Committee details intelligence failures before Jan. 6 attack on Capitol

A staff report ordered by U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., into intelligence failures leading up to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, found that federal agencies had “multiple tips from numerous sources” that violence was possible but didn’t take them seriously enough to prepare for the threat.

The report issued Tuesday by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s staff said the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security also failed to notify other law enforcement agencies about the potential for violence with “sufficient urgency and alarm.”

“At a fundamental level, the agencies failed to fulfill their mission and connect the public and nonpublic information they received,” the report said. Peters serves as chair of the committee.

More than 900 people have been charged in the attack on the U.S. Capitol, which momentarily delayed Congress from certifying the 2020 election for President Joe Biden. A mob of supporters of former President Donald Trump broke through security gates, broke windows and entered the Capitol, fighting with police and smashing their way into the chambers, fueled by Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election had been tainted by fraud and he really had won.

In June 2021, after a series of hearings, Peters’ committee and the Senate Rules and Administration Committee issued a joint report saying agencies “responsible for securing and protecting the Capitol complex and everyone on-site that day were not prepared for a large-scale attack, despite being aware of the potential for violence.” Tuesday’s report was a follow-up to that earlier report.

Committee staff said internal emails and other documents obtained by the committee found:

• The FBI received a tip in December 2020 that the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group with leaders who have been convicted in connection with the attack, planned to be in the nation’s capital and “[t]heir plan is to literally kill people.”
• Three days before the attack, the FBI learned of multiple posts on social media calling for armed violence, including one on Parler saying, “[b]ring food and guns. If they don’t listen to our words,they can feel our lead. Come armed.”
• Two days before the attack, Justice Department leadership learned of multiple social media posts, including those discussing “invading” the Capitol.

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The report said despite these warnings, the FBI “continued to downplay the overall threat” as not credible. As such, it said, both the FBI and Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis "failed to issue sufficient warnings based on the available intelligence indicating January 6th might turn violent.”

The report called on both agencies to conduct internal reviews of the events leading up to the attack, improve procedures for assessing and sharing intelligence, improve interagency communications and designate any joint sessions of Congress to certify the results as a presidential election as a special security event, requiring heightened security.

Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler.