Read the original article: What Did We Learn From House and Senate Hearings on the Capitol Assault?
Over the past two months, Congress has convened a series of hearings on the failures that enabled the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. During approximately 20 hours of questioning over eight hearings, lawmakers in both houses of Congress heard from an array of current and former officials on what went wrong. The testimony the witnesses gave was dense. And at times, witnesses offered competing accounts of the events that took place and deflected blame for their agencies’ lack of preparation.
Though notable, these inconsistencies and witnesses’ occasional equivocation only marginally detracted from the value of the congressional proceedings. Taken together, the House and Senate hearings appreciably enriched the factual record and offered important insight into how lawmakers, Capitol security officials and federal agencies are thinking about correcting the errors that led to the breach of Congress.
Many questions about the insurrection and the changes that will follow remain unanswered. Still, it’s clear from the hearings that an array of failures—of intelligence sharing and collection, communication, and law enforcement training—left Capitol and D.C. Metropolitan Police, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security astonishingly unprepared for the scale of the violence they witnessed on Jan. 6.
The Committees Leading Public Questioning
Four panels have convened the hearings that have occurred thus far. As part of their ongoing joint oversight investigation, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) and the Senate Rules and Administration Committee held two hearings on Feb. 23 and March 3. The first featured testimony from the former House and Senate sergeants-at-arms, the former chief of Capitol Police and the acting chief of D.C. Metropolitan Police; the second featured testimony from the commanding general of the D.C. National Guard and officials from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Pentagon. On March 2, the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned the seniormost witness yet to testify: FBI Director Christopher Wray.
In Congress’s lower chamber, the House Appropriations Legislative Branch Subcommittee has held five hearings. Three of those dealt exclusively with the Capitol assault, allowing lawmakers to grill the acting chief of Capitol Police, the acting House sergeant-at-arms, the architect of the Capitol and other House officials on Feb. 18, 24 and 25. The remaining two hearings, held on March 3 and 11, concerned the fiscal 2022 budget requests of the Capitol Police and the architect of the Capitol, and offered insight into how those officials plan to adjust their operations in light of the insurrection.
What did the hearings reveal?
Failures in Intelligence Collection and Sharing
Lawmakers dedicated significant portions of time during the hearings to determining what Capitol Police, D.C. Metropolitan Police, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security knew before Jan. 6, and how they assessed the available threat intelligence.
Capitol Police Intelligence
In testimony before the Senate on Feb. 23, Steven Sund, the former Capitol Police chief, stated that the department’s review of available intelligence led it to conclude that the “Save America” demonstrations on Jan. 6 would largely “be similar to the previous Million MAGA March rallies” held in D.C. in November and December 2020, which he said “drew tens of thousands of participants.” Sund acknowledged that Capitol Police expected extremist groups to attend the Jan. 6 protests, and that those groups “may be inclined to become violent.” But Sund indicated that, unlike prior demonstrations, the department understood the “Capitol itself” to be the “focus” of the Jan. 6 activity and believed the assembled crowd would “be somewhat different in size and risk.”
In testimony before the House Appropriations Legislative Branch Subcommittee on Feb. 25, Yogananda Pittman, the acting Capitol Police chief, added that the department knew many Jan. 6 demonstrators “planned to be armed.” On Jan. 3, the department’s intelligence division issued a special assessment outlining these findings. But on Jan. 4, 5 and 6, it nonetheless put out “Daily Intelligence Reports” characterizing the possibility of violence as “remote” or “improbable.”
The Norfolk Report
Pressed
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Read the original article: What Did We Learn From House and Senate Hearings on the Capitol Assault?