by Associated Press
JAN. 7, 20213:19 PM
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[William Brangham] Attorney General, I wonder if you could help us understand a little bit of, for people who don’t know Washington, D.C., and how law enforcement operates in the City, it’s a very confusing thing. There’s a police force for the Capitol; there’s the Secret Service for the President; D.C. has its own police force. In this case, we saw that this was primarily an issue for the Capitol Police to be dealing with. What other local and/or national law enforcement agencies should be involved here, and do you believe are involved in here?
[Karl Racine, Attorney General for the District of Columbia] William, the question is spoken from someone who knows Washington, D.C. So thank you for that. And it’s important for the citizens and residents of the United States to understand that the District of Columbia, unfortunately, is not a state. We pay taxes; we go to war, but we’re not a state. We have taxation without representation. And that means that our local police police our neighborhoods in the District of Columbia where we have 700,000 plus extraordinary Washingtonians live and work. But we have the Capitol Police responsible for policing the Capitol. We have the Secret Service who has broad responsibility for protecting, of course, the President, and other elected officials, and other national assets. We have the Park Police that is in charge of protecting our parks here in the District of Columbia that are beautiful. And so in a way, the District of Columbia is one of the most over-policed in the sense of having so many law enforcement officials who, generally speaking, actually work well together. I think the breakdown here is that the Metropolitan Police Department is trying with all of their might, and I think they are doing, to be honest, a very good job under the new chief Contee. But we have a dissonance because it appears that some crucial federal partners frankly didn’t come to play today. And I can only think that the order came from somewhere up high because I know those federal police officers. They go to work every day to do the right thing. I think they were frankly told not to post today.
[William Brangham] I want to follow up on that in a moment, but we are just getting some word from the apparently the Sergeant of Arms inside the Capitol announced an all-clear, that there was some sense that the majority of protesters have been either contained or that the threat is minimized. And allegedly there was some applause that broke out inside the Capitol. So hopefully that is some good news, and we’re working to try and confirm that. But Attorney General, you were saying before about this issue of the difficulty of a city not necessarily having full governance over its own affairs. We know that the mayor of D.C. , Muriel Bowser, has established a 6:00 p.m. curfew tonight in the city. Can you give us a sense of what other resources are going to be deployed in the city? What concerns you have about what might unfold as this protest continues?Abrupt Change of Topic
Another way to deal with a subject that you don’t want to discuss is to wait for a person to catch her breath and change the topic to something that is more agreeable. Most people will take the hint, but if it doesn’t work, try it again. Smile when you do it so the person doesn’t perceive you as being antagonistic or think you’re not a good conversationalist.
Here are some examples of how to quickly change the subject:
• When people start gossiping about someone who isn’t there, point to the buffet (or another inanimate object) and make a comment about how much planning must have gone into it.
• If a person says she has issues with the company you work for, you can smile and ask if she has any pets, and if so, what are they. She should take the hint that your employer is off limits in this discussion.
• When a person starts criticizing your friend or coworker, flash a big smile and ask about her last vacation.
-- How to Gracefully Change the Subject, by Debby Mayne
-- Senate Republicans Challenge Electoral College Votes, by PBS News, 1/6/21

Trump supporters gather before the siege on the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
Three days before the pro-President Trump riot at the Capitol, the Pentagon asked the U.S. Capitol Police if it needed National Guard manpower. And as the mob descended on the building Wednesday, Justice Department leaders reached out to offer up FBI agents. The police turned them down both times, according to a Defense official and two people familiar with the matter.
Capitol Police had planned for a free-speech demonstration and didn’t need more help, those three told the Associated Press. The police weren’t expecting what actually happened — an insurrection.
But the Capitol ended up being overrun, overwhelming a law enforcement agency sworn to protect the lawmakers inside. Four rioters died, including one who was shot inside the building.
There had been plenty of warnings. Plenty of time to prepare. Plenty of money to do it.
The failure raised serious questions over security at the Capitol and the treatment of mainly white Trump supporters who were allowed to roam through the building, compared with the Black and brown protesters across the country who demonstrated last year over police brutality.
By the day after the rampage, the House sergeant at arms, the chief security officer for the House of Representatives, had resigned and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) had called for the resignation of the Capitol Police chief.
