WASHINGTON (CN) — Top security officials defended the deployment delay of the National Guard to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 during a tense oversight hearing Tuesday where lawmakers pored over the litany of intelligence failures pockmarking the deadly day.
Seeking clarification about what transpired among law enforcement and defense officials on and before the attack on Jan. 6, House Oversight Committee chairwoman Carolyn Maloney laced into FBI director Christopher Wray.
An abundance of violent messages and posts littered social media platforms in the weeks leading up to riots with some of the more explicit missives and threats appearing on Parler, a largely right-wing social media site that quickly became a cyber watering hole for some of former President Donald Trump’s most ardent — and extreme — supporters.
“There was information on radio, television, social media streams. The system was blinking red,” Maloney said to Wray.
Parler informed Maloney in March that it had referred threats of impending violent activity to the FBI over 50 times. Some of those messages were more overt than others, including ones that Parler flagged stating: “This is not a rally and it’s no longer a protest. This is a final stand where we are drawing the red line at Capitol Hill” and “Trump needs us to cause chaos to enact the Insurrection Act.”
Wray testified, under oath, that he could not recall seeing it but believed the Parler warning went to an FBI field office. Regardless of that, he said, before the attack, the FBI sent out intelligence bulletins that “raised awareness” about the threat of domestic violent extremism looming on the horizon.
“Our goal is to bat 1.000 and any time there’s an attack, much less an attack as horrific and spectacular as what happened on Jan. 6, we consider that to be unacceptable,” Wray said before agreeing to provide an assessment to the committee specific to the FBI’s response on Jan. 6.
Lieutenant General Walter Piatt, director of U.S. Army staff and General Charles Flynn — brother to disgraced General Michael Flynn and leader of the U.S. Army Pacific since June 4 — also testified under oath Tuesday. Both men were involved at critical junctures on Jan. 6 as U.S. Capitol Police clamored for back up while the complex was overrun and officers brutalized.
Piatt told the panel it took several hours for National Guardsmen to be deployed because they were not prepared or in position to respond to a violent mob. But when he was on the phone with Capitol Police officials and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser during the melee, Piatt was adamant he did not deny any request for the guard to assist.
He just needed approval, he said.
General Flynn corroborated Piatt’s account, saying Piatt exuded the “calm demeanor” of someone with combat experience reacting to an “otherwise violent and unpredictable event” as he spoke to frantic-sounding officials.
Flynn was not on the call himself but overheard it for minutes as Piatt used the speaker function. Flynn told legislators he heard no political considerations weighed.
“When people’s lives are on the line two minutes is too long,” Piatt said, reflecting on the call. “But we were not positioned for that urgent request. We had to re-prepare so we could send them in prepared for this new mission.”
Records from the U.S. Capitol Police indicate that the first of at least a dozen requests for help from the department’s chief of police to the Defense Department began at 1:30 p.m. on Jan 6. Both Piatt and Flynn confirmed it took over an hour just to gain approval for deployment and then another three hours before the guard was sent out. The guard did not arrive until nearly 5:30 p.m., long after the violence had subsided and one person, Ashli Babbitt, was already dead.
Babbitt, a U.S. Air Force veteran, is seen on video footage donning a Trump flag over her shoulders as she attempts to push through a broken window pane in the Speaker’s Lobby, a section deep inside the Capitol where she was just inches away from accessing the House floor.
An officer opened fire on Babbitt, shooting her in the shoulder. The officer was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing in her death this April.
“In an emergency, every minute matters,” Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, remarked Tuesday before noting it was quite literally a single minute that separated former Vice President Mike Pence from frenzied rioters pouring into the Capitol and clamoring for his death — by hanging.
Video recordings from Jan. 6 show Secret Service officers whisking Pence off the Senate floor barely 60 seconds before a mostly white mob bounded up a flight of stairs to his location. They were only deflected when Eugene Goodman, a lone Black U.S. Capitol Police officer, deftly lured them away.
On Tuesday, as lawmakers on the committee heard testimony, the House passed a bill, 406-21, granting the Congressional Gold Medal to Goodman and all officers who responded to the mob that nearly overran them as well as the seat of the federal government.
Only the House’s most staunch Republicans — and notably, mostly longtime loyalists to the former president — voted against the bill, including Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, both of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas and others.
Republicans have blocked the formation of a bipartisan commission to study the events of Jan. 6 but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Tuesday she is actively considering the creation of a select committee that would be spearheaded by Democrats. Though Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said earlier this month when the bill failed in the Senate that he would consider holding another vote since the commission was tanked by just 10 Republicans, Pelosi said Tueday: “We can’t wait any longer. We will proceed.”
All told, seven people died as a result of the siege. In addition to Babbitt, two police officers died by suicide in the aftermath and another U.S. Capitol Police officer, Brian Sicknick, died after the clash, collapsing from what a medical examiner deemed as natural causes. Three of the former president’s supporters also died after suffering medical emergencies.
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