The Jan. 6 committee wants former President Donald Trump charged for the riot that occurred at the U.S. Capitol.
But a group of House Republicans countered on Wednesday that Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi deserves plenty of blame for the events that unfolded that day.
According to the conservative website JustTheNews.com, a handful of GOP lawmakers uncovered a trove of communications from Pelosi’s staff that showed the San Francisco Democrat’s office was intimately involved in crafting the security plan that failed on Jan. 6, 2021.
That, coupled with a reshuffling of the U.S. Capitol Police intelligence staff and priorities, revealed evidence that Capitol security personnel were ill-prepared to protect the seat of America’s republic. The report was compiled by Republican Reps. Rodney Davis, Jim Banks, Troy Nehls, Jim Jordan, and Kelly Armstrong.
The Capitol complex “was left vulnerable on Jan. 6 as a result of failures by the Democratic leadership in the House and law enforcement leaders in the Capitol Police who allowed concerns about the ‘optics’ of having armed officers and National Guardsmen visible to the public to override the need for enhanced security,” Just The News reported.
The GOP lawmakers noted that their probe uncovered that the USCP “had obtained sufficient information from an array of channels to anticipate and prepare for the violence that occurred.”
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Yet Democrats have “disregarded” this part of the Jan. 6 narrative that illustrates the “institutional failings that exposed the Capitol to violence that day.”
The report did not excuse or forgive the rioters. Those “criminal rioters assaulted police officers, broke into the U.S. Capitol, damaged property, and temporarily interfered with the certification of states’ presidential and vice presidential electors at the Joint Session of Congress — a typically pro forma event,” the Republicans’ report noted.
Still, Pelosi and/or her staff were as much to blame for opening that opportunity to them.
Then-house sergeant at arms Paul Irving “took direction from staff in the office of the Speaker of the House and intentionally excluded Republicans from key meetings and conversations related to House security,” the Republican lawmakers wrote.
“Staff within the House Sergeant at Arms office emailed Paul Irving that January 6th was Pelosi’s fault.”
Just The News noted that emails and text messages uncovered by the report’s authors showed two of Pelosi’s staff began meeting with Irving about the security plan, which was edited by Pelosi’s top staffer.
The GOP lawmakers allege Irving “succumbed to political pressures” from Pelosi’s staff to not only allow them to make changes in the security protocols but to keep Republicans out of the loop.
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Moreover, concerns from leading Democrats about the “optics” of a heavily armed security presence following the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots caused the National Guard to be sidelined before the protests started.
The report also alleges that Pelosi lied when she said publicly a month after the riots that she had “no power” over the USCP.
As examples of her misleading comment, the report noted Pelosi was directly responsible for the installation of metal detectors inside the Capitol and for the unscalable fence erected around the Capitol campus for nearly a year after the riot.
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