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WILL WE EVER LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CAPITOL RIOT? It’s important to gather more facts about the Capitol riot — but it’s not going to be easy. Tuesday’s newsletter was headlined, “Finally, some answers about the Capitol riot?” It was written in anticipation of a hearing on the riot by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The hearing would feature testimony from Paul Irving, the former House Sergeant at Arms; Michael Stenger, the former Senate Sergeant at Arms; Steven Sund, the former chief of Capitol Police; and Robert Contee, the current chief of Washington DC’s Metropolitan Police Department. Surely the session would reveal previously unknown facts about the riot, especially in light of the Capitol Police’s virtual lockdown on releasing information.
Alas, it didn’t happen. Yes, the hearing did yield some news — in the form of the former officials pointing fingers at each other and at the FBI over whether authorities received sufficient warning that a potentially violent crowd threatened the Capitol. Sund, Irving, and Stenger disagreed over the timing of their conversations on January 6 regarding the seriousness of the situation and the need to call in the National Guard.
That’s part of broader, important issue, which is the state of knowledge of authorities in the days leading up to the Capitol riot. Remember that at the second Trump impeachment trial, Democratic House managers said that the riot was “foreseeable” and that authorities had clear advance knowledge. “Capitol Police and the FBI reported in the days leading up to the attack that thousands in the crowd would be targeting the Capitol specifically,” Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse told the Senate. Other House managers made the same point.
Were they telling the truth? It is important for Congress, and for the American people, to know.
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But there was so much that was not discussed at the Senate hearing. For example, the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. Initial reports said that rioters had killed Sicknick by hitting him on the head with a fire extinguisher. “With a bloody gash in his head, Mr. Sicknick was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support,” the New York Times reported on January 8. But it turned out that wasn’t true. Sicknick did not suffer any sort of obvious trauma. Indeed, more recent reports indicate that the medical examiner has had a difficult time determining Sicknick’s cause of death. That could be critical information if anyone is charged with killing Sicknick.
Sicknick was barely mentioned at the Senate hearing. Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar included his name with two Capitol Police officers who committed suicide to say that “the attack on the Capitol also cost the lives of three brave officers.” But she certainly did not inquire about the circumstances of death of any of them. And no other senator did, either.
That wasn’t the only question ignored in the hearing. Did the protesters have guns? Did police confiscate any firearms? How many Capitol Police officers were injured in the riot? What were their injuries? What about the investigation into the police shooting of rioter Ashli Babbitt? What is the result of that? Those and many other issues went unaddressed, even as senators of both parties had key former officials in front of them.
But the hearing was not the only bad sign for those who seek to learn more about the riot. For one thing, there is a growing controversy around retired Gen. Russel Honore, the man House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chose to do a preliminary investigation of the riot. The day after the riot, before he had examined any evidence, Honore said that House and Senate authorities were “stupid or ignorant or complicit,” adding, “I think they were complicit.” The more attention is paid to statements like that, the less credibility Honore will have as a finder of fact.
More concerning, there are signs that Pelosi intends to make the “9/11-type” commission that she envisions investigating the riot into a partisan exercise. Although the real 9/11 Commission was equally divided between members appointed by Republicans and members appointed by Democrats, Pelosi wants to give Democrats a seven-to-four advantage in appointing members to the Capitol riot commission. That suggests the Speaker, who was obsessed with pursuing Donald Trump as president, might intend to continue that pursuit with the commission — a kind of third impeachment by other means.
Put it all together, and it does not bode well for the public quickly learning key facts about the Capitol riot. The riot was more than seven weeks ago. At the moment, the public has been forced to piece together bits of information about it from the various criminal charges that have been filed against some participants. Americans should not have to wait until the creation of some new commission to find out what happened.
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