Fox News’ Tucker Carlson highlighted Democrat former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s culpability in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot Tuesday night with newly obtained footage of the events.
Pelosi, who was in charge of Capitol security as speaker, failed to keep the congressional police force adequately prepared to handle mass demonstrations, according to a congressional investigation. House Republicans tasked with investigating the riot after the speaker barred them from the official Select Committee on Jan. 6 outlined Pelosi’s negligence in their minority report published in December. Pelosi’s deputies on the House panel, however, shielded the speaker from scrutiny throughout the probe.
“You may notice that the one person, really, who was never blamed for anything that happened on January 6th, was the very same person who was in charge of the police force, the Capitol Hill police that was charged with security safety on January 6th,” Carlson said. “That person was Nancy Pelosi.”
“So if there was a security failure on January 6th, which, demonstrably there was, it was probably Nancy Pelosi’s fault,” Carlson added. “After looking at thousands of hours of footage, we came to the conclusion that many others have reached, which is the Capitol Police were not prepared for what happened.”
Federal intelligence agencies, including the Capitol Police, warned about the potential for turmoil as Congress certified the 2020 election results. The FBI has refused to answer Republican senators’ questions about the extent of the agency’s involvement in the riot.
The prime-time cable host interviewed former Capitol Police Officer Tarik Johnson, who served on the police force for 22 years before he was forced to resign in the riot’s aftermath.
Johnson, a frontline officer on the day of the riot, told Carlson that Capitol Police superiors repeatedly ignored his pleas for help as demonstrators breached the building’s barriers. According to Johnson, the department’s chief officer in charge of intelligence operations, Yogananda Pittman, kept important information from those on the frontlines of the protests.
“We should have been better prepared that day, and we could have been better prepared that day if the information was disseminated like it was supposed to be,” Johnson said.
Johnson, who voted for Joe Biden, later lost his job after he wore a red hat reading the slogan “Make America Great Again” to move through the riotous crowd. Pictures of Johnson wearing the hat surfaced shortly after the riot, which earned him a suspension and led him to resign, forfeiting his pension.
“I figured if I had the hat on, it’d be easier for me to navigate my way through the crowd,” Johnson told Carlson. “It was basically self-preservation and de-escalation and I needed to get up those steps. I couldn’t say what would have happened walking through that crowd without it.”
In the Capitol, Johnson safely evacuated lawmakers as demonstrators entered the building.
Pittman was promoted to acting chief of Capitol Police two days after the riot and just last year took a job as head of security at the University of California Berkeley, which is near Pelosi’s House district.