House GOP report faults Nancy Pelosi for Jan. 6 security failures

Miranda Devine
House Republicans issued a scathing report Wednesday exposing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s key role in the catastrophic security and intelligence failures that left the US Capitol vulnerable to a violent attack on January 6, 2021.

Days after Pelosi’s Jan. 6 select committee recommended insurrection charges against former president Donald Trump over the Capitol riot, Republicans have hit back with a counter-investigation apportioning blame for the internal security breakdown on Jan. 6 to Pelosi and a dysfunctional Capitol Police intelligence division.

“Leadership and law enforcement failures within the U.S. Capitol left the complex vulnerable on January 6, 2021,” says the report, which is based on a trove of texts and email messages, and testimony from Capitol Police leaders and rank-and-file officers.

House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving, who answered to Pelosi as one of three voting members of the Capitol Police Board, “succumbed to political pressures from the Office of Speaker Pelosi and House Democrat leadership,” was “compromised by politics and did not adequately prepare for violence at the Capitol.”

Pelosi and her staff “coordinated closely” with Irving on security plans for the Joint Session of Congress on Jan. 6, but Republicans were deliberately left out of “important discussions related to security.”

And, in an apparent attempt to hide from Republicans the fact that they were being excluded from discussions, Irving asked a senior Democratic staffer to “act surprised” when he sent “key information about plans for the Joint Session on Jan. 6, 2021, to him and his Republican counterpart.”

The staffer replied sardonically: “I’m startled!”

The report also claims that “staff within the House Sergeant at Arms office emailed Paul Irving that January 6th was Pelosi’s fault,” although it provides no evidence for the assertion.

When Irving was forced to resign after the riot, an email from an unnamed staffer in his office criticized Pelosi’s “knee-jerk reaction to yesterday’s unprecedented event” and described his resignation as “spectacularly unjust, unfair, and unwarranted. This is not your fault. Or [Capitol Police chief Steven] Sund’s fault.”

The Republicans responsible for the withering report — Jim Banks (R-IN), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Rodney Davis (R-IL), Kelly Armstrong (R-ND) and Troy Nehls (R-TX) — are the five congressmen originally nominated to sit on the Jan. 6 committee, until Pelosi vetoed Banks and Jordan. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pulled the rest of his nominees in protest. Pelosi then installed two Never Trump Republican outcasts, Liz Cheney, and Adam Kinzinger.

Given Pelosi’s assiduous grooming of Cheney, no doubt it suited both their interests to focus the final Jan.6 committee report on Trump — and not on Pelosi’s culpability.

But now the Republicans Pelosi rejected have skewered her in their rival report, dredging up some of what she tried to hide, despite complaining of obstruction from the personnel she controls.
The report insinuates that the Speaker left the Capitol Police without backup on Jan. 6 because “widespread concern from Democratic leadership over ‘optics’ in the aftermath of the Summer 2020 ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests prevented early deployment of the National Guard.”