Part of the process of justice for last week's attempted coup has to involve a through investigation into what the military, intelligence and police knew about Trump's plot to incite a violent terrorist mob to stop the electoral vote count with deadly force. The evidence was overwhelming that something terrible was going to happen, and failure after failure occurred that could have resulted in the deaths of dozens of lawmakers and staffers. It's time to know what the Capitol Police were told, and who told them what.
The FBI and the New York City Police Department passed information to U.S. Capitol Police about the possibility of violence during the protests Wednesday against the counting of the Electoral College vote, and the FBI even visited more than a dozen extremists already under investigation to urge them not to travel to Washington, senior law enforcement officials said.
The previously unreported details undercut the assertion by a top FBI official that officials had no indication that violence was a possibility, and they add to questions about what intelligence authorities had reviewed before the Capitol riot, which led to the death of an officer and four other people, including a rioter who was shot and killed by police.
"Social media is just part of a full intelligence picture, and while there was First Amendment-protected activity on social media to include some people making threats, to this point, investigators have not found that there was an organized plot to access the Capitol," a senior FBI official said.
It was immediately obvious after the Capitol was seized by a violent mob Wednesday that Capitol Police, whose job is to defend the facility and the lawmakers who work there, had completely misjudged the security threat. The chief of the force was quickly forced out of his job, as were other key legislative security officials.
As evidence mounts that some extremists had told the world what they had in mind through social media, questions are emerging about whether the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies took the postings seriously enough — and why, if they did, they didn't step in until well after the building was under attack.
Asked Friday whether the slow police response Wednesday was the result of an intelligence failure, the official who leads the FBI's Washington field office, Steven D'Antuono, said no. "There was no indication that there was anything [planned] other than First Amendment-protected activity," he said.
First Amendment-protected activity.
They're going to cover their failures with "well, free speech, so we couldn't have done a thing."
Guess next time we have to wait until even more Capitol Police die defending the country from insurrection.
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