From a secure room in the Capitol on Jan. 6, as rioters pummeled police and vandalized the building, Vice President Mike Pence tried to assert control. In an urgent phone call to the acting defense secretary, he issued a startling demand.
“Clear the Capitol,” Pence said.
Elsewhere in the building, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were making a similarly dire appeal to military leaders, asking the Army to deploy the National Guard.
“We need help,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said in desperation, more than an hour after the Senate chamber had been breached.
At the Pentagon, officials were discussing media reports that the mayhem was not confined to Washington and that other state capitals were facing similar violence in what had the makings of a national insurrection.
“We must establish order,” said Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a call with Pentagon leaders.
But order would not be restored for hours.
These new details about the deadly riot are contained in a previously undisclosed document prepared by the Pentagon for internal use that was obtained by The Associated Press and vetted by current and former government officials.
The timeline adds another layer of understanding about the state of fear and panic while the insurrection played out, and lays bare the inaction by then-President Donald Trump and how that void contributed to a slowed response by the military and law enforcement. It shows that the intelligence missteps, tactical errors and bureaucratic delays were eclipsed by the government’s failure to comprehend the scale and intensity of a violent uprising by its own citizens.
With Trump not engaged, it fell to Pentagon officials, a handful of senior White House aides, the leaders of Congress and the vice president holed up in a secure bunker to manage the chaos.
Is it just a tiny bit plausible that we got "lucky" because the vast majority of people in the crowd, misguided and repulsive (to most of us here) as can be, weren't really out to pillage and burn the Capitol and really weren't aiming to actually lynch Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi. Perhaps most of the crowd were thrill-seekers, not police killers and hardline purposeful revolutionaries. Maybe this wasn't Lenin's ideologically-driven and organized cadres overthrowing the provisional government in October.
Mr. Horny and the jackass who put his feet up on Pelosi's desk are the revolutionaries who can't shoot straight. The shock troops who seem driven by the acclaim of their stupid buddies rather than by an ideology worth dying for. Maybe our "luck" is in the disorganization and atavism of the vast bulk of Trump's most avid supporters. This group of bovines could be herded into the halls of the Capitol, where they mostly sat around taking selfies and taking a sh!t. Our luck is that the number of people truly motivated to overthrow the government and kill members of Congress was tiny, and they didn't/couldn't act decisively, or at all.
Posts: 12759 | Location: Williamsburg, VA | Registered: 19 July 2005
The Capitol Police had clearer advance warnings about the Jan. 6 attack than were previously known, including the potential for violence in which “Congress itself is the target.” But officers were instructed by their leaders not to use their most aggressive tactics to hold off the mob, according to a scathing new report by the agency’s internal investigator.
In a 104-page document, the inspector general, Michael A. Bolton, criticized the way the Capitol Police prepared for and responded to the mob violence on Jan. 6. The report was reviewed by The New York Times and will be the subject of a Capitol Hill hearing on Thursday.
Mr. Bolton found that the agency’s leaders failed to adequately prepare despite explicit warnings that pro-Trump extremists posed a threat to law enforcement and civilians and that the police used defective protective equipment. He also found that the leaders ordered their Civil Disturbance Unit to refrain from using its most powerful crowd-control tools — like stun grenades — to put down the onslaught.
The report offers the most devastating account to date of the lapses and miscalculations around the most violent attack on the Capitol in two centuries.
Three days before the siege, a Capitol Police intelligence assessment warned of violence from supporters of President Donald J. Trump who believed his false claims that the election had been stolen. Some had even posted a map of the Capitol complex’s tunnel system on pro-Trump message boards.
“Unlike previous postelection protests, the targets of the pro-Trump supporters are not necessarily the counterprotesters as they were previously, but rather Congress itself is the target on the 6th,” the threat assessment said, according to the inspector general’s report. “Stop the Steal’s propensity to attract white supremacists, militia members, and others who actively promote violence may lead to a significantly dangerous situation for law enforcement and the general public alike.”
But on Jan. 5, the agency wrote in a plan for the protest that there were “no specific known threats related to the joint session of Congress.” And the former chief of the Capitol Police has testified that the force had determined that the likelihood of violence was “improbable.”
Mr. Bolton concluded such intelligence breakdowns stemmed from dysfunction within the agency and called for “guidance that clearly documents channels for efficiently and effectively disseminating intelligence information to all of its personnel.”
Jon Schaffer, a heavy metal guitarist and self-described "lifetime member" of the Oath Keepers, on Friday became the first Capitol rioter to plead guilty to charges based on his participation in the attack and has entered into a cooperation agreement with the government.
The move from Schaffer came at an unannounced proceeding before U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta on Friday morning. During a lengthy plea dialogue with Metha, Schaffer acknowledged that the deal requires him to "cooperate fully with the United States," from sitting for interviews to providing any evidence he has of known crimes. As part of the agreement, the Justice Department has offered to sponsor Schaffer for the witness protection program, Mehta noted.
Schaffer, who was seen on camera deploying chemical spray at officers, pleaded guilty to charges that he obstructed Congress' effort to certify the 2020 election results and that he unlawfully entered a restricted building.
How the effort to deny the reality of the Jan. 6 attack is evolving.
There were bozos, there were also highly organized troops and there is video evidence of those troops using sophisticated methods to achieve their goals.
-------------------------------- Several people have eaten my cooking and survived.
Posts: 25850 | Location: Still living at 9000 feet in the High Rockies of Colorado | Registered: 20 April 2005
Former President Donald Trump mounted an intense pressure campaign on the U.S. Justice Department to overturn his election defeat in his final weeks in office, the department's head during that time testified to lawmakers, a senior Senate Democrat said on Sunday.
Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen provided "invaluable" testimony during seven hours of closed-door testimony on Saturday, in which he implicated Trump in an attempt to subvert the election result, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin told CNN's "State of the Union."
According to Durbin, Rosen testified that Trump directly pressured him to falsely assert that continuing election fraud investigations cast doubt on President Joe Biden's victory.
"It was real. Very real. And it was very specific," Durbin said of Trump's pressure on Rosen. "The former president is not subtle when he wants something."
Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, praised Rosen, a conservative lawyer, for his voluntary cooperation with the committee's ongoing investigation into Trump's actions after the election.
"I have to say history is going to very kind to Mr. Rosen when this is all over. When he was initially appointed, I didn't think that was the case. I was wrong," Durbin said, adding: "It's a good thing for America we had someone like Rosen in that position."
