Investigators: Pelosi Responsible For Jan. 6 Security Breakdown At U.S. Capitol

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi shoulders much of the blame for the security breakdown at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a preliminary report from Republican investigators Reps. Jim Banks and Rodney Davis determined.

The Capitol Police (USCP) were half-staffed on Jan. 6, Pelosi’s House Sergeant at Arms denied multiple requests for National Guard assistance from the Pentagon and the USCP Chief in the days leading up to Jan. 6, officers were poorly equipped and had insufficient riot shields and helmets, and they were never trained to handle a riot even after the riots of 2020, the investigation shows, according to Banks.

The Republicans’ full report is not slated to be released for a few weeks but Banks and Davis said the hyperpartisan Jan. 6 Committee’s attempt to present a “slanted viewpoint as if it were impartial fact” prompted them to release their findings that “will help Americans understand the extent of the Committee’s misrepresentations and omissions.”

“The Committee has lied and made numerous unsupported and disputed claims that have been thoughtlessly parroted by their media and ‘fact-checking’ allies,” said Banks and Davis.

No Republican-appointed members serve on the committee, and no minority rights have been granted or observed by the committee. Those breaches of House rules have led Administration Committee ranking member Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., to announce there will be an investigation of the J6 Committee itself once Republicans take control of the House, as they are expected to do following the November elections.

Despite the J6 Committee’s attempts to blame the Capitol riot on former President Donald Trump and election integrity supporters, the GOP members found that Pelosi, who is responsible for Capitol security according to House rules and has led the Democrat majority for years, repeatedly failed to implement necessary improvements to the Capitol’s security system.

“This inaction left the Capitol unnecessarily vulnerable,” Banks and Davis noted.

Banks and Davis pointed to an After-Action Report from Capitol Police showing that the law enforcement department reorganized its intelligence without authorization which left it without essential “open-source intelligence capabilities” and caused staffing changes that “may have contributed to the tragedy” on Jan. 6.

In light of this information, Banks and Davis added that “the USCP intelligence unit had knowledge of the potential for violence yet failed to adequately communicate the threat or take the necessary steps to protect the Capitol.”

Despite these shortcomings, the Republicans found that even though the USCP Union largely voted it had no confidence in its intelligence division supervisor, the supervisor was promoted to acting chief following the Capitol riot.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy picked Banks and Rep. Jim Jordan to represent Republicans on the committee last year but they were promptly booted off by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi who implied the GOP would hamper a “comprehensive investigation” into the Capitol riot.

Now Banks, Jordan, Davis, and the two other Republicans who were poised to join the Democrats’ show trial committee before McCarthy pulled them out, are leading their own investigation into the Capitol security breakdown that reviews information hardly touched by Pelosi’s picks who are running the show trial.

Banks noted in a recent interview with PBS NewsHour that despite gathering more than 100,000 pages of evidence, the J6 Committee has “only selectively offered the American people a very small part of it.”

“Never forget that this select committee has already been caught altering evidence. They’ve had to apologize for it,” Banks said. “It’s dishonorable that this isn’t a bipartisan effort to give the American people the facts and the findings.”

Banks has repeatedly criticized Pelosi’s handpicked committee as a “political witch hunt” focused on slandering conservatives, especially those who express concerns about election integrity, instead of getting to the bottom of what really happened on Jan. 6.

“Republicans were denied the right to meaningfully participate in the Democrats’ show trial, but as you know, the five of us are leading our own independent investigation into the total breakdown of security at the Capitol. Our mission is to answer simple questions about what happened that day that Democrats have ignored,” Banks and Davis said.

Republicans have committed to “launching a full investigation into the actions of the Select Committee and hold Speaker Pelosi accountable” assuming GOP gains in the House of Representatives in the November midterms.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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