Senate Holds First Hearing On Capitol Riot | NBC News

we appreciate your willingness to to work with our committees to examine the breakdowns that allow this terrible attack to occur and to ensure that an attack like this can never ever happen again this hearing is unique because it's personal for everyone involved and i'm grateful to our witnesses colleagues staff capitol police the d.c metropolitan police and the national guard units who continue to assist in protecting the capitol today and all for all of the hard work that allows this very important discussion uh to begin so i would like to once again uh thank chairwoman klobuchar for your partnership and for your leadership and uh look forward to your opening remarks thank you very much uh chairman peters and good morning thank you to our witnesses for being here today for this first joint hearing of the rules committee and the homeland security and government affairs committee as we work to conduct oversight into what happened in the lead up and during the horrific events of january 6. thank you to chairman peters and also ranking member portman as well as my good friend senator blunt who i look forward to continue working with on the rules committee in this congress i think it's important to note that we planned this entire hearing on a bipartisan basis that's because the stakes are so high and we want this and i say this to our witnesses as well who are all appearing here voluntarily i think it's important for the members to know that and we thank them for doing that we want this to be as constructive as possible because in order to figure out the solutions so this doesn't happen again we must have the facts and the answers are in this room when an angry violent mob staged in insurrection on january 6 and desecrated our capital the temple of our democracy it was not just an attack on the building it was an attack on our republic itself we are here today to better understand what was known in advance what steps were taken to secure the capital and what occurred that day because we want to ensure that nothing like this happens again each of our witnesses held a leadership role at the time of the attack acting chief robert conti of the metropolitan police department of the district of columbia mr stephen sun former chief of the u.s capitol police who is here with us in person today mr michael stenger former senate sergeant at arms and mr paul irving former house sergeant at arms the other witnesses are here as many of our witnesses do via video to our witnesses your testimony is vital and thank you again for coming at the same time this is certainly not the last hearing that we will have regarding this attack next week we will hear from witnesses from federal agencies including the fbi the department of homeland security and the department of defense that are critical to our understanding the insurrection at the capitol was more than an assault on democracy it was an actual life or death situation for the many brave law enforcement officers who show up here to do their work every day and at the beginning of this testimony we will hear from one of them we will never forget the haunting shrieks of the police officer pinned in between the doors at the hands of the riders pleading for help we will never forget officer harry dunn who fought against the violent mob for hours and after it was over broke down in tears telling fellow officers he'd been called the n word 15 times that day he asked is this america our officer eugene goodman who after saving senator romney from walking who is here with us today thank you senator romney from walking directly into the mob ran by himself to take on a group of rioters and then eugene goodman diverted that mob away from the senate chamber allowing us to safely depart tragically the attack on the capitol also cost the lives of three brave officers including officer brian siknik who died from injuries sustained while engaging with protesters two other officers died by suicide following the event of january 6 d.c metropolitan police officer jeffrey smith and u.s capitol police officer howard liebengood officer liebengood or howie to those who knew him worked the delaware avenue door of the russell senate office building someone who i've seen at that doorway you know always greeted me and everyone with a warm smile it has been reported that 140 u.s capitol police officers sustained injuries from defending the capitol the courage of these officers will be remembered forever but there are still many voices that we haven't heard in the stories of january 6 including the many staff who make sure we have food in our cafeteria and water and heat in our building one janitorial worker hid during the attack in a closet another custodial staff member reflected on how terrible he felt when he had to clean up feces and had been speared on the wall saying i felt bad i felt degraded these dedicated workers were here too when the capital was attacked as where many committed journalists who report on our work to the american people to make this place safe going forward we must answer some key questions first and foremost on many of our minds is what took so long to deploy the national guard that day both because of decisions made in the capitol complex but also by others in the federal government we must find out what was known about the potential for violence before the attack and how that intelligence was shared with law enforcement partners including the officials responsible for protecting the capital there are also important questions to be asked about how information concerning those threats was communicated to rank and file officers and it's vital that we explore necessary reforms to the structure of the capitol police board which i know we will hear more about today we owe it to the 140 capitol police officers injured into all those at the capitol who continue to suffer the repercussions we owe it to the officer beaten by the violent rioters because he literally placed his body in the doorway to protect us we owe it to the officers who lost their lives we owe it to the american people to figure out how the united states capital the preeminent symbol of democracy around the world could be overtaken by an angry violent mob and we owe it to ourselves colleagues to believe enough in our democracy and in the u.s senate that despite our political differences we will be constructive in this hearing today not just here to make political hay but be constructive today to figure out what went wrong and what changes we can make to ensure that the capital is safe for us and the public going forward chairman peters ranking member blunt breaking member portman and colleagues for me the bottom line is that we must get the answers and those answers are what will give us the solutions thank you very much thank you madam chair it's been just over six weeks since our nation watched with horror as our capitol building was breached by domestic terrorists who who sought to use violence and intimidation to overturn the results of a free and fair election this was a shocking assault on our democracy and it marked one of our nation's darkest days the united states has stood as a beacon for the world showing how democracy can thrive on january 6th we saw just how fragile many of our most valued democratic principles including the peaceful trance of power yes it's hard to express how deeply grateful we are for the actions our capitol police our sergeants at arms and other law enforcement agencies do to keep us safe every single day and especially on that day too many of our officers were gravely injured or tragically killed as they bravely fought back the attackers chief conte we are also indebted and debit indebted to the d.c metropolitan police department for their valiant efforts to thwart the attack d.c police often provide support to help secure the capitol but the officers under your command did not hesitate to come to our aid we are thankful for the heroic actions of so many who ensured this direct attack on our democracy failed but there's no question that there were colossal breakdowns in the intelligence gathering and security preparations leading up to the events of january 6 as well as during the coordination and response efforts once the attack got underway our goal today is to begin to understand where those breakdowns and failures occurred and to determine if there are policy and structural changes congress must make to prevent a future attack of this nature in my role on the homeland security committee i've worked to draw attention to the rising threat of domestic terrorism including the rise of insidious ideologies of white supremacy uh anti-government militias and now q anon conspiracies these eye ideologies are intertwined in numerous ways and on january 6 we saw just how quickly they can shift from online communities to committing organized violent attacks in the real world but the warning signs were there just a few months earlier in my home state of michigan law enforcement successfully stopped a plot by anti-government militias to kidnap our state's governor we've seen an increase in violent crimes over the last decade that are driven by hateful ideologies and we saw the deadly and tragic consequences on january 6 when the domestic terrorist threat was not taken as seriously as it should have been this is a systemic and leadership failure on the part of our security officials from the fbi and department of homeland security to the security leadership on the ground in capital and it must be addressed domestic terrorism is not a new threat but it is an urgent threat it will require serious focus to ensure that we are doing everything we can to protect the safety and security of all americans and i'd like to take a moment to remind my colleagues that every senator here today took an oath to protect and defend the constitution against all enemies both foreign and domestic as the committee's charged with oversight strengthening homeland security and maintaining capital operations we have a solemn duty to thoroughly examine the security breakdowns and make needed reforms and i'm hopeful we'll be able to work together and carry out this responsibility in a serious and a non-partisan way and finally while today's hearing is our first on january 6th attack it will not be our last we will continue to seek testimony and information from a range of agencies and officials who were involved in preparing for and responding to the events of the day for the u.s capitol and for the entire region the attack on january 6 was an extraordinary event that requires exhaustive consideration the american people deserve answers on why their capital was breached and i look forward to having a productive discussion with our witnesses in order to provide the american people with those answers thank you good senator blunt uh thank you chairwoman club church it's been it's great to work with you and uh chairman peters uh and senator portman as we move forward on this hearing on what happened on january the 6th and i think that'll obviously also require discussion of what happened in the days immediately leading up to january the 6th this hearing as senator peters and you have both said really the beginning of a series of efforts that hopefully we can approach in a bipartisan way that looks for solutions and ensures that the deadly outrageous destructive attack that marks such a sad day in our history never happens again certainly the offers officers who defended the capital that day deserve to be recognized and praised for their valiant efforts and their willingness every day to stand ready to do what needs to be done to defend the capital and those who work there i'm certainly grateful to them i'm particularly grateful in this instance to the metropolitan police department and they're really admirable response uh to be here quickly to be here with significant numbers of people uh in the very short term and within an hour to have a an incredible impact on what was going on here at the capitol in a positive way the failures of the day unfortunately were of the most serious kind senator klobuchar has already mentioned the three officers whose lives were lost and other officers who have really had to deal with this in a significant way you also have to remember that this was an event where the families of our officers were watching in real time on television in an attack where they're seeing people that mean the entire world to them in this fight for their lives and fight for our lives and the capital three of today's witnesses former house sergeant-at-arms irving former senate sergeant-at-arms stanger and former chief of the united states police capitol police son were all charged with the protection of the capitol on january the 6th we need to hear from them whether it was a failure of imagination of what could go wrong a failure of intelligence gathering and dissemination a failure of preparation which ultimately led to this problem or maybe a structural failure that just is not designed in a way that it allows us to respond to an immediate crisis and obviously we need to get that done i want to hear from chief conte of the metropolitan police department to learn about the department's role and frankly to learn how their decision-making process appeared to be so much quicker than the decision-making process we could go through here i believe it's important for everyone to note that the attacks on january the 6th did not prevent congress from fulfilling its responsibilities both chambers reconvened that evening and finished the certification of the results of the electoral college i think senator klobuchar and the vice president and i left the building about 4 00 a.m on friday morning but we did get our work done where the american people and people all over the world would have expected it to get done and then on the 20th we held an inauguration on the same platform that had been stormed three weeks earlier and two weeks earlier and carried out one of our most important aspects of our democracy the peaceful transfer of power i want to thank my colleagues from both the homeland security and rules committee for today's hearing and the staff work that's gone into getting ready for today ranking member portman thank you chairman peters uh chairwoman klobuchar ranking member blunt for the constructive comments this morning uh in this business you often finish like you start and i appreciate the fact that we're starting this review by taking the politics out of it so we can get to the bottom of what happened i want to start by expressing my gratitude on behalf of everybody for the men and women of law enforcement u.s capitol police secret service national guard metropolitan police department the fbi and all the law enforcement agencies who put their safety on the line to safeguard democracy on january 6. as i said on the senate floor that night it was thanks to them the vice president pence members of congress staff and the capital complex workforce were protected and we were able to complete our constitutional duty of certifying the election it was important in my view that we sent a clear message that night to our constituents and to the world that we would not be intimidated that the mob would not rule here but that message could not have been delivered without law enforcement securing us and our respective chambers seven individuals lost their lives as a result of the capital attack including two capitol police officers and a d.c metropolitan police department officer we will never forget the service and sacrifice of officers brian sicknick jeffrey smith howard lievengood i knew officer liebengood i saw howie most days at his post at the russell office building his colleagues will tell you no officer was more dedicated to the mission of the capitol hill police department the mission and duty to serve and protect and i'm proud to have called him a friend we will never forget officer eugene goodman and the hundreds of other officers who were heroes on the