Crowds broke through police barricades and invaded the Capitol, vandalizing offices and leading to the evacuation of lawmakers shortly after 2 pm ET on Wednesday. At nightfall, the building was not yet secure and a woman was shot to death.
“Everything. Everything went wrong,” said a Capitol Police officer at the scene.
The police response that allowed a typically heavily protected federal landmark to come under attack, with rioters breaking windows and entering lawmakers’ offices and meeting places, came from a hesitant federal bureaucracy after initial guarantees from DC law enforcement agencies and Capitol. Agencies that had security forces who could help on Wednesday waited to be questioned.
“It was a mess. No one was communicating. No one knew what we should be doing there,” said a federal police officer who was dispatched to the Capitol.
The main law enforcement agency charged with protecting the historic building was the Capitol Police. Agency spokespeople did not answer several questions from CNN throughout the day.
Justice Department officials were tasked with coordinating federal agencies and the U.S. National Guard’s response prior to President Donald Trump’s demonstration near the Washington Monument. Some organizers said publicly that they planned to carry out a “wild” march to the Capitol while the joint session of Congress met to certify President-elect Joe Biden as the next president.
But the agencies were waiting for other officials to call for help – even as Trump’s electoral protest was unfolding.
The U.S. Secret Service was the first federal agency deployed when the U.S. Capitol Police asked local and federal authorities for help, a USSS official told CNN. When the Capitol Police asked for help, the USSS sent an additional uniformed division and special agents to Capitol Hill to help.
“The police have failed to understand what the likelihood of this threat was,” said CNN analyst Jonathan Wackrow, a former USSS agent, of the day’s events, although “no one should be surprised by the attempt to do so,” given Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani’s comments at the rally earlier in the day that it should be “combat evidence”.
“There should be a law enforcement wall,” said Wackrow.
Department of Homeland Security spokesman Alexei Woltornist said the agency was operating a “virtual situation room” to track communication between agencies, but “was not tracking any active threats”. US Customs and Border Protection, a law enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security, had dozens of staff prepared, if necessary. Officials from the Federal Protection Service and the Secret Service were also sent to the Capitol. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf is on a diplomatic trip to the Middle East this week, but is planning to return. The US Department of Parks Police, the Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Mall and other Capitol grounds, was also called in to help.
As for the Department of Justice, Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen deployed more than 300 agents and officers from the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the US Marshals Service, to assist the Capitol Police. But the Capitol Police had already lost control.
Some of these deployments took place almost an hour after the crowd blocked Capitol. Rosen did not issue a public statement condemning the violence until about four hours after the riots began.
Capitol Police raided
A former leader of the local DC police, from the Metropolitan Police Department, told CNN: “There is no denying that the Capitol Police was extremely overloaded today … I never saw the Capitol under such a siege.”
“By the time the Capitol Police called for help, the crowd was already inside the building,” said another federal official.
The Capitol Police report to Congressional leaders and are separated from law enforcement agencies that are part of the executive branch, the official said. This separation of powers would increase careful bureaucratic negotiation. In another division, the Capitol Police operates separately from the DC metropolitan police force, which began imposing a citywide curfew at 6 pm Eastern time.
The first task of police officers who arrived on Wednesday afternoon was to protect lawmakers and officials who were supposed to take shelter in offices. But the last-minute deployment, with the protesters already inside the building, presented special challenges.
FBI and ATF agents – whose normal job is to be investigators, not to control disturbances – were sent to the Capitol to try to protect the building and eventually try to free the protesters.
Following criticism from Washington, DC, city officials over the violent response during the Black Lives Matter summer protests, federal officials had a noticeably lighter presence at the Trump rally.
Two federal police officers said that the Capitol Police assured court officials that they were prepared for the rally, especially since the Capitol grounds are already barricaded in preparation for the inauguration ceremonies in two weeks.
DC Mayor Muriel Bowser also wrote to Rosen and other federal officials demanding that federal agencies not send a heavy presence to the city, as they did over the summer, and ensuring that the Washington Metropolitan Police, along with a small deployment of members of the National Guard service, were ready for the day’s protests.
“The District of Columbia government is not soliciting other federal law enforcement personnel,” wrote Bowser, “and discourages any further developments without immediate notification and consultation with MPD if such plans are in progress.”
That changed quickly when the crowd invaded the Capitol.
“I think you know the very significant perimeters that we have established around the streets of DC, and we are there to support them and now to enter the building to ensure that we are in control and will maintain control,” said Bowser on CNN the afternoon of Wednesday.
Police departments in the area respond, but await guidance
Nearby police departments, including Fairfax County, Virginia, and Montgomery, and Prince George counties in Maryland, were sending reinforcements to hundreds of police officers during the afternoon.
Prince George County forces were in town and still awaiting guidance from the local police in the late afternoon, according to his spokesman, although that was more of an answer than the force had been asked to provide during the summer protests Black Lives Matters, when they were not brought to town.
National guards were called on Wednesday from several states and began to arrive after the start of domestic terrorism. It was a sharp contrast to the speed with which Trump brought the National Guard and other security forces under executive power to clean up the park in front of the White House of peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters this summer. After the hard pay of that crowd, Trump crossed the park and took a picture in front of a church.
“We are going to need daylight, the opportunity to supervise and review to find out exactly what happened,” DC Attorney General Karl Racine told CNN on Wednesday night, adding that it should be compared to the use of force in Lafayette Square seven months ago. “I have to think that it was not accidental. That it was not careless or reckless ”to leave the Capitol overwhelmed, Racine said.
A source told CNN late on Wednesday that Trump initially resisted the sending of the National Guard, and Vice President Mike Pence encouraged the Joint Chiefs president to do so more quickly.
Inside the Capitol building at dusk, officers still went from door to door, looking from office to office, checking each cabinet to make sure the building was secure.
Several police officers were treated for injuries, just over a dozen people were arrested, pipe bombs found at the headquarters of political parties were safely detonated and the murder of a woman who died on Wednesday afternoon is under investigation.
This story has been updated with additional information.