Why are Democrats ignoring the failures of the U.S. Capitol Police force during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021?
As one TIME national political correspondent noted in a Twitter thread this week, Capitol Police played a large role on Jan. 6, but most on the left are not addressing it.
“I’ve thought a lot about this: Was Jan. 6 an attempted coup or just a police breakdown? If the police had been properly prepared, Jan. 6 would have been just another rally, a day no one remembers,” she mused on Twitter.
It’s a question that has run through many minds, but few, especially those on the left, have dared to ask it aloud. Certainly, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s Jan. 6 committee hasn’t addressed it.
Capitol Police officials and even D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser have admitted that Jan. 6 exposed key failures of the law enforcement department, but so far, the biggest changes have occurred because more than 100 officers left the Capitol force since the riot. Their departures left the force depleted by nearly 400 officers short of what is required.
As ranking member of the Committee on House Administration Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., noted in a memo earlier this week, the Capitol Police Inspector General issued more than 100 recommendations to be adopted by the law enforcement officers following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, but “most have not been implemented” by the administration.
“The Capitol Police IG has said that the Capitol Police still doesn’t have adequate training, intelligence gathering, and [the] culture change it needs to protect members of staff in the Capitol as a whole,” Davis noted in a Republican House leadership press call on Monday.
Pelosi, in addition to completely ignoring Republican members’ questions about Capitol Police, has also failed to encourage House members to hold an oversight hearing for the new Chief of Capitol Police Thomas Manger, who assumed his position in August of 2021. Her appointee for sergeant at arms has also failed to answer questions about the Capitol Police breakdown on Jan. 6.
Corporate media aren’t off the hook either. Instead of scrutinizing why key changes meant to reinforce the strength of Capitol Police have yet to be implemented, they have propped up coverage of the overtly partisan Jan. 6 committee and smeared Republicans as “domestic terrorists.” Leftist-controlled press rushed to amplify clips of a teary-eyed Harry Dunn testifying about Jan. 6 on social media and in cable coverage while they overlooked the officer’s track record of defending the violent 2020 riots in Kenosha.
Outlets such as The New York Times also focused on directly lying to the public about Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died of natural causes, not via a fire extinguisher to the head as they reported, instead of asking tough questions about why police failed to keep rioters out of the building.
Democrats want to pin the sins of hundreds of violent fools on millions of American conservatives, and they will go to any lengths to do it. Legislators such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., claimed to fear for their lives on Jan. 6, but they aren’t actually doing much to ensure that the political violence that occurred within the Capitol last year will be stopped by the police tasked with protecting it if it happens again.
