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The 1/6 Committee Left This Out And It’s A BFD
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The 1/6 Committee Left This Out And It’s A BFD

A lead investigator for the 1/6 C said the inadequate defense of the U.S Capitol wasn’t due to a lack of knowledge, but rather a failure to act on intelligence they received.
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“Their plan is to literally kill people. Please please take this tip seriously and investigate further.”

A lead investigator for the 1/6 House Select Committee determined that the inadequate defense of the U.S Capitol wasn’t due to a lack of knowledge, but rather a failure to act on intelligence they received. They had knowledge but chose not to act.

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The January 6th Committee had to make choices about what to focus on in its televised hearings, and they choose to focus on Trump world’s role in inciting the attempted self-coup/domestic terrorist attack.

But they left out some vital information about the failure of law enforcement to act on a large volume of advance tips. They left this out of the final report, as well, and that raises a lot of questions that we aren’t likely to get answers to so long as Republicans are in charge of the House.

“The House Jan. 6 committee concluded that the FBI and other federal security agencies could have prevented a violent mob from overrunning the Capitol had they acted on the large volume of intelligence collected beforehand, the chief investigator told NBC News in an exclusive interview — a judgment the committee left out of its televised hearings and final report.”

Heaphy said he agrees with what Washington, D.C.’s National Guard commander, William Walker, told the committee: The response would have been much different, before and during the attack, “if these protesters were Black and brown.”

They determined that the inadequate defense of the U.S Capitol wasn’t due to a lack of knowledge, but rather a failure to ACT on intelligence they had that warned extremists were coming to Washington to use violence to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

The lead investigator told NBC: “There was a lot of advance intelligence about law enforcement, about carrying weapons, about the vulnerability of the Capitol. The intel in advance was pretty specific, and it was enough, in our view, for law enforcement to have done a better job.”

Here’s an example of the kinds of tips that got ignored. An FBI tipster in December 2020, reported under types of tips: “Attempted coup/terrorist attack on Jan 6th.”

“They think that they will have a large enough group to march into DC armed and will outnumber the police so they can’t be stopped. They believe that since the election was ‘stolen’ that it’s their constitutional right to overtake the government and during this coup no US laws apply ... Their plan is to literally kill people. Please please take this tip seriously and investigate further.”

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This tipster also linked to the actual plans for the attack. The tipster said they planned to overtake the White House and that they would be armed.

The tip form asks if there are known associates. The tipster has an answer for that, too.  “Donald Trump - Proud Boys believe that Trump called them to action by telling them to go to DC on Jan 6th and act "wild". The group that is organizing the attack is the Proud Boys terrorist group.”

Even for an agency that must get a lot of reports, this seems like a huge miss. They must have a flag set up for “domestic terrorism” tips.

But that there was that memo reported in the fall of 2021 demonstrating how Homeland Security suddenly decided to control and restrict the flow of “election-related threats” to law enforcement ahead of 1/6.

CNN reported on September 14, 2021:

“A few months before rioters stormed the US Capitol, the Department of Homeland Security restricted the flow of open-source intelligence reports about “election-related threats” to law enforcement, citing First Amendment concerns, according to documents reviewed by CNN.”

That staffer — the guy who sent the order to restrict the flow of election-related threats — he also served on the House January 6th Committee.

“Joseph Maher, who changed the protocols around disseminating open-source information as head of DHS’ intelligence arm, is now on the staff of the House Select Committee on January 6.”

We discussed the suppression of information and downplaying of troubling connections between Trump and the Russians in the Russia investigation last week.

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One aspect that we are still going to dig into more is the failure of law enforcement, given the arrest for the former head of counterintelligence at the New York FBI office, where “tips went to die,” for allegedly working for the Russian he was supposed to have been investigating prior to his retirement.

Let’s take that established suppression of information that was damaging to Trump and view it along with this lead investigator saying, “The intel in advance was pretty specific, and it was enough, in our view, for law enforcement to have done a better job.”

We know that under Trump the Department of Homeland Security deliberately and with no legitimate reason cited — especially given that administration’s contempt for the First Amendment — restricted, as in stopped the flow, of intel relating to domestic terrorism threats and election-related violence.

The 1/6 Committee put Maher in charge of investigating intelligence dissemination failures that occurred, as critics pointed out in the CNN piece, “under his leadership.” The 1/6 Committee says Maher recused himself from these matters, but it’s fair to ask why they chose not to share this vital part of their findings, given that the safety of Americans is quite literally hanging in the balance.

So this is two times that we know of, and not even including the scourge of Trump protector Bill Barr weaponizing the DOJ for Trump and hiding potential criminal tips about Trump’s financial dealings, in which someone has been put in a position of oversight or investigation into matters in which they are possibly compromised or at the very least, incapable of impartiality.

Government is always full of corruption, like all entities, and that is why oversight is so important. But it’s also true that Trump took this corruption to heretofore unseen heights. His ability to corrupt the DOJ, FBI offices, and the DHS should be investigated and prioritized with legislation to keep from happening again.

The Republican-led House won’t do it, but don’t let their lack of patriotism stop you from demanding that they do their job.

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