Well, at least the House committee is looking at something related to how so many law enforcement agencies could be so wrong and utterly unprepared for the Jan. 6 treasonous riot.
They will walk on tippy toes so as not to be accused of being anti-cop, of course.
Due to late-breaking revelations, the committee’s public presentations in June and July skewed more toward Trump’s actions before and during the Capitol attack. But there’s a lot that got left on the cutting room floor, including new information gathered by the “blue team,” which has focused on law enforcement failures leading up to the attack, as NBC News reported back in January.
A committee aide told NBC News last week that this team of investigators is singularly focused on the preparedness of and response by law enforcement, intelligence agencies and the military.
“The team has conducted more than 100 interviews and depositions touching on these matters of security and intelligence across several federal and local agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, Fusion Centers, Office of Intelligence & Analysis, among others,” the aide said. “The team is looking into what intelligence these agencies had at their disposal; how that intelligence was analyzed, stitched together, and distributed; and whether law enforcement operationalized that intelligence.”
The “blue team,” a separate source told NBC News, is headed by Soumya Dayananda, who spent more than a decade as a federal prosecutor — and worked the case against Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán — before joining the committee.
Liz Cheney said in an interview on Fox News last Sunday that the blue team’s work would be featured in the committee’s final report and would “likely” be included in upcoming hearings.
“What we aren’t going to do … is blame the Capitol Police, blame those in law enforcement, for Donald Trump’s armed mob that he sent to the Capitol,” Cheney said. “Clearly there were intelligence failures, clearly the security should have operated better than it did. But this was a mob Donald Trump sent to the Capitol, and I think that’s important to keep our eye on.”
That last part is not promising. It indicates that they will not be looking at perhaps one of the most important aspects of the entire plot to overthrow the election.
Many officers and agents in federal, state and local law enforcement are supporters of the Proud Boys and other white nationalist groups, some of them are secretly members, and many of them wanted to see the Jan. 6 insurrection succeed. We already know some Capitol police welcomed the rioters with open arms and pats on the back.