front lines that afternoon that evening many of whom sustained injuries to honor that kind of sacrifice and avoid future attacks we have got to take a really hard look at what happened on january 6th the decision making it led up to that day and the decision-making that allowed the capital to be to be breached and overrun as the bipartisan media advisory announcing this joint hearing stated the purpose today is to examine the security failures that led to a breach of the capital on january 6 specifically the preparation and response efforts there are key questions that have to be answered first some witnesses have suggested there is an intelligence failure we need to know was there credible intelligence about potential violence when was it known and who knew it second our witnesses have differing accounts about requests for national guard assistance we need to know did the u.s capitol police request approval to seek national guard assistance prior to january 6 and if so why was that request denied we need to know was the request for national guard assistance on january 6 delayed and why if that is true and we need to know why it took so long for the national guard to arrive after their support was requested third the capital was overtaken in a matter of hours we need to know whether capitol police officers were properly trained and equipped to respond to an attack on the capital and if not why not and we need to know why the capital complex itself was so vulnerable and insecure that it could be so easily overrun my hope is that today we get clear answers to these questions from our witnesses we need to know what happened and how to ensure this never happens again it's that simple i'll be listening carefully as i know my colleagues will to the testimony of the witnesses before us these events on january 6 showed that while our democracy is resilient our democracy at times will be challenged we've got to be up to that challenge that certainly includes securing this capital the citadel of democracy that's something we can all agree on thank you mr chairman thank you senator portman before i introduce the panel it's important that we hear from someone we all believed it was important that we hear from someone who was on the front lines that day and i'd like to recognize captain karnisha mendoza of the u.s capitol police captain mendoza has been a member of the capitol police for almost 19 years with 13 years of leadership experience she currently serves as a field commander in the special operations division where her duties include acting as a field commander for significant security incidents she has served in various divisions within the department including the command center house division and senate division before she joined the capitol police she served as an active duty soldier in the united states army and she has received various awards for her work including her work on recovery efforts during the pentagon attack on 9 11. born and raised in missouri senator blunt captain mendoza graduated from park university with a bachelor of science in criminal justice administration she has two children on january 6 she rushed to the capitol when she heard that her fellow officers needed immediate help and assumed command in the rotunda as she and her colleagues fought to push back the rioters and ultimately drive them out of the building captain thank you for sharing your story today thank you good morning thank you for the opportunity to speak before the committee today and thank you all for your service to our country my name is captain karnisha mendoza and i've served with the united states capitol police for 19 years i take a lot of pride in my job prior to serving with the capitol police i served as an active duty soldier with the united states army my last duty station was split between the pentagon and the washington area criminal investigations division i received various awards from the army and the capitol police to include an award for recovery efforts during the pentagon attack unfortunately i didn't save any lives but there are certain lessons that always stuck with me after 9 11. one of those lessons is knowing the unthinkable is always possible so be ready so i always take my job very seriously as 911 is always in the back of my mind with the capitol police i have served in various operational administrative and collateral assignments i'm currently serving as a captain in the special operations division where i have various responsibilities to include serving as a field command commander and a field force commander for the civil disturbance unit throughout my career i have responded to and managed various critical incidents and events from congressional and member security related issues to shootings and armed carjackings i have served as a cdu field force commander for multiple events including the november 14th million mega march in my career i've been activated to work demonstrations with various controversial groups and i've been called some of the worst names so many times that i'm pretty numb to it now as an agency we have trained for and handled numerous demonstrations it's something we do on a regular basis and it's something i've always felt we've excelled at during the million mega march multiple white supremacist groups to include the proud boys and others converged on the supreme court along with counter groups the civil disturbance unit fought hard that day physically breaking up fights and separating various groups i literally woke up the next day unable to move due to the pain on january 6 we anticipated an event similar to the million mega march that took place on november 14th where we would likely face groups fighting among one another additional civil disturbance units were activated that day i was working the evening shift and had planned to report in at 3 pm i was prepared to work a 16-hour shift and assume field force commanders should the event continue into the evening and overnight shifts it was approximately 1 30 in the afternoon i was home eating with my 10 year old spending time with him before what i knew would be a long day when a fellow captain contacted me and told me things were bad and that i needed to respond in i literally dropped everything to respond to work that day early i arrived within 15 minutes and i contacted dispatch to ask her what active scenes we had i was advised things were pretty bad i asked where assistance was needed and was advised of six active scenes there was an explosive device at the democratic national committee building a second explosive device at the republican national committee building and large hostile groups at different locations outside the capitol building i advise the dispatcher i would respond to the dnc since that building was closest to where i was at the time in route i heard officers at the capitol building calling for immediate assistance so i proceeded past the dnc to the capitol as i arrived to the east front plaza of the capitol i heard an officer yell there was a breach at the rotunda door and i heard various officers calling for assistance at multiple locations throughout the building many of the doors to the building were not accessible to the size of the crowd i was able to enter a lower level door with the assistance of a capital division officer once inside the memorial door i immediately noticed a large crowd of possibly 200 rioters yelling in front of me since i was alone i turned to go back so i could enter another door but within the few seconds it took me to walk back to the door i entered there were already countless rioters outside the building banging on the door i had no choice but to proceed through the violent crowd in the building i made my way through the crowd by yelling and pushing people out of my way until i saw capitol police civil disturbance units and riot gear in the hallway they were holding the hallway to keep rioters from penetrating deeper into the building i immediately jumped in line with them to assist with holding the crowd of rioters at some point my right arm got wedged between rioters and the railing along the wall a cdu sergeant pulled my right arm free and had he not i'm certain it would have been broken shortly after that an officer was pushed and fell to the floor i assisted the officer to a safer location and got back in line at some point the crowd breached the line officers worked so hard to maintain civil disturbance units began to redeploy to keep rioters from accessing other areas of the building i proceeded to the rotunda where i noticed a heavy smoke-like residue and smelled what i believe to be military-grade cs gas a familiar smell it was mixed with fire extinguisher spray deployed by rioters the rioters continued to deploy cs into the rotunda officers received a lot of gas exposure which is worse inside the building than outside because there's nowhere for it to go i receive chemical burns to my face that still have not healed to this day i witnessed officers being knocked to the ground and hit with various objects that were thrown by rioters i was unable to determine exactly what those objects were i immediately assumed command in the rotunda and called for additional assets officers began to push the crowd out the door after a couple hours officers cleared the rotunda but had to physically hold the door closed because it had been broken by the rioters officers begged me for relief as they were unsure how long they could physically hold the door closed with the crowd continually banging on the outside of the door attempting to gain re-entry eventually officers were able to secure the door with furniture and other objects i'm proud of the officers i worked with on january 6th they fought extremely hard i know some said the battle lasted three hours but according to my fitbit i was in the exercise zone for four hours and nine minutes and many officers were in the fight even before i arrived i'm extremely proud of the united states capitol police i'm especially proud of the officers who are the backbone of this agency and carry out day-to-day operations i know with teamwork we can move forward the night of january 7th into the very early morning hours of my birthday january 8th i spent at the hospital comforting the family of our fallen officer and met with the medical examiner's office prior to working with fellow officers to facilitate a motorcade to transport officer sicknick from the hospital of the multitude of events i've worked in my nearly 19-year career in the department this was by far the worst of the worst we could have had 10 times the amount of people working with us and i still believe the battle would have been just as devastating as an american and as an army veteran it's sad to see us attacked by our fellow citizens i'm sad to see the unnecessary loss of life i'm sad to see the impact this has had on capitol police officers and i'm sad to see the impact this has had on our agency and on our country although things are still raw and moving forward will be a difficult process i look forward to moving forward together as an agency and as a country in closing i want to honor chief son's leadership i served under his command as a watch commander for three years and was able to personally see his hard work and dedication he was fully dedicated to united states capitol police and he cared about every employee on the department i often hear employees on the department praise his leadership and his ability to inspire others he's made a significant impact on our agency thank you chief thank you thank you very much uh captain mendoza for that beautiful statement and for your work on behalf of our country i'm going to give you the bios on the other witnesses and then senator peters will swear them in our first witness today is robert j conte acting chief of the metropolitan police department of the district of columbia acting chief conte was sworn in as acting chief of the mpd on january 2nd of this year he first joined the department in 1989 as a cadet after being sworn in he became a patrol officer before being promoted to lieutenant and leading the forces intelligence branch in 2004 he was promoted to captain and put in charge of the violent crimes branch after being promoted to second district commander he joined the special operations division for the next decade acting chief conte served in multiple leadership roles with the mpd including his patrol chief of patrol services south where he oversaw several police districts he was appointed as assistant chief of the investigative services bureau in march of 2018. acting chief conte is a graduate of dc schools and holds a bachelor degree in professional studies from the george washington university acting chief conte grew up in the carver terrorist community in northeast washington d.c our second witness today will be mr stephen a son mr sun served as chief of the u.s capitol police from june of 2019 to january 16th of this year mr sun joined the capitol police in 2017 as assistant chief and chief of operations prior to joining the uscp he spent nearly 25 years with the metropolitan police department where he started out as a patrol officer in 1990. from 1999 to 2006 he served as mpd special operations division and helped plan several major events including the 2001 and 2005 presidential inaugurations after joining the mpd's homeland security division he rose through the ranks to become commander of the special operations division in 2011. as commander of the special operations division he served as lead planner for both the 2009 and 2013 presidential inaugurations and many other national security special events he received his bachelor and master of science degrees from john hopkins and his master of arts in homeland security from the naval postgraduate school our third witness will be mr michael stenger former senate sergeant at arms who served in that capacity from april of 2018 through january 7th of this year he joined the senate in 2011 as assistant sergeant at arms for the office of protective services and continuity he has also served as chief of staff of the sergeant-at-arms and his deputy sergeant of arms prior to joining the sergeant-at-arms office he was a 35-year veteran of the united states secret service where he served in many roles including as the special agent in charge of the washington field office immediately before joining the senate he served as assistant director of the office of government and public affairs for the secret service he graduated from fairleigh dickinson university he is also a veteran having attained the rank of captain in the u.s marine corps our final witness today is mr paul irving mr irving served as a sergeant at arms at the u.s house of representatives from january of 2012 through january 7th of this year he joined the united states secret service in 1983 after briefly serving with the fbi he served as head legal instructor for constitutional law and criminal procedure at the secret service training academy before joining the presidential protective division during the george h w bush and clinton administrations following his white house service he served as the assistant director for congressional affairs assistant director for government affairs assistant director for homeland security and assistant director for administration for the secret service he retired from the secret service in 2008 as assistant director and worked as a private security consultant until his appointment as house sergeant-at-arms in 2012. he is a graduate of the american university university and whittier law school i want to thank our witnesses for appearing voluntarily today and i look forward to your testimony it is the practice of the homeland security and governmental affairs committee to swear in witnesses so if the witnesses would stand including those joining us virtually and raise your right hand do you swear that the testimony you will give before this committee shall be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god thank you thank you may i'll be