“There was a failure of leadership at the top,” Pelosi said.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), the incoming Senate majority leader, said he will fire the Senate sergeant at arms.
The Capitol had been closed to the public since March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 364,000 people in the United States. In normal times, the building is open to the public and lawmakers pride themselves on their availability to their constituents.
It’s not clear how many Capitol Police officers were on duty Wednesday. There are 2,300 officers who patrol 16 acres of ground and protect the 435 House members, 50 senators and their staffs. By example, the city of Minneapolis has about 840 uniformed officers for a population of 425,000 across more than 6,000 acres of land.
Let me tell you something. I have filmed numerous times in the U.S. Capitol building, and in the Congressional offices for both the House and the Senate. I’ve done this for over 30 years. I can tell you first of all, it is impossible to get into these buildings. It is extremely difficult. Don’t think I haven’t tried to get my crew and my camera and everything in there. It is just virtually impossible. So there is a system to follow. If you’re bringing a crew and equipment in, everything has to be gone through. And it isn’t easy, and it takes time, and there are a ton of police there, Capitol police. And last Wednesday, there’s about 2,300 Capitol police that exist on the Capitol police force. There were less than 500 who were called into work that day, on a day when for weeks it was known that tens of thousands of angry people who said they were going to stop the vote count, the counting of the votes of the American people, the electoral votes, they were going to go to D.C. and stop it by any means necessary – that was their mission. And everybody knew it. So much to the extent that I have spoken to a number of members of Congress and their staff, and every single person that I’ve spoke to said that on Tuesday, the day before, they told their staff not to come into work on Wednesday because they didn’t feel it was going to be safe. And so much of the staff of many members of Congress were not there on Wednesday. They were home, to protect themselves.
So it was known! It was known by the members of Congress that this was going to be a potentially dangerous day. And when these members showed up to work early Wednesday morning, I can’t tell you how many have commented to me, or have commented to the media, how bizarre it seemed that when they pulled into the parking lot there behind the Capitol building, or when they walked through the grounds to go into work, how few police were around, knowing this was going to be such a huge protest day, and yet it felt like, as one person told me, it felt like a Saturday on Capitol Hill. That’s what it looked like.
So right away somebody made the decision to pull back, and not have the proper amount of police there. Jim Clyburn who is the third in command in the democratic party there in the House of Representatives, he said he pulled in and he said it looked bizarre. That’s the word he used: it looked” bizarre” to him that there just wasn’t much of a presence there.
So they all knew. They all knew. And they trusted that the Capitol Police somehow had a plan, they were going to be there to protect them, and everybody went into work and assumed nothing was going to happen, until it did.
I want to tell you too, that having worked in there, and having filmed in there, it is so difficult to get your bearings straight, to know where you’re at, to find anything. As I sit here right now, I cannot tell you where Nancy Pelosi’s office is, as many times as I’ve been in there. I cannot give you directions right now to the Speaker of the House’s office. There are so many tunnels underneath the Capitol building. They go out to five or six office buildings where the members of Congress and the Senators have their personal offices. Each of those buildings have five or six floors, at least. It’s very hard to find your way. You know that if you’ve ever gone there to drop in to see your member of Congress.
The one thing that is good about Capitol Hills is that if you are a citizen who wants to see your representative, you can do that. You can go look at the, “Okay, it’s in that building and it’s that office number,” and then you walk there. You go through the Police, you go through the metal detector, you go through the wanding – everything they do – and then you can go see your representative the way it should be in a democracy. It should not feel like a police state. It should feel like it’s open to any of us to go in there.
How did they find Nancy Pelosi’s office? How did they find Jim Clyburn’s secret office? As the majority whip, he has a unmarked office. They didn’t go to his real office that his name is on the door – they found his secret office that the majority whip uses. They found places in there that even I, who have worked there for so many years as a filmmaker, I could not tell you where they are at. I didn’t know Clyburn had a secret office. I mean, it’s that hard.
