelosi was directly involved with the creation and implementation of the Capitol Hill security plan that was such a disastrous failure during the Capitol incursion of Jan. 6.
The records also show that California Democrat “denied again and again” the resources needed to protect Congress and the surrounding government office buildings linked by tunnel to the nation’s capital, according to the report.
The 141-page document — titled “Report of Investigation: Security Failures at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021” — was released Wednesday.
The probe was a direct response to the partisan witch hunt of Pelosi’s select committee on Jan. 6, which featured seven Democrats and two fiercely anti-Trump Republicans.
The report is the result of months of combing through the records the Democrat-led committee ignored after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy gave the go-ahead to look into the evidence to Republican Reps. Rodney Davis of Illinois, Jim Banks of Indiana, Troy Nehls of Texas, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota.
It concluded that the security breach on Jan. 6 was a result of failures by House Democratic leaders and law enforcement officials in the Capitol Police Department who allowed “optics” about seeing armed officers in the Capitol override security issues.
“Leadership and law enforcement failures within the U.S. Capitol left the complex vulnerable on January 6, 2021. The Democrat-led investigation in the House of Representatives, however, has disregarded those institutional failings that exposed the Capitol to violence that day,” the report says.
The report also found that signals of the potential for violence during the weeks around Joe Biden’s inauguration and the certification of the election were ignored — facts the Jan. 6 committee refused to note.
“Prior to that day, the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) had obtained sufficient information from an array of channels to anticipate and prepare for the violence that occurred,” the report says.
Report on Jan. 6 by The Western Journal
The Democrats have spent two years denying that the House speaker and her fellows had any part in the failure on Jan. 6. Indeed, only a month after the incursion, Pelosi said, “I have no power over the Capitol Police.”
This is obviously untrue.
“The reason there wasn’t a proper security presence on that day goes right to the speaker’s staff and the speaker’s office,” Jordan said, according to Just the News.
The documents uncovered by the GOP investigation show two of Pelosi’s key staffers regularly attended security meetings with the Capitol police and were fully aware of all the threats and the plans to meet them. In some cases, the speaker’s office even contributed to editing the plans to write them up for implementation.
Also, the first man Pelosi fired after Jan. 6, House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving, “coordinated closely with the Speaker and her staff and left Republicans out of important discussions related to security,” the report says.
Indeed, Irving had pleaded with Pelosi to increase security and approve funding to use the D.C. National Guard when necessary, but she rebuffed him, according to the report.
House Republicans led by @GOPLeader, @RepJimBanks, and @RepTroyNehls released a report today showing that Nancy Pelosi’s staff had regular meetings setting up J6 security, & turned down requests from USCP and House Sergeant at Arms for more funding and National Guard troops. Wow.
— Alex Bruesewitz 🇺🇸 (@alexbruesewitz) December 22, 2022
Just the News added, “Capitol Police whistleblowers told the congressmen there were ample and detailed warnings that violence would occur on Jan. 6, but the leadership of the Capitol Police failed to adjust the security plan to address the threat while the political leadership in Congress repeatedly refused to provide resources to secure the building.”
The U.S. Capitol Police issued a statement Wednesday after the GOP report had been released, according to the outlet. It did not dispute a single word in the document, saying only that it was committed to making the necessary changes to prevent any future incursions.
“For nearly two years our officers, officials and civilian employees have been working around the clock to address many of these findings and similar findings from a series of post January 6 reviews,” the department said.
“[W]e value everyone’s input and we are confident the U.S. Capitol Complex is more secure because of the hard work of our brave men and women and because of the resources provided by the Congress to turn recommendations into results,” it said, according to Just the News.
The outlet reported Pelosi’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
“Our report exposes the partisanship, incompetence and indifference that led to the disaster on January 6 and it the leading role Speaker Pelosi and her office played in the security failure at the Capitol,” Banks said, according to Just the News.
“Unlike the sham January 6th Committee, House Republicans produced a useful report that will keep out Capitol and USCP officers safe with no subpoena power and no budget,” he said.
The paper trail linking the failures of security directly to Pelosi’s office spurred calls for the speaker to be held accountable.
Nancy Pelosi is directly to blame for the security failures at the Capitol on January 6th.
She blamed everyone else now she must pay the price.https://t.co/gmiz9P3Rvq
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) December 21, 2022
If Pelosi’s Jan. 6 committee is going to file “criminal referrals” to the Department of Justice for indictments over the “insurrection,” one would hope that something might be in there to indict the speaker herself.