seated you want to begin then chief conte sure good morning chairman peters chairwoman klobuchar ranking members portman and blunt and members of the committee i am robert j conte iii the acting chief of police of the metropolitan police department the primary police force in the district of columbia i appreciate this opportunity to brief you on the events of january 6 2021 a dark day for our country i would like to begin by highlighting a few key facts to ensure the committees and the audience understand the very different roles of mayor muriel bowser and the district of columbia including mpd and those of congressional and federal authorities first mpd is prohibited by federal law from entering the capitol or its grounds to patrol make arrests or serve warrants without the consent or request of the capitol police board second the president of the united states not the mayor of the district of columbia d.c national guard the scope of the request by the mayor must be limited to supporting the district's local jurisdiction and authority which excludes entities which excludes federal entities and property third since mayor bowser declared a public health emergency last march the district has not issued permits for any large gathering although the district and mpd take pride in facilitating the exercise of first amendment rights by all groups regardless of their beliefs none of the public gatherings on january 5th and 6th were issued permits by the city on the morning of january 6 mpd was prepared to support our federal partners with a first amendment assembly that was held primarily on federal land while continuing to patrol and respond to calls for service throughout d.c based on our experience prior demonstrations after the election we recognize that there was a possibility of violence especially after dark and smaller groups of protesters gathered with malicious intent on our city streets to be clear available intelligence pointed to a large presence of some of the same groups that had contributed to violence in the city after demonstrations in november and december the district had intelligence indicating the potential for violent actions in the streets of the district of columbia in preparation for the anticipated demonstrations and the possibility of violence on city streets mpd was fully deployed on 12-hour shifts the week of january 4th with days off and leave cancelled at mayor bowser's request several area police departments were on standby in d.c and more than 300 members of the national guard were deployed on district streets providing traffic control and other services however these resources were barely enough to counter an event that had never happened in the history of the united states a mob of thousands of american citizens launching a violent assault on the u.s capitol the seat of our government in an attempt to halt the counting of the electoral ballots an essential step in the peaceful transfer of power in our nation the mob sustained assault on the capital precipitated an equally unprecedented response within capital police chief steve sun issuing an urgent request for mpd to come assist in defending the capitol needless to say when we received the call for help mpd responded immediately within minutes our members arrived at a chaotic scene the violent mob had overran protective measures at the capitol in an attempted insurrection prior to the arrival of mpd officers at the west front our objectives were to one stop the rioters from entering the capitol building and remove those that were already inside to secure a perimeter so that the capital could be cleared for lawmakers three enabled congress to resume their sessions to demonstrate to our country and to the world that our democracy was still intact and lastly once the third objective had been accomplished begin making arrests of anyone violating the law at 2 22 p.m a call was convened with among others myself leadership of the u.s capitol police the national guard and the department of the army i was surprised at the reluctance to immediately send the national guard to the capitol grounds in the meantime by 2 30 p.m the district have requested additional officers from as far away as new jersey and issued notice of an emergency citywide curfew beginning at 6 pm from that point it took another three and a half hours until all rioters were removed from the capitol 90 minutes later at 8 pm congress was able to resume its critical work and fulfill its constitutional duty over the course of january the sixth and into the early morning of the seventh approximately eleven hundred mpd members responded to the capital at least 65 mpd members sustained injuries five people lost their lives on january the 6th as we reflect on that dark day we offer condolences to all of the grieving families in closing i appreciate the opportunity to highlight the heroism of mpd officers who put their lives on the line to protect the capital congress and our democracy but to ensure the continued safety of the district and everyone in it we must be frank in looking at several critical issues this assault on the capitol has exposed weaknesses in the security of the most secure city in the country the federal police forces in d.c will be re-examining their security protocols given the risk of both foreign and domestic terrorism as the chief of the district's municipal police force i must think about our preparations not only for possible attacks but the daily impact of the changing operations of our federal partners as they harden targets in the federal enclave other buildings in the city under mpd jurisdiction may become more likely targets this concludes my testimony i am happy to answer any questions thank you very much uh mr hunt good morning chairwoman clovershaw ranking member blunt chairman peters and ranking member portman thank you for allowing me the opportunity to testify before your two committees regarding the attack on the united states capitol that occurred january 6th i have been in policing for almost 30 years the events i witnessed on january 6th was the worst attack on law enforcement and our democracy that i have seen in my entire career i witnessed insurgents beating police officers with fists pipes sticks bats metal barricades and flag poles these criminals came prepared for war they came with their own radio system to coordinate the attack and climbing gear and other equipment to defeat the capitol's security features i am sickened by what i witnessed that day our officers fought valiantly using batons shields chemical munitions and pepper ball guns to hold back the attackers capitol police and responding law enforcement agencies showed tremendous restraint by not using their firearms which would have likely led to a more chaotic situation and a possible mass casualty incident no civilian law enforcement agency to include the united states capitol police is trained or equipped to repel an insurrection of thousands of individuals focused on breaching a building at all costs i am extremely proud and appreciative of the capitol police officers the metropolitan police department and the other law enforcement agencies that came to our assistance a clear lack of accurate and complete intelligence across several federal agencies contributed to this event and not poor planning by the united states capitol police we rely on accurate information from our federal partners to help us develop effective security plans the intelligence that we based our planning on indicated that the january 6 protests were expected to be similar to the previous maga rallies in 2020 which drew tens of thousands of participants the assessment indicated that members of the proud boys white supremacist groups antifa and other extremist groups were expected to participate on january 6th and that they may be inclined to become violent based on the intelligence that we received we plan for an increased level of violence at the capitol and that some participants may be armed but none of the intelligence we received predicted what actually occurred extensive preparations were put into place for january 6th that included the full activation of the department intelligence and information sharing with our federal and local partners and department officials implementing a significant enhancement for member protection extensive operational enhancements to include significant civil disobedience deployment and an expanded perimeter we also distributed additional protective equipment for our officers and coordinated and coordinated outside agency support as recent as tuesday january 5th during a meeting i hosted with my executive team the capitol police board and a dozen of the top law enforcement and military officials from d.c no entity including the fbi provided any new intelligence regarding january 6th it should be also noted that the secretary of homeland security did not issue an elevated or imminent alert in reference to the events at the united states capitol on january 6th we properly planned for a mass demonstration with possible violence what we got was a military-style coordinated assault on my officers and a violent takeover of the capitol building i know that the images we saw of the officers battling for their lives and the visuals on national tv had a profound effect on the nation the united states capitol police did everything we could based on the intelligence and available resources to prepare for this event while my officers were fighting my post was in the command center coordinating resources from numerous agencies around the national capital region to provide critically needed support i was also briefing the two sergeant-at-arms and working on establishing accountability and priorities for the incoming resources as capital police and outside resources began to re-establish the security perimeter i responded to the capitol building to personally evaluate the situation and brief the sergeant-at-arms and leadership i acknowledge that under the pressure of an unprecedented attack a number of systems broke down one of the reported issues described by officers was a lack of clear communications and directions from officials it appears that the established incident command for the capitol building was overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation and as officials battling insurrections as opposed to directing the response there have also been reports that some officers may have felt confused or let down during the attack as an official who cares as much as i do about my colleagues nothing is more painful to me these issues must be addressed through new training policies and procedures even our best efforts were not enough to stop this unprecedented assault on the capitol however casting blame solely on united states capitol police leadership is not only misplaced but it also minimizes what truly occurred that day the focus going forward needs to be on the efforts to improve intelligence and the coordination of security measures between all involved agencies hopefully this will be part of the focus of an independent after action committee to look at all aspects of the january attack on our nation's capital in closing i want to again recognize the heroic efforts of the capitol police officers who on january 6th outnumbered and against the odds successfully carried out their mission to protect the members of congress and the legislative process i couldn't have been more proud to be part of their team than the uscp mission i'm available to answer any questions you may have thank you thank you mr sund mr stenger chairwoman kobachar chairman peters ranking member blunt ranking member portland the national capital region is a unique environment for law enforcement u.s capitol police conjunction with the sergeants at arms work to provide security of the capitol complex and its population but there is a shared responsibility with other law enforcement groups within the region sharing of information and resources are paramount for success once assuming the position of the senate sergeant-at-arms enhancement of the working relationship between my office and u.s capitol police have been a priority i am a proponent of the concept of intelligence-elect police this methodology can be used in assessing threats to individual numbers as well as threats to the campus as an all intelligence operations it was only as good as the analyst assessing it and that assessment is then placed in the appropriate hands to take steps in order to mitigate any threats we have to be careful of returning to a time when possibility rather than probability drive security planning the events of january 6 certainly reveal the remove intelligence should be done returning to the concept of possibility driving security operations they result in poor use of the resources this is the constant give and take of security planning there is an opportunity to learn lessons from the events of january 6th investigations should be considered as to the funding and traveling what appears to be professional agitators first amendment rights should always be considered in conjunction with these investigations law enforcement coordination in the national capital region should be reviewed to determine what can be done in a more efficient productive manner intelligence collection and dissemination training and concepts on the use of force must be consistent disintegration should be accomplished without regard to self-interest and cause it concludes in conclusion whenever you prepare for a major event just always consider the possibility of some level of civil disobedience at these demonstrations and plan according events of january 6 went beyond disobedience this is a violent coordinated attack where the loss of life could have been much worse this concludes my preparedness thank you mr stinger mr irving chairman peters chairwoman klobuchar ranking member portman ranking member blunt and distinguished members of the committees thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today there has been a lot of press reporting about me not all of it accurate and i appreciate the opportunity to address some of that today my name is paul irving and i served as the sergeant-at-arms for the house of representatives for the past nine years serving in that role was one of the great honors of my life and i counted a privilege to work with speakers from both political parties including speaker boehner speaker ryan and speaker pelosi i'm a law enforcement officer by training my professional career started more than 40 years ago as an intern at the department of justice and then as a clerk at the fbi i later became a special agent at the secret service where i worked on two different presidential protection details and ultimately rose to the rank of assistant director like you i am profoundly saddened by the events of january 6th the entire world witnessed horrific acts of violence and destruction carried out by our very own citizens against the global symbol of democracy our seat of government i am particularly saddened by the loss of life which included which included three officers my heart goes out to all the families that lost a loved one we began planning for the protest of january 6th in december 2020. the planning relied on what we understood to be credible intelligence provided by various state and federal agencies including a special event assessment issued by the capitol police on january third the january 3rd assessment forecast that the protests were expected to be similar to the previous million mega march rallies that had taken place in november and december 2020. every capital police daily intelligence report between january 4 and january 6th including on january 6th forecast the chance of civil disobedience or arrest during the protests as remote to improbable i relied on that intelligence when overseeing the security plan put forth by chief sun the chief's plan took on an all-hands on-deck approach whereby every available sworn capital police employee with police powers was assigned to work on