And why I’m saying all this is that it’s clear to me that this was a bit of an inside job, that Republicans who are either members of the House or Senate of their staff, or some of them, helped the leaders and the instigators of this mob. The mob knew right were to go. The mob did not walk in there like a bunch of yahoos, like “Well, Jesus, firs time I’ve been in here. Look at all the marble. No. NO! They knew right where to go, they knew the doors to find the floor of the chamber of the House and the Senate, how to get there, they knew the tunnels – they knew it all! And when there is an investigation of this and how it happened, we’re going to find out the truth. And hopefully we’ll find out who helped them. Because I’m tell you, this crowd could not have done it on their own. And I’m not saying they hadn’t done their own reconnaissance in the weeks leading up to this. I’m sure they did. But take my word for it, no average citizen could do what they did and get to where they got as quickly as they got without some help, without knowing, and without having police and law enforcement turn their heads and look the other way, or open the door for them. You’ve seen the footage. Or, what was the one with the New York Times, one of them said, “Where’s Chuck Schumer’s office,” and the cop showed them the way.
Over and over, you hear these stories the last couple of days on how helpful law enforcement was, once these people had broken in, and were already committing felonies, were already violating the law, were already knocking over statues, busting doors, busting windows! “Hey, could you tell me where Chuck Schumer’s office is?” “Well, yes I can, you just go down that hallways there, make a right, then a left, and it’s door 362.” Hmmm.
There were a lot of police that didn’t aid and abet, actual everyday Capitol police who fought back, who tried to block some of these doors, who got caught in the doors – you’ve seen the footage of the one young police officer bleeding. They were violently trying to come into the floor of the House, of the Senate, they wanted to grab the boxes with the electoral votes, and destroy them, they wanted to stop – you and me – our votes from being counted, as we prepared to inaugurate the next President of the United States. They wanted that not to happen.
And afterwards, they’re like – some who got out of there – “They maced me! They maced me!” Have you seen that woman? Yes, there were a lot of women there. Remember, when I say men or women, we’re talking about white people here. All right? Let’s just be honest. That’s the only reason they got away with it. Had they been black or brown people, they never would have got two steps in the door. But there were a number of the white women – 55% of the white women who voted for Trump – were there representing the majority of white women who wanted four more years of Donald Trump, and then were shocked that the police were trying to fight back and keep them from stealing the boxes with the electoral votes.
But there were many cops, and there are members of Congress, Congresswoman Jayapal and others have already said there was something wrong, something fishy going on here. They personally witnessed police helping the mob, helping the terrorists who have come into the building to destroy the election of 2020....
Think about this too. You’ve seen the footage now, or you were watching it that day, not only were the police hardly there, you’ve seen these scenes in the movies where the Mob pays off the cops to kind of disappear for an hour or so, turn their heads the other way, there were no barricades set up, even though 50,000 people were coming down Pennsylvania Avenue toward them. There were no police horses. I’m telling you, I’ve been to demonstrations there since Nixon’s inauguration, and there are horse at every demonstration in D.C. There are police on horses, and they are aggressive with it to block you from going down this street or that street. There were no horses! Only 500 of the 2,300 police present. What is that? What is that: 1/5th? Four-fifths of the cops not showing up to work! Let’s be very clear about this.
Oh, watch any of the footage from those hours – and remember it was hours – it was from 1:00 until the National Guard arrived after dark! That’s how long those members and their staff and people had to hide in closets and safe rooms in holy shit terror for their lives. Nobody showed up! Up in the sky, not a single helicopter. No helicopters! Aren’t there usually police helicopters ALWAYS at a protest, at a demonstration? This was not a protest or a demonstration! This was a mob terrorist attack on our Capitol building! And they were there to cause harm and to kill if necessary, and they did kill a police officer. So they weren’t just terrorists then, they were cop killers! These very people who we’ve listened to all year chant “Blue Lives Matter.” And what they ended up truly being, with the mask ripped off their face, a cop-killing terrorist mob....
