POINTING FINGERS IN RIOT
Congress hears cop agencies blame each other as pols begin dissecting mayhem
Law enforcement officials responsible for protecting the U.S. Capitol blamed poor intelligence, a halting Pentagon response and even each other on Tuesday for the abysmal security breach that allowed a pro-Trump mob to storm the historic building last month in a deadly attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Before the officials delivered their Senate testimony, a Capitol Police captain injured on Jan. 6 opened the hearing by offering a harrowing account of how the insurrectionists attacked her and other officers with “military-grade” tear gas.
“Officers received a lot of gas exposure, which is a lot worse inside the building versus outside, because there’s nowhere for it go,” said the captain, Carneysha Mendoza. “I received chemical burns to my face that still have not healed to this day.”
Speaking before Congress about Jan. 6 for the first time, the four officials — all of whom resigned in the aftermath of the attack except for Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee — defended their actions during the insurrection and said they could not have foreseen the events of that bloody day. However, they also acknowledged a string of shortcomings that paved the way for the riot, which left a Capitol Police officer and four others dead.
Steven Sund, the former chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, made the startling revelation that his agency received a “critical threat” memo from the FBI on Jan. 5 warning that far-right
extremists were preparing to unleash “war” the next day if Congress certified President Biden’s election — but the unnerving alert was never conveyed to Sund.
“I was just advised of that in the last 24 hours,” Sund said in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Rules committees. “That report made it ... to our intelligence bureau to a sergeant there and ceased moving forward at that point. No leadership, myself included, over at Capitol Police was made aware of that at the time.”
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Gary Peters (D-Mich.), whose panel is taking the lead on a preliminary review of the Jan. 6 riot, could barely believe his ears and asked Sund how that “vital” piece of intelligence was kept from him on the eve of the assault.
Sund blamed an intra-agency process necessitating that such “raw” intelligence be verified before it’s passed up the chain of command. “That information would have been helpful,” he conceded.
Moving on, Sund pointed fingers at former House and Senate Sergeants-at-Arms Paul Irving and Michael Stenger, who were both at the hearing, saying he had approached them about 1 p.m. on Jan. 6 about calling in the National Guard to help with security at the Capitol. But Irving rebutted that and said he didn’t hear from Sund until after 2 p.m., once rioters — egged on by ex- President Donald Trump’s command for them to “fight like hell” to block certification of Biden’s election — were already climbing the Capitol steps, wielding weapons, Confederate battle flags and zip ties.
Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, the top Republican on the Senate Rules Committee, said lawmakers may need to subpoena Sund and the other officials for phone records to clear up the discrepancies.
Like Sund, Irving, Stenger and Contee said they weren’t made aware of the Jan. 5 FBI alert before the attack.
Contee complained the FBI memo was emailed to his agency without much notice. That kind of intelligence “would warrant a phone call or something,” he said.
He testified about an infuriating conversation with Pentagon officials once the riot was underway.
Contee said Army brass were slow-walking his request for National Guard assistance as rioters were stampeding through the Capitol on the hunt for ex-Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other pols they deemed “traitors” to Trump. “I was just stunned..., Contee said.
It took several hours before National Guard troops eventually arrived at the Capitol.