january 6th that meant approximately 1200 capital police officers were on site including civil disturbance units and other tactical teams i also understood that 125 national guard troops were on notice to be standing by for a quick response the metropolitan police department was also on 12-hour shifts with no officers on day off or leave and they staged officers just north of the capitol to provide immediate assistance if required the plan was briefed to multiple law enforcement partners based on the intelligence we all believed that the plan met the threat and that we were prepared we now know that we had the wrong plan as one of the senior security leaders responsible for the event i am accountable for that i accept that responsibility and as you know i have resigned my position much has been said about whether optics affected my judgment in a january 4 telephone call with chief son and senate sergeant armstanger about a national guard offer to incorporate 125 unarmed national guard troops into the security plan the guard's purpose would have been to work traffic control near the capitol my use of the word optics has been mischaracterized in the media let me be clear optics as portrayed in the media played no role whatsoever in my decisions about security and any suggestion to the contrary is false safety was always paramount when making security plans for january 6th we did discuss whether the intelligence warranted having troops at the capitol that was the issue and the collective judgment at that time was no the intelligence did not warrant that if the chief or any other security leader had expressed doubt about our readiness without the national guard i would not have hesitated to request them chief sund senate sergeant armstanger and i were confident in the chief's plan and i did whatever i could to ensure that chief son had the support needed to prepare and execute that security plan and on january 6 when i was asked for authorization to request national guard assistance i approved it there are important lessons to be learned from january 6th i commend the committees for conducting this proactive review of the events leading up to and on january 6th i want to help the staff and members make changes and improvements and to ensure the tragedies of january 6th never occur again i look forward to answering your questions thank you very much we'll now begin questioning i want to start out just to clear up one thing by just asking all of our witnesses a yes no question based on what we know now including the recent department of justice indictment do you agree that there is now clear evidence that supports the conclusion that the january 6 insurrection was planned and it was a coordinated attack on the u.s capitol and just say anyone agree yes okay um would you agree that this attack involved white supremacists and extremist groups yes yes okay would you agree that this was a highly dangerous situation which was horrific uh but could have actually been worse without the courage of the officers that you commanded okay yes thank you yes okay so now let's look at what we knew leading up to it or what you knew leading up to it or what people that worked for you knew leading up to it uh we knew leading up to it that on january uh leading up to january 6 a president trump sent nationwide tweets telling people to come to washington on january 6 and saying be there will be wild and according to public reporting by the washington post the fbi's norfolk field office issued a threat report on january 5th that detailed specific calls for violence online in connection with january 6 including that protesters quote be ready to fight and quote and quote go there ready for war end quote um i guess i'll start with you mr sun when a critical intelligence report is received by the capitol police from an intelligence community source like the fbi um who usually would receive it and i guess i'll start with did you receive this report thank you very much for the question ma'am uh i actually just in the last 24 hours uh was informed by the department that they actually had received that report it was received by what we call it's an uh one of our sworn members that's assigned to the joint terrorism task force which is a task force with the fbi uh they received it the evening of the fifth uh reviewed it and then forwarded over to an official at the intelligence division over at uh u.s capitol police headquarters and so you hadn't seen it yourself no ma'am it did not go any further than that okay and then was it sent to the house and senate sergeant-at-arms i don't believe it went any farther than uh from the start over to the sergeant at the intelligence division okay and mr irving mr stenger do you did you get that report beforehand mr stanger did you get the report no okay mr irving i i did not okay um okay so i think that may have contributed part to the lack of information but i'll leave that for for the future now let's go back to another report the i know on january 3rd mr sun you said in your written testimony that the capitol police published intelligence assessments of the event including one on january 3rd do you mostly rely on your federal partners like the fbi to gather and analyze intelligence on potential threats to the capital and members of congress yes i think what's important to realize as a law enforcement agency we're a consumer of intelligence and information that's provided by the intelligence community the intelligence community is 18 federal agencies that collect information uh do the analyzing of the raw data raw intelligence and then provide it to us so we're reliant on that information to be complete and accurate but in that in that report we now know according to your testimony that tens of thousands of participants were likely to send on washington is that correct yes ma'am okay and the january third memo according to the washington post made clear that supporters of president trump see january 6 as the last opportunity to overturn the results of the presidential election and that quote this sense of desperation and disappointment may lead to more of an incentive to become violent is that correct yes it is man the article also quoted the memo as stating that unlike previous post-election protests the targets of the pro-trump supporters are not necessarily the counter-protesters but rather congress itself is a target on the six is that right that is correct and did you have any indication that many of these protesters might arrive armed or that members of extremist groups might be there we knew members of extremist groups would be there and there was social media calls for people to come armed yes you've also said that at a january 55th meeting with capitol police the sergeant-at-arms and federal law enforcement military officials all present at the meeting indicated that there was no new intelligence report for january 6. is that right that is correct ma'am but your testimony states that the capitol police took a number of steps after these assessments like um what you said was the largest number of civil disturbance unit platoons possible increasing dignitary protection coverage coordinating with the d.c police and ordering all hands on deck status for capitol police is that right that that is correct ma'am we took extensive uh efforts to prepare for the events based on the information much of which you just reviewed yes okay good so if the information was enough to get you to do that why didn't we take some additional steps why didn't you and others involved to be better prepared to confront the violence we expanded our perimeter when we expanded the perimeter again we knew there was going to be some maybe limited uh violence but we did we expanded the perimeter we took a number of steps to outfit our personnel with additional hard gear we developed a plan for if we had um protesters that may be armed uh and that was one of the reasons the expanded perimeter and the heightened risk that i went to the sergeant arms and requested the national guard and but now you realize it wasn't enough those security measures is that right well that is you know hindsight being what it is i mean you look around the capitol right now and you see the resources that are brought to bear based on the information we now know from january 6th okay mr sun you stated in your written testimony that you first made a request for the capitol police board to declare an emergency and authorize national guard support on monday january 4th and that request was not granted that is correct ma'am your testimony makes clear that the current structure of the capitol police support resulted in delays in bringing in assistance from the national guard would you agree with that that's one of the things we want to look at yes ma'am okay do you think that changes are needed to make clear that the capitol police chief has the authority to call in the national guard i i certainly do i think in action circumstances there needs to be a streamlined process for the capital chief chief of police for the capitol police to have authority okay and mr stanger do you think that reforms are needed to the structure of the capitol police board to make that clear i think a review of the capitol police board and their statutory authority is probably a would be a good time to do this now there's a lot of statutes out there in the capitol police board that go back many many years things have changed and it's probably uh to make the board a little bit more nimble it's probably not a bad time and an idea to take a look at what's there that's probably an understatement with what happened but thank you mr irving your views i would certainly agree with both chief sund and michael stanger i think a review would certainly be warranted at this time of the capitol police board um mr sund your written testimony states that you had nor no authority to request the assistance of the national guard without an emergency declaration of the capitol police board on what rule regulation or authority did you base that view uh i'd have to go back and look the specific rule but it's a standard it's a standing rule that we have i cannot request the national guard without a declaration of emergency from the capitol police board uh it's it's kind of interesting because it's very similar to the fact you know i can't even give my men and women cold water on a an excessively hot day without a declaration of emergency it's just a process that's in place um and to be clear apart from the capitol police board you also face delays in getting authorization to bring in the national guard from the department of defense is that correct we'll be hearing from them next week yes ma'am that is correct um would you agree that there were serious issues at the pentagon that contributed um to the fact that guard troops did not arrive at the capitol until about 5 40 that day after most of violence had subsided i i don't know what issues there were at the the pentagon but i was certainly surprised that the delays i was i was hearing and i was seeing okay very good and my last question just as of all of you in addition to the reforms of the police board which are very clear need to be made any other suggestions that wouldn't involve classified information you have for us mr sund as reference to uh some of the recommendations i would look at you know again you know one of the big things that i think was a contributing factor to this was uh intelligence i think as you meet with the intelligence community and law enforcement in the intelligence community we have a very good relationship i think the aperture just needs to be opened up a little bit farther you know like chief conte had mentioned you know january 6 was a new day it was a change of what threat we face and i think getting them to open the aperture and looking a little bit harder and i think internally looking at some of our policies procedures our processes for how we handle special events how we handle incident command with stuff we can do and then looking at physical security of the building and the grounds i think is going to be is going to be critical i know a lot of people have talked about you know the fencing the open environment i understand and i know that goes way back and members of congress like the open environment i think there are ways to develop a more secure campus while keeping an open environment but i'll leave that for more classified or restricted hearings okay thank you anything you would add in addition just any other thing you'd add in addition to uh what uh the former police chief laid out here mr singer i would be very supportive without those areas that uh the chief mentioned i think he's right on the money there i think there's maybe another area of use of force uh that probably needs to be uh coordinated uh better in this in the region here but certainly intelligence uh needs to be taken a look at as to how it works we have a lot of people that we've ramped up since 9 11. uh and i think maybe it's time to take a look at how how efficient it is on the gathering of intelligence and the collection of intelligence thank you i'm going to allow my colleagues to ask that same question of you mr irving and you uh chief conte because i've gone over my time thank you thank you uh madam chair uh mr son i i you know you've made the uh or brought up the issue of intelligence throughout your testimony and the gaps that were there and how we need to to strengthen uh the intelligence but i was struck by the fact that you said the fbi report and my understanding is that that report had some fairly specific information that was troubling that you said that their report did get sent to the capitol police that it went to the folks in the intelligence department but then you were not aware of it which raises a really big question something coming in like that right before an event that i think is significant it does not get to operational commanders who are there to deal with it how did that how how can that happen how can you not get that vital intelligence on the eve of what's going to be in a major event thank you sir i know that's something that's going to be looked at i think that information would have been helpful to be aware of again you know looking at the information for the first time yesterday it is strictly raw data it's raw intelligence information that has come in seen on a social media post uh lots of people postings on social media that need to be you know corroborated and confirmed uh so it again it's come coming in as raw data so please keep that in in mind but you know i agree that's something we need to look at what's the process and how do we streamline that information getting to where it needs to go well i understand it's raw data but it's the eve of the event you're not going to have time to to do the kind of analysis that you would normally like to do that is information that has to get to you so that's clearly a major problem and my question is also related to the report that was put out by capitol police by your your uh intelligence folks on january third the intelligence division of the capitol police issued a internal report which reportedly stated and this is uh some of this has been out in in the public domain that instead of targeting counter protesters protesters as you've seen in the prior events that occurred that you've referenced earlier that quote this is quote that's been out in the public domain that congress itself is the target on the sixth by trump supporters congress was the target the report also mentioned that members of the proud boys white supremacist groups other extremist groups would be in attendance and quote again out in public sources may be inclined to become violent so you you have your own report did you see that report that was put out on the third yes i did so how is not that a warning of some extraordinary measures now i understand you increased and you had folks there and you increased your presence but how was that that not a real big warning flag and if it was what