A Guard spokesman declined to say whether the police informed the units on Capitol Hill about an IED threat.
“Our main objective is to provide support to local authorities,” said spokeswoman Tracy O’Grady Walsh, noting that the Guard’s mission during the inauguration is to provide crowd management, traffic control, parking coordination and medical and logistical support. local authorities. “Public safety is our highest priority.”
In the coming days, up to 20,000 guards can be posted around DC, at the request of the DC Metropolitan Police Department and other civilian authorities. On Tuesday night, hundreds of armed guards were sent to the Capitol ahead of lawmakers who began a second round of impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.
It is unclear whether National Guards are preparing to respond to potential IEDs, and reports on potential IEDs have made some uncomfortable, people familiar with the matter said.
Guard members are trained in the use of lethal and non-lethal force, the use of protective equipment and “de-escalation techniques”, as is standard for civil disturbance response missions, said O’Grady Walsh. Some Guard units, including Guard combat engineers, infantry units and military police, typically train for IED response before deployments abroad, but not all guards are trained that way.
“The most important element in defeating IEDs is knowing what to look for, knowing where to look and understanding how to disarm them quickly or mark them for eventual destruction,” said Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, retired from the US Army, noting that the IED training mainly involves “the early recognition of predicted routes by drones and engineers and scouts, the use of intelligence to map and predict potential locations for placing IEDs that would cause the most damage or destruction, and interference from networks.”
An unclassified intelligence bulletin compiled by the US Secret Service, obtained by POLITICO, warned that at least one right-wing extremist group, Patriot Actions for America, “is organizing and encouraging a violent demonstration” on January 16 on Capitol Hill.
The bulletin, which relies primarily on open source social media information and was first reported by The Daily Beast, said the police are also tracking a separate “Millions of Militias March” planned by two other groups for the Day itself de Posse, warning that “although no civil disobedience has been confirmed, the organizers encouraged participants to bring weapons to the event through the use of weapon images in promotional materials for the event. The group says it will not attack, but defend. ”
President-elect Biden was briefed on Wednesday by senior FBI and Secret Service officials about threats around tenure, and will continue to receive daily briefings on “operational and security preparations to ensure the transition goes smoothly”, Biden’s transition team said in a statement.
Biden’s national security team “is engaging with the current government to obtain as much information as possible about the image of the threat and the preparations being made to prevent and defend against interruptions or violent attacks,” the statement said. .