On the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, as
Congress was meeting to certify the
results of the 2020 presidential election, a
violent and heavily armed mob of
supporters of outgoing President Donald
Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol. While
lawmakers and staff were shepherded to
secure locations or barricaded behind
doors, the rioters pushed past severely
outnumbered Capitol Police officers,
breaking windows and vandalizing offices,
many with disturbingly violent intentions
toward members of Congress and Vice
President Mike Pence for their having
refused to succumb to Trump’s attempts
to overturn the election in his favor. Five
people were killed, including one Capitol
Police officer who was beaten by rioters.
The attempted coup was not the
spontaneous work of a moment. “The
invasion of the U.S. Capitol … was stoked
in plain sight,” ProPublica reported, with
Trump supporters having for weeks
discussed openly their plans for a violent
overthrow. Their goal of stopping the
election certification, based on baseless
conspiracy theories of widespread voter
fraud, was encouraged by elected officials
like Rep. Mo Brooks, Rep. Paul Gosar, Sen.
Josh Hawley, and Sen. Ted Cruz. The
biggest instigator, of course, was the
president himself, who for months had
fanned the flames of conspiracy and
earlier that day urged the crowd to march
to the Capitol and “fight.”
But beyond the important issue of who
was complicit in inciting the seditious and
violent attack, questions remain about how
the mob was able to so easily breach
Capitol security and why it took so long to
secure the building. Just 1,400 Capitol
Police officers were on duty at the time,
and National Guardsmen didn’t arrive until
hours after the invasion began. As
Americans watched the rioters storm
through the building, news reports
circulated that the Pentagon — which has
authority over the D.C. National Guard —
and the president had initially denied
requests for the deployment of
Guardsmen.
In the days following the attack, federal law
enforcement did not brief the public.
Information about the events was shared
largely through media reports and
interviews, in which various officials
pointed fingers. Capitol Police — an agency
with a budget larger than that of most
major-city police forces — are part of the
legislative branch, thus not subject to the
Freedom of Information Act, and have
been heavily criticized in the past for not
releasing information to the public.
As the public demands answers, American
Oversight has filed FOIA requests with
multiple agencies to learn more about how
the federal government — including the
Defense Department, the White House, and
federal law enforcement agencies —
responded to the mob attack. We’ve
requested related communications and
directives, as well as Jan. 6 call logs, of
top officials at multiple agencies, and are
also seeking any assessments about the
threat of militia violence that were prepared
in advance of the attack by the FBI, the
Pentagon, or the Department of Homeland
Security. We also requested the
communications of top Defense and Army
officials with Trump or Vice President
Pence.