exactly did you do when you read that report so that was one of the reports that contributed to the fact that we expanded our perimeter i reached out you know looking at it i'd reach out to the metropolitan uh police department just knowing even before that report knowing you know what that extremists were likely to be there in the previous reports for it that has been called for on social media for people to be armed and talking with our partners over at the metropolitan police department i reached out to say hey we are going to be able to provide us some support and we coordinated that additional support the morning of the uh of the sixth so yeah we did take all that in consideration as we developed uh the extensive security plans for this event so you changed plans on january third after getting that report we yeah we just just our perimeter we did a number of things for we actually were adjusting our perimeter probably a little bit before that as well so that was happening before so we're going to want to know more specifically when you get that and then of course i think we're going to see you got additional information from the fbi for example but that did not get to you so i i understand that yeah the other thing that i think is important for us to understand and i've heard all of you mention this uh in your in your testimony that this was not just a uh uh it was actually in response to uh chair chairwoman's klobuchar's question it is not just a random violent attack was actually coordinated that you saw and i believe in your testimony as well i'm going to ask other witnesses to respond to this too because all of you mentioned that how do you define coordinated what did we actually see from these folks that lead you to believe that it was coordinated and i think in your testimony now you just mentioned military style coordination so that would mean command and control it would mean understanding the layout of the capital it may mean knowing the internal operations of of defense perimeters of folks that are engaged talk to me what did you see that lead you to believe that this was a coordinated attack and i would like our other witnesses to to engage in that as well yeah i'm able to provide you a quick overview of why i think it was a coordinated attack one these people came specifically with equipment what you're bringing climbing gear to to a demonstration you're bringing explosives you're bringing chemical spray such as what captain mendoza mendoza talked about you're coming prepared the fact that the group that attacked our west front attacked her for west front 20 minutes approximately 20 minutes before the event over at the ellipse ended which means they were planning on our agency not being at what they call full strength being you know watching the other events saying hey that event's ending okay everybody get on post they're going to be marching our way knowing that we may not be at full strength at that time and then also the fact that we're dealing with two pipe bombs that were specifically you know set right off the edge of our uh perimeter to what i suspect draw resources away i think there was a significant uh coordination with this attack anyone else of my uh uh chief conte i think you also believed it was a coordinated attack oh absolutely um my view is from the day of the incident uh i think there were hand signals that were being used by several of the insurrectionists uh there were radio there was radio communication by several individuals that were involved uh the coordinated use of of our chemical munitions to include uh bear spray uh by several uh people that were out there i certainly believe it was coordinated uh to chief sun's point regarding the uh placement of the pipe bombs uh in the areas their discovery uh prior to this event all of those things and plus uh adding to that what we know in hindsight now as a result of the ongoing investigation that's being handled by the fbi uh you know as they continue to scrub our social media i think we're learning more and more and more this is clearly a coordinated effort real quick mr irving and then i'll ask another question real quick mr irving based on the information provided by chief conte and chief sund i would agree the evidence would indicate a coordinated attack so we're looking at uh folks that were coming out in in intelligence reports that groups like the oath keepers proud boys others that were engaged these violent extremist groups which we clearly need to get collect more intelligence on it'll be the subject of another hearing that we will do regarding this but if you look at what the dog is now prosecuting 200 federal cases the fbi has linked at least 40 to extremist groups 59 to other defendants that have connections on social media to violent or extremist rhetoric conspiracy theories this is clearly an area that we've got to focus on as to why did we not have more information about these groups that were coming here planning and usually you leave a trail when you're planning either that or you're real sophisticated using encrypted devices and other things but those are things that we're going to have to be looking at clearly the national guard presence was critical i know you're going to get a lot of questions related to that but chief conte in my remaining time just a question yeah and you mentioned this in your testimony but in an earlier statement chief you stated that you were stunned by the by by quote the tepid response of the army officials in response to chief sun's request for assistance while the violent siege was was uh escalating clearly here we got a coordinate attack all of you saw this immediately the way they were doing i can imagine the conversations with the national guard and chief you were stunned by the tepid response could you clarify that and tell us exactly how those conversations went yeah so uh just after some time after two o'clock p.m i had left the uh the west front of the capitol after initially uh being at the scene assessing uh what was going on uh looking at uh just how violent uh uh looking at the violent actions that were taking place uh shortly thereafter there was a phone call that was convened between several officials a chief son was on the call uh literally pleading uh for there were several army officials that were on the far i don't know all by name who were on the call several officials from district government that were on the scene was chief son was pleading uh for the deployment of the national guard and in response to that there was not an immediate yes uh the national guard is responding yes the national guard is on the way yes the national guard are being restaged from traffic posts uh to respond the response was more uh asking about the plan uh that you know what was the plan for the national guard the response was more uh focused on uh in addition to the plan of the optics you know uh how this looks uh with boots on the ground uh on the on the capitol and in in my response to that uh was simply i was just stunned uh that you know i have officers that were out there literally fighting for their lives and you know we're kind of going through you know what seemed like uh an exercise to really check the boxes uh and there was not an immediate response uh with the the when i asked specifically uh steve's son chief son was he requesting the response national guard and was that request being denied the response was no uh we're not that from the us department of the army was no we're not denying the request but then that they were concerned they did have concerns so i was just again just stunned at that response thank you senator blunt thank you chairman uh chief son if i have your testimony correct this morning i think what i'm hearing you say is based on the intelligence you saw on january the 3rd after that on january the 4th you decided this was going to be a different kind of protest than we you'd seen in november and december and that's when you asked for an expanded perimeter and national guard assistance is that correct so the information we received yes it was very similar to the previous assessments it was just a little bit more detailed uh we had been analyzing kind of how we responded to the previous mega marches uh and decided to expand the perimeter really when you expand a perimeter as large as we expanded it it creates a large area you have to defend and that was the primary reason knowing that these protesters were coming here we were the focus of the protest and the expanded perimeter and we knew this was going to be a long day the the um so did you know from the time you expanded the perimeter that you were going to have to have more help and on all likelihood to defend that parameter than uh then your force would be able to provide we we knew the additional support would be we could we could utilize the additional support yes so why did you believe that you needed the approval of mr irving and mr stinger to request assistance to the national guard that's that's that's always been the case we only requested the national guard for very specific events usually the inauguration and that requires a declaration of emergency from the capitol police board to utilize those resources do you know if there's a statutory requirement for that i could look into that and get that to you as a follow-up if you do like i don't i don't know that there is but i i do know that if you get the approval to expand the parameter and you don't have the assistance to do that that's obviously a problem why didn't you contact the third member of the police board uh the architect of the capitol mr blanton uh thank you for that question sir um use my conduit to the capitol police board was usually through the house and senate sergeant arms they were the ones usually having the communications with the department especially law enforcement related issues they're both law enforcement and also the fact that mr singer at the time is the capital police board chairperson uh but usually outside the monthly capitol police board meeting that we'd have unless it was a um issue specific to the architect regarding you know building structures something like that my conduit was regularly the house and senate sergeant arms why do you think the architect of the capitals on the police board as one of the voting members and providing oversight but apparently not enough oversight that you thought you needed to involve him in the conversation like i said our my usual conduit was going through the the house and senate sergeant arms you know that's already two people i got to go to you want you know going to three you know in the future i guess if that's something that's going to be you know you know that will implement then i will implement it but that's i was just following my usual course of action so mr irving and mr stinger both let's start with mr irving why was the request for national guard assistance not approved at the same time you approve the expansion of the perimeter mr irving i think you're muted mr irving now you're definitely muted okay now you should be fine go ahead am i okay now yes thank you thank you i apologize for that senator i did not take the call uh from chief sund on the fourth as a request chief son called me to tell me that he was had received an offer from the national guard to provide us 125 unarmed troops to work traffic control in the perimeter of the capital shortly after that discussion i said let's include sergeant armstanger as chair of the board and another senior official with with quite a bit of experience the three of us talked it through and during that call the number one question on the table was did the intelligence support did the intelligence support that additional offer for those 125 troops did you did you discuss this with anybody except um sergeant armstinger and chief sund no it was just this one phone call and during that call we all agreed that the intelligence did not support the the troops and collectively decided to let it go michael stenger then said how about we put him on standby just in case and that's what we ended up doing but from what i remember everyone was very satisfied that we had a robust plan security plan that was consistent with the intelligence that we had at the time mr stinger why why did uh why did you think that they the troops were on standby uh they must have been standing way away from where we needed them if it took hours to get them here what did that mean they were going to be on standby what i did when i when i spoke to the chief when the chief brought up to me this attempt to get the national guard and it apparently wasn't going uh forward i suggested to him that uh he reached out he knew the national guard commander from his previous uh work in the uh metropolitan police department i suggested you reach out to the national guard commander for a couple of reasons uh one of them was uh i had either read in a paper or heard on the news that the national guard in dc was rather reticent to engage with the demonstrations at this time because of the issues that had arisen there in the white house demonstrations of a month ago and that uh that we need to make sure that the national guard was engaged in this and that they would be willing to uh but do you think you did make sure that they were engaged and would be willing i'm going to have to go to another one more question here did you think they were engaged and would be willing if called on yeah that's what i think what i asked the chief to return from all right mr mr irving you said in your testimony that when asked for national guard assistance you approved it mr sun stated that he asked for the national guard assistance at 109 and you approved it was approved at 210 why would it take an hour to approve national guard assistance on your part in that moment of crisis mr irving senator from my recollection i did not receive a request for approval for national guard until shortly after 2 p.m when i was in michael stenger's office let me get that straightened out mr sun do you know when you asked for national guard assistance was it 109 or was it 2 pm it was 109 sir 109 and who did you ask for assistance at 109. it was from uh mr irving i believe he was in the company of mr stinger at the time as well and mr irving why would you not remember that senator i have no recollection of a conversation with chief son at that time i was on the floor during the electoral college session and my conversation with chief sund in that time frame was shortly before 1 30 when i recall he was describing conditions outside as deteriorating he may in fact be submitting a request and i carried that forward and um that was as much as i can tell you i have no phone record call from chief sund first record did you discuss that that request at 109 or whenever you got it with anybody else or did you and mr stinger make that decision then no i did not get a request at 109 that i can remember the first conversation i had with chief sund in that time frame was a rent was at 128 uh 130 uh and at that in that conversation he indicated that conditions were deteriorating he might be looking uh to for national guard approval and approval of our mutual aid agreements with local law enforcement and i went to mike stenger's office awaiting an update this is a time mr irving i'm sure my colleagues will want to follow up on this because i'm out of time but that's a time when the difference in 130 and 210 or 109 and 210 makes a big difference one of the things i'm wondering and and we don't have time for you to answer this but i'm going to tell you what i'm thinking here is in a moment like this if your focus is chiefly on the safety of house members and i would certainly understand that and mr stanger's is chiefly on the safety of senate members maybe that's a problem here where the board really can't function as a board because you have such diverse areas of immediate responsibility but whatever happened here doesn't seem to me to be an agreement with the various time frames and i'm out of time mr