Members of a small board created to coordinate US Capitol security did not share — even among themselves — critical information leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, a government watchdog said in a Tuesday report.
(Bloomberg) — Members of a small board created to coordinate US Capitol security did not share — even among themselves — critical information leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, a government watchdog said in a Tuesday report.
For instance, the office of the the architect of the Capitol — responsible for erecting security fencing, among other things — wasn’t informed of a threat detected in advance by the Senate’s sergeant at arms, according to the report by the Government Accountability Office.
The sergeants at arms of the House and Senate, along with the architect of the Capitol, make up the Capitol Police Board and oversee the Capitol Police. The Capitol Police chief is a fourth, non-voting member of the panel.
“We found that Capitol Police Board agencies did not receive complete or timely information from one another,” the 122-page GAO report states.
It also notes that while Capitol Police officials did give the board a Dec. 16, 2020 briefing that it was monitoring intelligence regarding groups that might head to the Capitol grounds the week of Jan. 4, 2021, there is no documentation that a follow-up threat briefing was ever convened for the board before the attack.
The bulk of the GAO report focuses on providing more detail of failures of multiple law enforcement and intelligence agencies to share information in the weeks and days prior to the Capitol assault. But it also calls for the roles and responsibilities of the Capitol Police Board to be clarified, including to ensure that members of the board share information.
In December, a group of House Republicans released a report that partly blames Democratic congressional leaders for security failures. But Republicans then controlled the Senate and had their own representation on the Capitol Police Board, through the Senate sergeant at arms.
And the architect of the Capitol was an appointee of then-President Donald Trump. None of the three people who served on the board on Jan. 6 are still in those posts.
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