New questions surface about why Pelosi refused Trump’s offer of troops on Jan. 6
Questions about why then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused President Trump’s offer of National Guard troops to secure the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, are being raised – again – after a government report faulted a number of law enforcement agencies for allowing the riot to develop that day.
Pelosi, and Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, refused Trump’s offer of additional security that day – and hundreds of people rioted, some breaking into the Capitol to vandalize it and others walking past security guards who held doors open for them and taking selfies in the building.
The trigger for the riot was the belief that the 2020 presidential election had been corrupted.
A report from Just the News, which has pursued a multitude of reports on the issue, said the Government Accountability Office reported that Capitol Police, FBI and eight other federal agencies gathered intelligence “that extremists were planning to commit violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 but failed to adequately adapt security or get threat assessments to key decision-makers and frontline officers.”
The report said, “Some agencies did not fully process information or share it, preventing critical information from reaching key federal entities responsible for securing the National Capital Region against threats.”
The conclusions immediately triggered questions inside Congress on the failure by Pelosi to act. As House speaker she had responsibility to oversee the security of the building.
The report said the GAO found fault with all 10 agencies it reviewed, but blasted the Capitol Police “for leaving frontline officers unaware of the threat they faced when they went to work.”
“Capitol Police did not share threat products with its frontline officers,” the GAO said. “The Capitol Police and Park Police did not process threat products to include all relevant information, which resulted in incomplete assessments and conclusions in the products. Both agencies, in addition to the Capitol Police Board, also did not share all relevant information internally.”
The GAO warned it now is important to change the processes that failed.
Just the News revealed, too, that Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., cited the concerns that a special House committee set up by Pelosi, and consisting of only harsh critics of President Trump, did not address. In fact, that committee never addressed the apparent failure on the part of Pelosi to provide adequate security that day.
Norman, during an interview on “Just the News, No Noise,” television program, said, “Some of the police were involved. Unfortunately, some of the FBI agents were involved. The information they had, they had a blueprint for what was going to happen, and they didn’t think about it and look at the consequences.”
Former Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and said following the riot he had been given information by police “that there were intelligence and security failures but Democrats under former Speaker Nancy Pelosi suffocated the release of such information publicly,” the report said.
“There’s no secrets in Washington when you do something really stupid, like they did, like Pelosi did,” he said. “It looks like, at least from first glance, [the GAO] actually are telling the truth for once, which is great.”
The GAO also warned the FBI failed to process information from social media platforms and failed to share information.
Other targets of the report included the Homeland Security Department.
Just the News reported, “The report validated months of reporting by Just the News about the details that law enforcement forwarded to Capitol Police as early as a month before Jan. 6, citing several instances surfaced by Just the News stories, including, for example, a tip the Capitol Police received on Jan. 5, 2021, regarding plans to block and confront Democratic members of Congress from entering the Capitol through the tunnel system via the basement of the Library of Congress.”