chairman thank you senator blunt and i wanted senator peters and are going to trade off chairing here with the votes and we have a set order that all the center staff have based on a melded set of rules between the two committees and i'd like to submit for the record a written statement from the united states capitol police labor committee dated february 23rd 2021. thank you senator without objection ranking member portman thank you mr chairman um first of all with regard to the conversation we just had on the discrepancies uh with regard to national guard assistance i would request that both chiefs on you and mr irving provide us with those phone records i know there's there's been some interviews that have been conducted but i'm not sure we have the phone records and that seems like that would clear up some of the confusion i want to shift gears a little bit and talk about preparedness chief son in your testimony you talked about the need for better intelligence and better coordination that was your conclusion and i i think that's true and certainly everything we have learned indicates that was part of the problem but what about preparedness we've received information that prior to january 6 capitol police officers were not trained on how to respond to an infiltration of the capitol building is that correct mr sund when you talk about infiltration you talk about a large insurrection like we saw on the january 6 no and why not why wouldn't we be prepared for an infiltration of the capital given the risk that's out there i would say to mr irving and mr stenger both of you have had distinguished careers with the secret service um i i would i would ask you all just give me a quick yes or no answer does the secret service have training regarding infiltration as an example of the white house yes or no mr stagger mr irving senator i'll take that as a yes if it's a no you okay mr stanger are you a yes also yes okay well it seems obvious that you would have training on responding to an infiltration so i think if if nothing else comes out of this process we've got to figure out how to deal with again the the real danger that is out there and it seems to me the intelligence reports but also just the previous demonstrations would indicate a need for that kind of training let me ask you about something else if i could mr sun and that has to do with the u.s capitol police officers that i saw on video and the world saw fighting against this attack in in street uniforms or soft uniforms many of them did not have riot gear i'm told by contrast d.c metropolitan police department provides all of its officers with such gear including helmets shields gloves gas masks having seen those incredibly disturbing videos and photographs of your brave officers attempting to hold the line to defend the capital without that kind of right here um are all capital police officers outfitted with right gear no they are not sir they're not and and why are they not so so if you look at the way we outfit our our officers and it'll probably be very similar to i think you'll find with even with metropolitan i've been with metropolitan for a number of years they'll have a certain number of officers cdu platoons as they call it's not the entire def entire force that's outfitted to the level one cdu with is the big protective gear the helmets uh things like that so we we outfit a number of our we have seven cdu platoons that we can activate four of those platoons it's 40 people in a platoon are activated to what we call the level one the full cdu gear and equipment it requires extensive uh cost extensive training to keep that and keep and maintain that level for us a number of our officers are posted in interior post screening posts things like that where they you know that gear wouldn't do them any fight and it wouldn't provide them any support so we have determined up until january 6 that that number of cdu platoons had sufficed for all the demonstrations that we had dealing with on capitol hill i would just say you know obviously those officers who you say had interior posts needed it that day so it's not accurate to say that they didn't need it but i know that you activated seven of these civil disputes dispersed just civil disturbance unit platoons and um then only four of them had riot gear um i don't know why you would have a civil disturbance unit platoon that didn't have riot gear um but you've just testified that that's true that only four of them had it is that correct that is correct and just one additional point since i've been chief i've actually pushed for every member in the department to to have riot helmets i had ordered those back in september that we had been looking at delays because of code from the manufacturer getting them delivered and they actually just started being delivered january 4th and distributed to our officers just days before this with limited limited numbers being given to the officers prior to this event yeah too too late for for many of those officers chief conte the comment was made the met pelton police does not all have rad cares is that true i thought that the metropolitan police department officers did have access to rag here could you comment on that yeah so we have seven platoons that have uh the hardened hardened gear but all of our officers uh have ballistic helmets all of our officers have batons all of our officers are deployed with gloves uh as well and uh gas masks so our entire department are deployed with that level but when you talk about the hardened part and all of the the other extras we have seven platoons that have the additional that's a different layer of protection but every officer has a helmet every officer has the protective gloves every officer has the baton is that correct and gas mask that is gas mask yeah it appeared to the metropolitan police department i'm told that the capitol police officers did not have the training and civil disturbance tactics that they had that's what i was told by some of the interviews that we've had chief conte is that correct yes i've heard the same thing with respect to the training of the u.s capitol police officers are all of your metropolitan police officers trained in civil disturbance tactics we have uh platoons that are that are trained for every uh for for every patrol district and our special operations division some officers do not have the civil disturbance training on those officers generally they work traffic duties or they work assignments back in patrol one other thing all of our officers who leave the training academy they get the basic civil disturbance unit uh training so all of our officers do get the basic uh training but we might have some members for example we've been on for 30 years and they haven't been cdu trained and they may work you know back out of patrol district but all of our members coming out the academy they received the civil disturbance your training uh mr sun is that true with capitol hill police officers also are they all trained in civil disturbance tactics as they go through their training that was a process being implemented i could check and let you know if that's been fully implemented for new recruits coming out of the academy that was one of the initiatives i was working on so we were working on that but um as far as you know this training was not being provided even for new officers much less for those i believe i believe the new officers coming out were but i just need to uh confirm that yeah i i think the the bottom line here is that unfortunately our officers were not given the proper training with regard to infiltration of the building or the complex with regard to dealing with civil disturbance and and they didn't have the equipment necessary to push back and most importantly to protect themselves so my hope is that again one of the ways that this joint hearing and this committee report can be helpful is to bring the capitol police department up to speed and look i appreciate the sacrifice and the bravery of that day but i think we also owe it to those officers to provide them the training and equipment they need to protect themselves and to protect the capital thank you mr chairman thank you ranking member the chair now recognizes senator leahy thank you uh chairman i i'd like to follow up on what senator portman said i agree with his concerns but i might ask a question from the appropriations committee and i know time is limited so these could be yes or no answers um the corporations committees always work in a bipartisan fashion to get money to the uh to the police so mr sun yes or no the appropriations committee ultimately the congress had met your request for salaries and operating expenses in every fiscal year is that not correct yes sir thank you and mr stenger the appropriations committee and ultimately the congress has met your request for salaries and operating expenses every fiscal year is that correct i don't hear an answer so i'll ask mr irving serving the appropriations committee and ultimately the congress has met your request for salaries and operating expenses in every fiscal year is that correct yes that that is correct mr stenger yes that's correct sir thank you very much um so i i have to think that we had in not that we had inadequate uh resources but a failure to deploy the people that we were supposed to i look at those who appeared i looked at the lives that were lost the police who fought who protect our our capital we saw this as a violent and i'd say a planned and organized attack of the united states in the united states government by domestic terrorists i hope they're all going to be prosecuted as fully as they can but those uh when we see people encouraging them including from the former president of the united states who urge his followers to fight and to show straight i i really wonder why we didn't take this seriously enough to be prepared for them the hours it took to bring in the national guard and everything else so i i read mr sun i read your detailed letter to speaker pelosi but you said there wasn't enough intelligence shared but in your same way you stated the intelligence assessment i'm quoting here indicated that members of the proud boys white supremacist group antifa and other extremist groups were expected to participate in january 6th event they may be inclined to become violent how much more intelligence do we need than that yes sir that is that is correct that is what the intelligence assessment said it was very similar to the intelligence assessments that we had for the november and december uh mega marches the intelligence assessments that we had developed for the january 6th event all the way up uh until january 6 we're all saying very much the same thing and that's what we had planned for we had planned for the the possibility of violence the possibility of some people being armed not the possibility of a coordinated military style attack involving thousands against the capital violence and armed strike me as a pretty strong pretty strong thing and i would suggest that everybody get together and look at the future because if you have something that goes on for months the president calling them everybody else calling them i'm worried that there was not more there i think until we ruled out the hate and throw the rioters to the door that day no fence or tank or barrier is going to provide the safety we need um we want safety but also talking about peterborough and franklin says give up those who give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty north safety but i know a vote is on and before i close i do want to commend chief conte for your swift response i you don't have an easy job in charge of protecting a city as large as washington d.c and balance the delicate balance with other dozens of other law enforcement but i think that i commend the two chairs and ranking members for holding this hearing we'll hold more in appropriations but we're going to look very closely at the request this year and say what do we do if we have another one of these i thank you you've backed my time thank you senator leahy uh chair recognizes uh senator johnson thank you mr chairman i want to start off by just thanking our law enforcement witnesses for your service i know there's 20 20 is hindsight it's pretty easy to money money morning quarterback and i want to make sure that we we guard against doing so certainly what i've seen from testimony it seems like there's a fair amount of thought a fair amount of due diligence went into this so again i appreciate your service i also want to say i find the videos as you said chief send sickening the violence reprehensible the racial slurs repugnant and i want to make sure the perpetrators the the people that are engaged in the violence uh are prosecute the full extent of the law uh i've got a long list of questions which this format really doesn't lend itself to asking so what i will be doing is preparing a letter for the committee chair and hoping that they will ask those questions and investigate these issues that that i'll be listing but what i want to do in terms of asking some questions i want to start out by reading excerpts from what i thought was a very interesting eyewitness account by j michael waller uh he is a senior analyst for a strategy at the center of security policy his areas of concentration include political and psychological warfare and subversion he's a former professor instructor at the institute of world politics at the naval postgraduate school his current lecture at the john f kennedy school special warfare center at fort bragg he wrote this piece titled i saw provocateurs at the capitol ride on january 6th and he he basically arrived on scene about 11 30 from union station and i'll just start reading about 11 30 a walk from near union station and noticed a small number of capitol police dressed in full riot gear with shin guards and shoulder guards then i walked up pennsylvania avenue toward an empty freedom park he noticed that the speech had broken up and so a crowd was was walking down constitution avenue they he joined them at 13th street but he said the the mood of the crowd was positive and festive of the thousands of people i passed or who passed me along constitution avenue some were indignant and contemptuous of congress but not one appeared angry or incited to riot many of the marchers were families with small children many were elderly overweight or just plain tired or frail traits not typically attributed to the riot prone many were pro police shirts or carried pro police black and blue flags although the crowd represented a broad cross-section of americans mostly working class by their appearance and manner of speech some people stood out a very few didn't share the jovial friendly earnest demeanor of the great majority some obviously didn't fit in and he describes four different types of people plainclothes militants agents provocateurs fake trump protesters and then disciplined uniform column of attackers i think these are the people that probably planned this he goes on the dc metropolitan police were their usual professionally detached cells standing on curbs or at street crossings and exchanging an occasional greeting for marchers when we crossed first street northwest to enter the capital grounds where the capitol police had jurisdiction i noticed no police at all several marchers expressed surprise the openness seemed like a courtesy gesture from congress which controls security that appearance of low threat level made no sense yet no capitol police appeared anywhere from what we could see now again i'm taking these these excerpts uh in order but there's a lot more to this piece what looked like tens or even hundreds of thousands of people surged down the avenues as far as one can see but almost everyone seemed talkative and happy no police could be seen on the platform for now no police could be seen anywhere people kept surging in from constitutional avenue and the plaza quickly filled up and overflowed onto the lawn everyone squeezed closer and closer