WASHINGTON, D.C. – A new Senate report shows that U.S. Capitol Police were informed of the threats toward Congress, but failed to act on them on January 6th.
In the report, the Capitol Police, and the FBI had learned of the threats from social media posts, and a website with the domain name of thedonald.win.
The website contained information about the tunnel system at the Capitol, hundreds of social media posts discussing plans of how protesters would move on the Capitol, and talk about how to overwhelm the Capitol Police.
The report mentions many of the posts within the website came from Trump supporters who were planning to stop what they viewed as the certification of a fraudulent election, but neither the FBI or the DHS considered the threats and plans of attack to be credible.
According to the report, the day before the riots, FBI’s field office in Norfolk, Virginia passed along information about the attacks describing protesters were heading to Congress, but could not attribute the threats to one person and considered the threats as “information off the Internet.”
Although this was the warning the Capitol Police received, they did nothing with the information or inform any of the police officers on the front line.
The report includes officers on the front line of the riots who said they were very upset with the communication from command. The report does not include names of the officers.
One officer said, “I felt like I was alone and I felt like I had to make my own decisions.”
The report shows another officer said, “I was horrified that NO deputy chief or above was on the radio or helping us. For hours the screams on the radio were horrific. The sights were unimaginable and there was a complete loss of control… For hours NO Chief or above took command and control. Officers were begging and pleading for help for medical triage.”
The report focuses on current acting Capitol Police chief, Yoganonda Pittman, who was deputy in charge of the force’s three intelligence components in the months leading up to the riot. Former chief Stephen Sund was forced to resign after the riots.
The report says Pittman contradicted herself when she told lawmakers on Jan. 26 that “We knew there was a strong potential for violence and that Congress was the target,” but then a month later said that there had not been any “specific, credible threat that thousands of protestors would descend on the Capitol with the intent to disrupt the Electoral College vote certification.”
The report shows that officers do not recall having heard Sund on the radio at any point during the attack and only heard Pittman one time to announce a lockdown of the Capitol at 2 p.m.
The report says Capitol Police officers told the committees that they had not been informed of the possibility of a violent protest on Jan. 6.
The report also included the delay in the Pentagon deciding to deploy the National Guard.
The committee working on the report did not find evidence that former President Donald Trump caused the delayed response.
The report says the Pentagon’s late response was “informed by criticism” of the National Guard’s response to the protests last summer related to the murder of George Floyd.
The Capitol Police have released a statement where they welcome the report and want to improve its operations moving forward, but said “neither the USCP, nor the FBI, U.S. Secret Service, Metropolitan Police or our other law enforcement partners knew thousands of rioters were planning to attack the U.S. Capitol. The known intelligence simply didn’t support that conclusion.”
This is a developing story, which means information could change. We are working to report timely and accurate information as we get it.
