Did law enforcement miss the Jan. 6 warnings or ignore them?
Press critic Dan Froomkin asks again why the press shies from addressing evidence that law enforcement in the Capitol ignored warnings of violence planned for Jan. 6.
The January 6th Committee in what may be its final hearing on Thursday revealed a series of messages uncovered in Secret Service communications. The Service infamously deleted texts from Jan. 6 that (per public knowledge) have never been recovered. However, the Committee did obtain nearly one million other communications agents sent from the period leading up to Jan. 6.
Presenting some of the evidence Thursday, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) displayed multiple examples of messages demonstrating that President Trump, the White House, the Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies had advance warning of violence planned against the Capitol for Jan. 6.
“Days before January 6, the President’s senior advisers at the Department of Justice and FBI, for example, received an intelligence summary that included material indicating that certain people traveling to Washington were making plans to attack the Capitol,” Schiff said.
Another email showed that the Secret Service had been alerted “more than 10 days beforehand regarding the Proud Boys’ planning for January 6,” Schiff continued.
“On a call with President Trump’s White House national security staff in early January 2021, Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist had warned about the potential that the Capitol would be the target of the attack,” Schiff said, adding:
In fact, as we have seen, the Secret Service and other agencies knew of the prospect of violence well in advance of the president’s speech at the Ellipse. Despite this, certain White House and Secret Service witnesses previously testified that they had received no intelligence about violence that could have potentially threatened any of the protectees on January 6th, including the vice president.
Evidence strongly suggests that this testimony is not credible …
The Committee may recall those witnesses and afford them a chance to “amend” their previous testimony, plead the 5th Amendment, or cooperate.
A Washington Post report observed:
The evidence presented at the hearing adds the Secret Service to a long list of national security agencies who received prescient warnings about the assault protesters planned for Jan. 6, yet failed to respond with urgency or cohesion to prevent the insurrection.
The question still unaddressed, Froomkin asks, is why.
One hint may lie in an email NBC News obtained that was sent to FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate on Jan. 13 regarding agency reaction to the riot (Esquire):
“a sizable percentage of the employee population that felt sympathetic to the group that stormed the Capitol, and said it was no different than the BLM protests of last summer. Several also lamented that the only reason this violent activity is getting more attention is because of “political correctness”. Here’s a sampling of what is happening across multiple field offices: I literally had to explain to an agent from a “blue state” office the difference between opportunists burning & looting during protests that stemmed legitimate grievance to police brutality vs. an insurgent mob whose purpose was to prevent the execution of democratic processes at the behest of a sitting president. One is a smattering of criminals, the other is an organized group of domestic terrorists. I was talking to an A/SSA in a “red state” office who was telling me that over 70% of his CT squad + roughly 75% of the agent population in his office, disagreed with the violence “but could understand where the frustration was coming from” which led to the “protestors getting carried away”. An analyst in “purple state” described watching horrified as the events were unfolding on the news, while several co-workers chalked up the insurgency as a “response to everyone being quarantined at home for months and more on edge, because so many lost their jobs and lack steady income because of COVID.”
That email presaged the most chilling aspect of Thursday’s hearing, namely, the barely concealed subtext that agents of the FBI and Secret Service may have been complicit in the violence of January 6, if only by standing back and letting it happen, or by ignoring or slow-walking intelligence they had in advance of the riot. (Two Secret Service agents were practically accused of having lied to the committee.) One particular tip to the Secret Service stood out for its plaintive appeal for someone to do something. People were coming to the Capitol armed, the tipster said, adding, “Please take this tip seriously and investigate further.” It’s unclear whether anyone ever did. If anyone had a worse day on Capitol Hill Thursday than the former president* did, it was FBI Director Christopher Wray and the upper echelons of the Secret Service.
Froomkin wrote in May:
The newest GAO report requested by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection adds to a mountain of evidence that federal law enforcement agencies didn’t miss signs of a violent attack on the Capitol, they ignored them.
Why they ignored them remains one of the biggest unanswered questions related to the day’s events.
Actually, it’s worse than an unanswered question, it’s also a largely unasked question. Media coverage of this particular issue has been shockingly weak, and has produced no credible explanation.
It’s a strange blind spot for the reporters who have so assiduously examined seemingly every other factor in the insurrection. My conclusion, after 16 months of trying to get them to pay attention to it, is that they are too squeamish to confront this issue head-on.
We don’t want to be seen as not supporting law enforcement. Even when law enforcement does not support us.
Update: Just found the Harwood tweet.
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