together with most in high spirits some trouble began up in the front near the base of the inaugural platform itself but we could not see what was happening then something happened at the front of the crowd it seemed like a scuffle but from 40 feet back i couldn't see people started chanting usa usa and other slogans for a few seconds i saw what looked like police in a tussle with some of the marches up front what appear to be an organized group in civilian clothes this organized group are the cell i would call the plainclothes militants they fit right in with mega people suddenly energy surge from the front of the crowd is the anti-riot police above on the inaugural platform visibly tensed up one fired a tear gas canister not at the plane closed militants in the front line but into the crowd itself then another flash grenades went off in the middle of the crowd the tear gas changed the crowd's demeanor there was an air of disbelief as people realized that the police whom they supported were firing on them what are you doing we support you someone yelled all of a sudden pro-police people felt the police were attacking them and they didn't know why more tear gas a canister struck a girl in the face drawing blood the pro-police crowd went from disbelief and confusion to anger i'll stop there the last five pages is titled provocateurs turn unsuspecting marchers into an invading mob so i'd really recommend everybody in the committee read this account and i ask that it be entered into the record but chief sudden i want to ask you is one of the re the house managers made a big deal that this was predictable this was foreseeable which i don't believe do you believe that what happened the breach of the capital did you believe that's foreseeable and predictable no i don't nor do if you look at some of our other partner agencies i think acting chief conte actually made the statement that the breach of the capital was not something anybody anticipated nor do i think some of our federal partners expected it i don't think secret service would have brought up the vice president if they expected it is part of that because of what you'd experienced in the past what this mr waller experience is the vast majority of trump supporters are pro-law enforcement and the last thing they would do is violate the law i will say that story you know information i've received from some of my officers were they were trying to prevent people from coming into the building and people were showing up saying hey we're police let us through and still want to violate the law to get inside the building so you know again i've got a long long list i just want to close with the two former sergeant of arms um i knew this committee these committees were going to start an investigation i waited a couple weeks i didn't see any letter go out oversight letters so i wrote my own on the 21st and i just have a question for both the former sergeant of arms did you get my letter my oversight letter with with my questions i did not i did not receive your letter i left town right after i resigned uh but i certainly look forward to working with you and your staff to answer your questions okay well if you give us an address because we we sent it to the acting sergeant arms that acting sergeant martin's won't even let us know whether they pass that letter along to you apparently they didn't uh mr stenger did you receive my letter i don't recall it senator but uh i i might it might have come i don't one last question for you do you do you regret resigning yes i do sir i certainly do regret signing all right resigning i uh i love this agency i love the women and men of this agency and i regret the day i left well mr irving mr stinger i really wish you'd respond you know first of all look look for my letter and i'd like an answer to that as quickly as possible thank you thank you senator johnson um we're waiting for senator warner and any other member i see senator rosen would you like to go ahead because you're the first member on senator rosen perfect thank you very much senator kobachar and thank you everyone for being here today and uh um springing this hearing is much needed and i think it's the first of many but i'd like to start off by expressing that my thoughts are with the brave capital police officers they put their lives on the line to protect us on january 6 and their heroic actions like the ones of eugene goodman they redirected those violent rioters away from us um they're gonna forever be embedded in our minds and we know that so many of these courageous men and women they're really hurting in the aftermath of the insurrection and um i've been particularly heartbroken to hear about the death of capital police officer howard lehmanngood he's been protect he was protecting the senate since 2005. he was stationed by the door of my russell office my prayers are with him his family and his loved ones but you know when the insurrectionists when they came to storm our capital on january 6 they came armed not only with weapons but also with hate mere weeks before international holocaust remembrance day the world watched in horror as a rider inside the capitol proudly wore a camp auschwitz shirt as he and others violently pushed forward on the house and the senate floors all the wa wild the riders they're wavy confederate flags they're hanging nooses on the front lawn they're verbally assaulting a jewish reporter outside the capitol saying you are cattle today that refers to cow cars that used to transport that were used to transport jews to nazi death camps during the holocaust this violent attack in the capitol featured followers from the anti-semitic q anon conspiracy theory so mr conte on january 4th metro police department arrested enrique torreillo leader of the racist anti-semitic proud voice hate group fbi claims the next day is shared with mpd concrete intelligence about extremist plans for violence on january 6 including specific threats on members of congress maps of the tunnels under the capital complex if mpb was tracking extremist potentially violent white supremacist activity that what exactly did you know on january 5th and why didn't you alert anyone thank you for that question uh what the fbi sent them on january this uh fifth was in the form of an email uh i would certainly think that something as violent as an insurrection capital uh would warrant um you know a phone call or something but as chief son mentioned earlier the information that was sent was on uh it was uncooperative information it was raw information that we had that we received through the same lines through the jttf uh that information was not fully vetted and had not been sent through the chains of the metropolitan police department the metropolitan police department was prepared for was the larger violence and demonstrations that we expected to see in our city that's fine i have i have to ask mr sun the same question now what did you know as of tuesday night january 5th because i i have a follow-up for both of you on this one so quickly mr sun what did you know on january 5th and were you alarmed or or not alarmed what what did you expect uh so yeah i was uh you know i was concerned we had the intelligence that was coming out the intelligence that we'd be planning for again keep in mind the intelligence assessments that we had developed at the end of december the beginning of in the one for january third were very very similar they just provided a little bit more uh specificity so we had already been planning for the threat for violence the threat for armed possible people uh protesting and that's what we're planning for now if you're referring to the norfolk letter again i just became aware that the department was aware of that 24 hours ago uh so on the sixth or the fifth or the fourth i was not aware of that memo existed so so you're saying that there's a breakdown between you and the fbi because we have rallies protests and things happen in washington all the time how many do you could both of you just maybe give a guess how many do you think are usually with armed insurrectionists or come heavily armed out of the uh hundreds perhaps thousands of rallies that we see in washington uh through the through the year we know the last three uh incidents the first two mag arounds men and women of the metropolitan police department uh recovered firearms from several people who were attending uh the the demonstrations uh at the first mega rally as well as the second one aside from that those are have been really the only uh the only demonstration is what we've seen individuals coming on well do you think this was an intelligence breakdown or a resource issue i think that the intelligence uh has not did not make it where it needed uh to be uh in terms of the fbi you think the fbi did not raise us to the level they needed to with the metropolitan police department in your mind we received it in the form of an email that came as an alert bulletin at seven o'clock p.m the day before posture al posture is the metropolitan police department again i think uh you know it's reflected in our deployment in terms of not just the uh national guard that was deployed but as well as other officers from surrounding jurisdictions that reflected the seriousness that we took with respect to the threats that we were expecting to see in the city mr uh mr sund can you tell me do you think this was a resource issue or intelligence breakdown or something else if you uh be brief because this is very important yes ma'am i'll be very brief was part of my introduction i think it was it was more than just the norfolk letter i think we need to look at the whole entire intelligence community and the view they have on some of the domestic extremists and the uh effect that they have i looked this as a intelligence uh problem that impacted this event yes so what information would you be would you have had to have heard to have raised up the flag to to get more resources for the capitol police because thank goodness i mean we we saw loss of life and thank goodness there wasn't more but one is too many so what what is your threshold then what should be the threshold to protect the capital and protect your officers i did in advance reach out to the washington dc police to coordinate resources and i did also go to the both the house and senate sergeant arms to request the national guard um and mr conte um i think i have five seconds and we can take this off the record but i believe that there's planning uh there are some plans by q anon for something to happen at the capitol on march 4th i want to hear what steps we're taking to protect the capital uh on march 4th from any uh any more violent extremists thank you okay we'll have you talk to him about that later because senator warner has arrived via video and i also want to mention senator peters will work with our witnesses for restroom breaks and the like and let us know so that we don't want to take a long break but i can imagine you need a break at some point here so uh senator warner thank you madam chairman and thank you to the witnesses um uh for for appearing today um you know we we've talked a little bit about the deployment or lack of deployment of the national guard um and one of the questions i guess mr sun uh or frankly or chief conte you know the fact that we the district did not have the ability to um uh bring the guard to the table uh because of um frankly that they're not a state and mayor bowser is not treated i think in a in a totally fair fashion in this um this may be outside your lane but um her inability to to bring the guard to the table and actually any of you on the panel can answer this that to me is a reflection of the disempowerment of the district on a going forward basis at least in terms of being able to deploy the guard shouldn't the mayor of the district of columbia have the ability to to do that without all the additional hurdles they have to go through in terms of federal check checklist yes i absolutely agree with that does anybody else want to answer on that question as well yes sir i'm uh happy to add in i think we we have an established process for the capitol police to to make the request through the capitol police board that is also equally as effective well again i i feel like the long-term discrimination against the district we've we've seen it in some of the coveted legislation where they did not receive the same kind of level of support that um other states did we saw it play out real time in terms of on january 6 the the hurdles from the previous administration i actually have concerns whether the deployment of the guard was affirmatively slowed down um i hope that we in the congress will as a supporter of dc statehood i'd like to see that move forward but even short of that trying to ensure that the mayor has appropriate powers going forward i know there were some questions already raised about um the fbi and whether that the intel that came out of the the norfolk fbi office was either ever fully relayed to uh all of you individuals um but can you talk more generally about um the fbi's responsiveness sharing of intelligence i had a number of conversations i called director ray on monday the fourth uh trying to express concerns that there might be this kind of activity i never expected this level of violence i had a number of conversations with senior fbi leadership on the fifth through the sixth um i can't believe was i don't think even the full fbi could have been fully informed of all of what was going to come to pass but i i felt like the fbi felt that we they were in better shape in terms of intel and preparation than what came to be the case and i'd like each of you to comment on how well you felt that the fbi did in terms of sharing intelligence and then coordinating when the actual activities of the sixth played out so i'll go ahead and um did you you want me to address it first yeah i mean i can't see where you are so every one of you can take a crack at that i'll i'll go ahead and uh and start first uh i think the relationship we have with the fbi is outstanding uh i think in my time with metropolitan and my time here we've seen nothing but the relationship get better the construct that we have that's very similar to some of the other major cities is having the joint terrorism task force being involved with that the the information we're getting in uh is is good i think the the process and and having like i said earlier the wider lens of what information is being collected maybe looking at the agencies that are consumers of their uh information and what their intelligence collection requirements are is something we need to look at but i think you know getting that information in and then having it processed and pushed forward in an effective manner is something we need to look at i would say uh on the sixth when this started happening you know immediately the fbi you know as being a partner of ours established a process where with capital police and fbi police we can begin to analyze video footage analyze other evidence to begin going out and making arrests uh of the individuals that had created the insurrection of the capitol yeah i'll call the next one did we get enough intel beforehand if we get the balance of the panel to respond yeah sure uh i i would echo what uh what chiefs on uh just mentioned uh we've had a great working relationship with the fbi uh i think it's a whole of intelligence approach not specifically just the fbi when we have something as significant uh as what occurred here uh at the u.s capitol uh if you know if there's information specific information uh out there that our government is responding uh to i would think that something of that nature would rise to the level are more than just an email on the sent to law enforcement agencies that should be a larger more involved conversation about specifics on that you know not just some of the unvetted raw information that's out there we see a lot of that but i think it's more of a whole intelligence approach not specifically the