WASHINGTON (CN) — Omissions in intelligence, lackluster security planning and botched leadership failed to prevent the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol in January, two Senate committees found Tuesday in what could very well be lawmakers' last wholly bipartisan effort to probe the events of Jan. 6.
An attempt to establish an independent commission to investigate the attack in depth — including what precipitated it — was blocked by Senate Republicans last week. Though Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said he may reintroduce legislation forming a commission down the line, such attempts, even if successful, are still unlikely to garner enough Republican support to get off the ground.
Compiled over five months, Tuesday's report is a joint effort from the Senate committees on Homeland Security and Rules. It zeroes in on just a few facets of the January 6 siege, namely the security planning at the Capitol on the day of the attack and how the breach could have been averted by “entities directly responsible for Capitol security,” like the U.S. Capitol Police and its board members including the House and Senate sergeants at arms and the architect of the Capitol.
The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense — all agencies tasked with communicating national security threats to U.S. Capitol Police — are singled out again and again across the report’s 95 pages.
It was, the senators found, a cumulative failure by those federal agencies to forgo issuing a threat warning or even a bulletin to law enforcement about what might lie ahead. And those omissions flew in the face of abundant indicators online that violence in Washington was actively being fomented if not imminent.
“FBI and DHS officials stressed the difficulty in discerning constitutionally protected free speech versus actionable, credible threats of violence,” the report notes.
Multiple posts were made online — and were known to Capitol Police — containing information about the plot to invade the Capitol on the day that lawmakers would certify the 2020 election results showing that former President Donald Trump lost handily to his Democratic challenger . Some of those posts featured maps of the Capitol complex and its tunnel systems. Other social media posts, like those found on the message board known 8kun, were more plain.
“You can go to Washington on Jan. 6 and help storm the Capital. As many Patriots as can be. We will storm the government buildings, kill cops, kill security guards, kill federal employees and agents, and demand a recount,” one person wrote.
On TheDonald.win, a forum that has since gone defunct, another poster wrote: “If we occupy the Capitol building, there will be no vote.”
Tuesday's report says the potential for unrest on Jan. 6 was known to the U.S. Capitol Police Intelligence and Interagency Coordination Division for weeks ahead. Indeed the Electoral College had declared Joe Biden to be America's next president a full month earlier based on his 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.
Incidentally, this was the same breakdown by which Trump had won election in 2016 — though in his case, while still losing the popular vote. Four years later, however, Trump nonetheless spent weeks before the attack falsely proclaiming online, on television and at campaign events that the 2020 election was stolen.
Other failures recounted in Tuesday's report include the lack by U.S. Capitol Police to set any “department-wide operational plan” nor “comprehensive staffing plan” for the Jan. 6 joint session. Notably, there was not even a record of where officers would physically be located at the ceremony.
Seven civil disturbance units were given special protective equipment like helmets, hardened plastic armor and shields to fend off the thousands of people who swarmed the building before finally overrunning it. Many USCP officers who “fought to defend the Capitol were left to do so in their daily uniforms,” the report states.
