The spokesman said in a statement that Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman on Monday ordered the officer to be suspended and the officer to remain suspended pending the outcome of an investigation by the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility.
“We take all allegations of inappropriate behavior seriously,” said Pittman. “Once this matter was brought to my attention, I immediately ordered the officer to be suspended until the Office of Professional Responsibility could conduct a full investigation.”
The Washington Post reported for the first time that the officer was suspended after a Congressional aide saw the document in plain sight at a checkpoint.
A printed copy of the Protocols of the Meetings of the Sages of Zion was left on a table inside the entrance to a building in the House, according to photos obtained by the Post. The text is a work of fiction published in a Russian newspaper in 1903, intended to be documents that show a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. The counterfeit papers were used as propaganda and influenced Adolf Hitler, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Flags, signs and symbols of racist, white supremacy and extremist groups were displayed along with Trump 2020 banners and American flags in the January 6 riot on the United States Capitol. Explicitly anti-Semitic images were seen among the rioters in the crowd, and several policemen seemed to tolerate the rioters’ behavior.
A rioter who invaded the United States Capitol wore a sweatshirt with the phrase “Camp Auschwitz”, the name of the Nazi concentration camp where about 1.1 million people were killed during World War II. The hem of his shirt said: “Work brings freedom”, which is the approximate translation of the phrase “Arbeit macht frei” that was at the gates of the concentration camp.
One Capitol officer took a selfie with someone who was part of the crowd that took over the building, and another wore a “Make America Great Again” hat and started directing people around the building, according to Congressman Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat. Both were suspended in January.
Zach Fisch, New York Democrat’s chief of staff, Rep. Mondaire Jones, took a photo of the document on Sunday night as he left the Capitol through one of the 24-hour entrances on the Chamber side of the building before sharing them with the Post , the reported role.
Seeing the document there “horrified me”, Fisch
said in a series of tweets on Monday night.
“This is a national security issue and a security issue in the workplace,” he said.
continuous. “Our office is full of people – black, brown, Jewish, homosexual – who have good reason to fear white supremacists. If the USCP is all that stands between us and the crowd we saw on January 6, how can we feel safe?”
CNN’s Madison Park, Curt Devine, Scott Bronstein, Peter Nickeas, Annie Grayer, Ryan Nobles, Mallory Simon and Sara Sidner contributed to this report.
