by Eric Lendrum
On Tuesday, NBC host Lester Holt claimed that federal law enforcement did not do enough to combat the peaceful protests that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021, Fox News reports.
“The January 6 Committee’s final report was more than 800 pages,” Holt said in his report. “But some material did not make the cut, including much of its findings on the failures of federal law enforcement leading up to the attack.”
“Tonight, in an exclusive interview, the chief investigator for the January 6th Committee says the government could have prevented it,” said NBC correspondent Ken Dilanian.
NBC then spoke to Tim Heaphy, the former lead investigator for the controversial and highly politicized January 6th Committee, who claimed, with no evidence, that federal agencies failed to act on intelligence they allegedly had received ahead of the protest.
“I think it would have been a lot different had law enforcement taken a more assertive, protective posture,” said Heaphy. “The intel in advance was pretty specific, and it was enough in our view for law enforcement to have done a better job operationalizing a secure perimeter.”
“Law enforcement had a very direct role in contributing to the failures, the security failures that led to the violence,” Heaphy added.
“People familiar with the committee’s work tell NBC News members downplayed that finding because they wanted to keep the focus on former President Trump,” Dilanian noted, essentially confirming that the January 6th Committee always had partisan goals in mind, rather than actual concrete solutions regarding security failures. “Heaphy says the committee found the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies did not act on the intelligence they had,” he added.
The January 6th Committee, formed shortly after the peaceful protest, was politicized from the very beginning. When then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) nominated a slate of Republicans to serve on the committee to balance it out, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) refused to seat two of them, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jim Banks (R-Ind.), falsely accusing them of being directly responsible for the protest; in response, McCarthy pulled all of his Republican nominees.
Subsequently, Pelosi designated just two Republicans to sit on the committee: Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), both of whom were staunch NeverTrumpers and frequently at odds with the party leadership and Republican base. Kinzinger, fearing a primary challenge from a conservative candidate, chose not to run for re-election in 2022; Cheney tried to run again but was resoundingly defeated in her primary by Trump-backed challenger Harriet Hageman, in the second-biggest landslide primary loss for an incumbent in modern history.
– – –
Eric Lendrum reports for American Greatness.
Photo “January 6 Riot” by Tyler Merbler. CC BY 2.0.
