- An internal FBI report warned of a “war” on the United States Capitol on the eve of the attack by pro-Trump rebels, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
- The situational report came from the FBI’s Virginia office and said the agency “received information indicating that requests for violence in response to ‘illegal blockades’ should begin” on January 6 in Washington, DC.
- The document cited an online topic with “specific calls for violence”, including one that said: “Congress needs to hear broken glass, doors being kicked and blood from its slave soldiers BLM and Pantifa being spilled.”
- “Be violent,” continued the topic, according to the report detailed in The Post’s story. “Stop calling it a march, or a rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We take our president or we will die.”
- Tuesday’s report adds another layer to the massive intelligence failure that contributed to the attack on the Capitol, which resulted in five deaths.
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An internal FBI situational report warned on January 5 that pro-Trump rebels planned to wage a “war” on the United States Capitol the next day, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
The agency’s Norfolk, Virginia, office issued the alert, saying it “received information indicating requests for violence in response to ‘illegal blockades’ to begin” on January 6 in Washington, DC, the Post reported.
According to The Post, the FBI report cited an “online topic” that “discussed specific calls for violence”, including one that said, “Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear broken glass, doors being kicked and blood. of their slave soldiers BLM and Pantifa being poured out. Be violent. Stop calling it a march, or rally, or protest. Go there ready for war. We take our president or we die. NOTHING else will achieve that goal. “
Supporters of President Donald Trump also shared a map of tunnels under the Capitol complex and locations in Kentucky, Massachusetts, South Carolina and Pennsylvania, where they could meet before heading to Washington, DC, to attend a “Save the Rally” rally America “that the president made headlines.
An FBI official familiar with the situational report told the Post that the bureau’s Norfolk office drafted the document 45 minutes after it became aware of the topic and that field office employees in Washington, DC, were informed about it the day before the rally. It was not clear whether other law enforcement agencies were contacted.
The Post’s report directly rebuts a senior FBI official’s claim that the bureau had no intelligence, suggesting that there would be violence on the Capitol after the demonstration. It also adds another layer to what appears to have been a massive intelligence flaw that contributed to the ability of the pro-Trump crowd to invade the Capitol – where members of Congress and the vice president met to count the 2020 electoral votes – with relative ease.
Capitol police chief Steven Sund stepped down after resignations increased. He told the Post in an interview that House and Senate arms sergeants – who have already been fired or forced to leave – declined their requests for the National Guard in Washington, DC, to stand by if he needed reinforcements.
The Department of Homeland Security has also been accused of not taking the threat of violence from white supremacists seriously. Leaders in the department’s Intelligence and Analysis unit did not see the pro-Trump demonstrations as a serious threat, sources told The Wall Street Journal.
Amid a lack of interagency coordination and poor planning, the Capitol Police and the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police denied offers to reinforce the National Guard until the riot was underway. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan also said last week that the head of the National Guard at the federal level rejected requests to send state troops for 90 minutes.
Before the siege, Trump angered his fanatics at the “Save America” rally. “You will never get back to our country with weakness,” he said. “You have to show strength and you have to be strong.”
“We are going to have to fight a lot harder,” he said.
The coup attempt resulted in five deaths, including a Capitol Police officer who died from injuries sustained while Trump supporters beat him with a fire extinguisher.
Additional footage and news suggested that the riot could have been more deadly if Vice President Mike Pence and lawmakers had not been evacuated. A crowd of Trump supporters outside the Capitol shouted “hang Mike Pence”, and a Reuters photojournalist said he heard at least three protesters say they wanted to hang Pence “from a Capitol tree as a traitor”.
A makeshift noose with a noose was erected outside the building while neo-Nazis and white nationalists who support the president invaded the Capitol to hunt down other lawmakers.
In the wake of the violence, the Post reported, the FBI and other US agencies discussed their omissions on issues of race and domestic terrorism. The government has received strong criticism of the contrast in how it responded – or failed to respond – to the Capitol riot fueled by mainly white Trump supporters and responses to peaceful anti-racism protests last year after George Floyd’s police murder.
“City after city, day after day, we saw peaceful protesters meeting with brute force,” said former First Lady Michelle Obama in a statement after the insurrection. “We saw broken skulls and mass arrests, law enforcement with pepper spray in a peaceful demonstration for a presidential photo.
“And for those who call others antipatriotics for simply kneeling in silent protest, for those who wonder why we need to be reminded that black life is important, yesterday made it painfully clear that certain Americans can, in fact, denigrate flag and symbols of our nation, “he added. “They just need to look the right way.”