Whew!!! All the other things – think about this -- that aren’t right about this. Where’s the press conference that we always see whenever there’s an event, a big event like this, a horrible event: a school shooting, something happens in a shopping mall, whatever, you have within an hour or two all the cops – the sheriff, the police chief, the mayor, the state representative, everybody’s at the big microphone speaking to the press and answering questions as to what happened. The Nashville bombing, right? Within hours, they are all there talking to the press. We haven’t had that press conference yet! Do you realize that, that none of them together have stood at a microphone? No Capitol police chief – who has now been fired? No D.C. police chief, no National Park police, no FBI, no Secret Service, no CIA, no military police – nobody has stood! And what are we in here now, day four of this? Day four, and no press conference. You know the one we’re used to when there’s a school shooting, or whatever, and they all get there, and get their face time in front of the microphone? Nobody in authority has stood there to tell us what was really going on! And the reason they’re not doing that is because by now they know. They’ve done their own work, and they know who the rogue cops and the rogue military, and the ex-military are, and were part of this, and it’s shameful for them – they don’t want to admit they – they want to get their story, a new story, they want to create a new narrative, and they’re not ready to tell us what that narrative is yet. So that’s why you’ve seen zero press conference. There’s been one press call that some FBI guy was on, and press could call into that number and listen to what he had to say. That’s it! You think that’s a little strange? Do you understand why I think they don’t want to talk to us, to the public? They don’t want to talk to the press? Because they got to get their freekin story straight. That’s why. I’ve been around this enough; I’ve been around all these bullshitters, these politicians, the police chiefs and the sheriffs and everybody. It’s all political; it’s all political. You know that. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.
-- Michael Moore: The Terrorist Attack Is NOT Over, by Michael Moore, Rumble podcast, 1/9/21
The Capitol Police has an operating budget of $460 million and has experience with high-security, high-stakes moments. It is used to managing large crowds and large events such as the inauguration, the State of the Union and mass demonstrations.
There were signs for weeks that violence could strike on Jan. 6, when Congress convened for a joint session to finish counting the electoral college votes that would formalize Democrat Joe Biden’s election as president.
On far-right message boards and in pro-Trump circles, plans were being made.
The leader of the far-right extremist group Proud Boys was arrested coming into the nation’s capital this week on a weapons charge for carrying empty high-capacity magazines emblazoned with his group’s logo. He admitted to police that he made statements about rioting in the District of Columbia, local officials said.
Trump and his allies were perhaps the biggest megaphones, encouraging protesters to turn out in force and support his false claim that the election had been stolen from him. He egged them on during a rally shortly before they stormed the Capitol and rioted. His personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani called for “trial by combat.”
But the Capitol Police had set up no hard perimeter around the Capitol. Officers were focused on one side where lawmakers were entering to vote to certify Biden’s win.
Barricades on the plaza to the building were set up, but police retreated from the line and a mob of people broke through. Lawmakers, at first unaware of the security breach, continued their debate. Soon they were cowering under chairs. Eventually they were escorted from the House and Senate. Journalists were left alone in rooms for hours as the mob attempted to break into barricaded rooms.
“The violent attack on the U.S. Capitol was unlike any I have ever experienced in my 30 years in law enforcement here in Washington, D.C.,” Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund said. He said there had been a robust plan for what he had expected would be a free-speech demonstration. “But make no mistake — these mass riots were not 1st Amendment activities; they were criminal riotous behavior.”
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser had warned of impending violence for weeks, and businesses had closed in anticipation. She requested National Guard help from the Pentagon on Dec. 31, but the Capitol Police turned down the Jan. 3 offer from the Defense Department, according to Kenneth Rapuano, assistant Defense secretary for homeland security.
Federal officials, who were harshly criticized for the law enforcement crackdown on peaceful protests last June near the White House, were intent on avoiding any appearance that the federal government was deploying active-duty or National Guard troops against Americans.
The Justice Department’s offer for FBI support as the protesters grew violent was rejected by the Capitol Police, according to the two people familiar with the matter. They were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.
By then, it was too late.
Officers from the Metropolitan Police Department descended. Agents from nearly every Justice Department agency, including the FBI, were called in. So was the Secret Service and the Federal Protective Service. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sent two tactical teams. Police from as far away as New Jersey arrived to help.
It took four hours to disperse the rioters from the Capitol complex. By then, they had roamed the halls of Congress, posed for photos inside hallowed chambers, broken through doors, destroyed property and taken photos of themselves doing it. At least 80 people were arrested, but it will take time to sort through all the footage to determine who should be charged and with what, officials said.
In the aftermath, a 7-foot fence is being put up around the Capitol grounds for at least 30 days. The Capitol Police will conduct a review of the mayhem, as well as their planning and policies. Lawmakers plan to investigate how authorities handled the rioting.