WASHINGTON (AP) - A Senate investigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol found a broad intelligence breakdown across multiple agencies, along with widespread law enforcement and military failures that led to the violent attack.
There were clear warnings and tips that supporters of former President Donald Trump, including right-wing extremist groups, were planning to "storm the Capitol" with weapons and possibly infiltrate the tunnel system underneath the building. But that intelligence never made it up to top leadership.
The result was chaos. A Senate report released Tuesday details how officers on the front lines suffered chemical burns, brain injuries and broken bones, among other injuries, after fighting the attackers, who quickly overwhelmed them and broke into the building. Officers told the Senate investigators they were left with no leadership or direction when command systems broke down.
The Senate report is the first - and could be the last - bipartisan review of how hundreds of Trump supporters were able to push violently past security lines and break into the Capitol that day, interrupting the certification of Joe Biden's presidential election victory. It recommends immediate changes to give the Capitol Police chief more authority, to provide better planning and equipment for law enforcement and to streamline intelligence gathering among federal agencies.
As a bipartisan effort, the report does not delve into the root causes of the attack, including Trump's role as he called for his supporters to "fight like hell" to overturn his election defeat that day. It does not call the attack an insurrection, even though it was. And it comes two weeks after Republicans blocked a bipartisan, independent commission that would investigate the insurrection more broadly.
"This report is important in the fact that it allows us to make some immediate improvements to the security situation here in the Capitol," said Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which conducted the probe along with the Senate Rules Committee. "But it does not answer some of the bigger questions that we need to face, quite frankly, as a country and as a democracy."
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday the findings show even greater need for a bipartisan commission to investigate the root causes of the attack, referring to Trump's unfounded claims about the 2020 election.
"As the 'big lie' continues to spread, as faith in our elections continues to decline, it is crucial - crucial - that we establish a trusted, independent record of what transpired," Schumer said.
But Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who led the blockade against such a commission, said he's confident the ongoing reviews by lawmakers and law enforcement will be sufficient.
The House in May passed legislation to create a commission that would be modeled after a panel that investigated the Sept. 11 terrorist attack two decades ago.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told colleagues in a letter Tuesday if the Senate fails to approve the commission, her chamber will launch its own investigations.
The top Republican on the rules panel, Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, has opposed the commission, arguing that investigation would take too long. He said the recommendations made in the Senate can be implemented faster, such as legislation that he and Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the rules committee chair, intend to introduce soon that would give the chief of Capitol Police more authority to request assistance from the National Guard.
The Senate report recounts how the Guard was delayed for hours Jan. 6 as officials in multiple agencies took bureaucratic steps to release the troops. It details hours of calls between officials in the Capitol and the Pentagon and as the then-chief of the Capitol Police, Steven Sund, desperately begged for help.
It finds the Pentagon spent hours "mission planning" and seeking multiple layers of approvals as Capitol Police were being overwhelmed and brutally beaten by the attackers. It also says the Defense Department's hesitant response was influenced by criticism of its heavy-handed response to protests in the summer of 2020 after the death of George Floyd in police custody.
The senators are heavily critical of the Capitol Police Board, a three-member panel made up of the heads of security for the House and Senate and the Architect of the Capitol. The board now is required to approve requests by the police chief, even in urgent situations. The report recommends its members "regularly review the policies and procedures" after senators found the three board members on Jan. 6 did not understand their own authority and could not detail the statutory requirements for requesting National Guard assistance.
Two of the three board members, the House and Senate sergeants at arms, were pushed out in the days after the attack. Sund, the Capitol Police chief, resigned under pressure.
The report recommended a consolidated intelligence unit within the Capitol Police after widespread failures from multiple agencies that did not predict the attack even though insurrectionists were planning it openly on the internet.
The police intelligence unit "knew about social media posts calling for violence at the Capitol on January 6, including a plot to breach the Capitol, the online sharing of maps of the Capitol Complex's tunnel systems, and other specific threats of violence," the report said, but agents did not properly inform leaders of everything they had found.
On Dec. 28, for example, the report said someone emailed a public Capitol Police account and warned about "countless tweets from Trump supporters saying they will be armed on January 6th" and "tweets from people organizing to 'storm the Capitol.'" There were also internal warnings of an uptick in posts on various sites that showed maps of the Capitol, including its underground tunnels. But those specifics were never disseminated widely.