fbi they are great partners to the metropolitan police department thank you let me just um i don't know if any of the other panel members want to want to add any comment on that let me just say that this is my concern is that um in in virginia we've seen these kind of anti-government extremists take to the streets of charlottesville in 2017 resulting in the death of heather heyer uh we see the same kind of uh groups come to come to the forefront and on january 6th i think this is an ongoing uh threat to national security uh i fear at times that while the fbi and others have pointed this out that it didn't get the level of of serious review uh that it should have um uh with the prior administration i i felt at times that they did not want to take the information that was coming out of the fbi i hope on a going forward basis we're going to be able to be more coordinated in terms of taking on anti-government extremism whether it comes from the left or the right this is a real ongoing threat i can tell you from our intelligence committee that we've seen that many of these groups have connections and ties to anti-government extremist groups in europe uh where they've taken a great precedent i know my times expired madam chairman but uh this is something we need more work on thank you for having the sharing thank you very much senator warner we look uh to working with you and the intelligence committee on this um next will be senator lankford and after that senator carper thank you uh son i want to try to validate something there's a letter that's in the public domain not this at this point that's an eight-page letter that was written to speaker pelosi that uh is attributed to you to try to explain the events of that day are you familiar with that letter in the public domain and is it accurate yes it is sir so in the letter itself um you described several things in this in the details and the timeline on it uh can you tell me why you wrote this letter to speaker pelosi what was the purpose of the letter i i feel at the time i resigned i had limited communications with my uh with my department i know my department was getting ready to go and testify at some of the initial uh committee hearings and i think that she had called for my resignation without full understanding of what we had prepared for what we had gone through uh that uh i think she uh deserved to read you know firsthand what we had prepared for and what uh you know what i dealt with that that for that sixth okay that's helpful uh you had said in this you talked several times about thousands of well-coordinated well-equipped violent criminals and described them with climbing gear and all the things that you've also testified here you you also mentioned this letter about the pipe bombs that were located uh that the first word will come at 1252 that a pipe bomb had been located at the republican national committee headquarters how was that located uh who who found it and why was that particular moment the moment that it was found i don't know why there was a particular moment that was found i believe it was an employee of the republican national committee that had located it in the rear of the building that had called it into capital police headquarters you had mentioned before that you thought this was part of the coordination that there were several that were out there that would take away resources at that exact moment but there's no way to know that they would find it at that exact moment i'm glad they did find it they found another one at the democratic headquarters as well at 150 and you document that as well but you had to send quite a few individuals to be able to go to the rnc and the dnc to be able to go deal with those explosives that were planted there is that correct that that is correct and just for your information the rnc uh pipe bomb that was one that was really run by uh capitol police the dnc metropolitan ended up taking that and running that so we can run too concurrently that resulted in the evacuation of two congressional buildings the um cannon house office building as well as one of the library of congress buildings so it took extensive resources so the assault in the capital is not what caused the evacuation of those buildings the discovery of those pipe bombs is what caused the evacuation of those that's correct sir there's been quite a bit of conversation today and quite a few members here that have talked about the national guard and the length of time that it took to be able to go through the bureaucratic process to be able to get them deployed i i i do think that needs to be shortened obviously in a deployment structure and the complexity of the bureaucracy here but it seems to be a misunderstanding on this diaz of some individuals describing the national guard as if they're the riot police that can automatically be called out they're not were you expecting to meet like a rapid response swat team at this point what's a typical response from the national guard to be able to call them out when they're not currently positioned i believe the typical response once they are they're approved is approximately two hours okay but then the approval process is obviously multiple hours to do that or multiple days to do that you had started that process several days before and making some requests so that that is correct as far as the process you know my my initial request was over to uh mr irving it was actually an in-person request on the uh on the fourth uh and it was until the evening of the fourth that i talked to general walker that he informed me that uh if needed because mr stinger wanted me to ask him if they could lean forward they could get 125 right if needed in a fairly fairly quick fashion once approved so that's when what leaded into january 6 when we made the initial request at 109. but that 125 individuals from the national guard that were prepared to be able to move faster because they were in streets and different places doing traffic duty at that point you had already been informed that the city of washington d.c and the mayor's office had made a request to dod and dod had approved it that none of them would be armed none of them would be have heavy gear on there would be no military vehicles that'd be available to them they had to use unmarked vans and other government vans and there would be no helicopters that would be used those were prohibited that day for those 125 individuals that were already on the street is that correct so just for correction at the time no i did not know that was the restrictions being placed on them and uh two when i talked to general walker the evening of uh the fourth which was monday evening the 125 he was going to give us were 125 that were doing coveted relief for the district of columbia not assigned to the traffic post okay so the individuals that were assigned to traffic judy had no weapons had no military vehicles to move had no overhead visual on anything that had all been requested no from the city of washington d.c and then for the other individuals that could be assigned to you as a rapid force those are folks that were currently doing covet duty so you had no swat team this description is very interesting to me around this diaz that people think that suddenly the national guard just bursts in uh and is ready to go on that that's not what the national guard is pre-positioned to do that that is correct any time we've requested the national guard they've been in an unarmed fashion uh i was looking for them to help support the perimeter that we were establi that we had established okay there's been some concern that i've talked to some of the officers here and there's obviously been some conversation around this diaz as well about the rules of engagement and about training and authorization there there wasn't uh training for what to do if a mass group actually comes through the door and tries to burst through whether it's an insurrection type event whether it's just a mob that's gone crazy and whatever maybe or protest that gets out of hand to be able to burst the door there was no clarity for the officers inside the building on their rules of engagements once they actually came to the building they literally my impressionists had to make it up on their own and they determined their stand was going to be where the members and the staff were located that was going to be their stand to start using lethal force so i have a couple questions for that at this point now and i understand hindsight's 2020 is there a need for much greater less than lethal force capability on officers at the time or available to officers at a time that they have less than lethal capabilities and clear rules of engagement of what to do if you have a group of individuals come into the building unauthorized so so just for a little clarification we do train for people trying to get into the building we don't train for when i said an insurrection over thousands of people right and our officers do have less lethal capability that they carry with them with hindsight being what it is from january 6 absolutely i think there needs to be additional training additional equipment to consider this type of attack in the future well the challenge is we all watched this summer in fact this committee at homeland security had a hearing on the assaults on a federal courthouse in portland and went through and all of us saw for a month individuals just attacked that courthouse day after day after day and we saw the techniques that were used some of those same techniques were used by individuals that came in here i'm not saying it was the same individuals but some of those same techniques of trying to be able to work to the fence to be able to find it to be able to find a way to be able to attack officers so the challenge is that we saw that that this was rising i guess that people were watching on tv people attacking a federal institution all summer long and uh it is a follow-up that we're going to have to do in the days ahead of how to be able to get less than lethal capability and to find ways to be able to stop any kind of assault of a number of individuals to be able to come on the capitol so i appreciate your service i appreciate very much the officers that continue to be able to serve because they've not had a gap they've not had a break since that time period and i know you still interact with him at least i hope you do and i would encourage you to pass on from us our gratitude and we're all looking at this as a hindsight 2020 saying why couldn't you read the tea leaves uh at this particular scrap of intelligence that came in the night before none of us saw it at this level and uh so we're grateful for the service they continue to do and let's find the lessons we can learn thank you very much sir i know they appreciate your support as well as the support of congress they're they're a hell of a police agency okay thank you senator lankford next uh thank you for your patience senator carper yeah my pleasure thank you madam chair chief conte is a former governor of the first state of delaware for eight years i recall numerous instances and in which i uh called on the delaware national guard in emergencies they could have been the floods blizzards ice storms drought you name it a lot more uh i know the importance of the valiant work that our citizen soldiers have done for decades in the first day in other states around the country as we have learned in contrast to every other state's national guard in the country the dc national guard operates differently and i'm i'm convinced if someone had been able to activate that they'll the dc national guard and have a thousand or two thousand guardsmen and women uh deployed at the capitol uh in a timely way under the 6th of january this destruction if death and destruction would not have occurred the the leader of the uh unlike the all the states of the 50 states that we have the leader of the district of columbia not in power to activate the dc national guard during an emergency that's one of the reasons why i've worked for years with congresswoman eleanor holmes norton to in support of legislation to admit washington d.c as our 51st state and to provide equal rights to the americans who make this community over i showed 700 000 people their home there's question chief condi and your testimony you highlighted a request for dc national guard assistance at the u.s capitol on january 6th would have been to uh would have had to have been made by the us capitol police with the consent of the u.s department of defense you just take a minute to explain that process and why mayor bowser is not able to request dc national guard assistance when federal installations and property as well as human lives uh are threatened in the district that she leads please go ahead yes thank you for the question yeah so the mayor does not have full authority over the national guard to include their activation or deployment when the mayor we make a request as the district of columbia we make a request we send that to the federal government ultimately the secretary of the secretary of the army receives that request there's a whole approval process that that request has to go through in order for national guard resources to be deployed to the district of columbia uh unlike governors and other states who are able to activate their national guard uh without going through uh those approval processes and receiving uh approval from the highest level of the federal government we just uh that that just does not have to take place in other states so a real hindrance to us in terms of our response and the ability to call them up thanks thanks for that response could you just take a minute to share with us your thoughts on whether having a d.c national guard under the command of a mayor or even a governor of the neighboring state might help the the d.c metropolitan police in coordinating with federal authorities to better protect the city and its citizens and along with the federal installations during assault like the one we experienced on january the 6th yes i think we i think we certainly uh should um we found we we know even on that day on january the 6th you know prior to any movement of the national guard from the assignments that they had been given the traffic post again that required approval at the highest levels of the federal government to include the secretary of the army and secretary of defense in order to just move the national bar or a change of mission in essence so uh yes i think that that should certainly be something that falls under the mayor's authority all right thanks so much a question if i could for mr sun mr sun and your testimony you state that the events of january 6 were not the results of poor planning on behalf of the u.s cabinet police uh but rather a lack of actionable intelligence that would have allowed the uh that would have allowed the uh uh uh let me start over or rather a lack of actual intelligence that would have allowed the us capital or the capitol police to properly prepare as i was looking through mr stinger's testimony and former sergeant-at-arms for the u.s senate he states that i want to quote he says the share of information and resources is paramount for success that's it that's his quote i strongly agree with that statement mr sun what went wrong leading up to january 6 with regard to gathering and sharing actual intelligence why do you think the likelihood of a truly devastating attack was so badly underestimated mr sun i think as you start to hear some from some of the federal agencies on the investigations that are currently going on where they're finding the evidence that this was a coordinated attack uh that had been coordinated among uh numerous states for some time in advance of this that's the information that would have been extremely helpful to us for them to detect some type of level of coordination that would have given us the indication that we're going to see more than just a may become violent that you know may be inclined to violence uh type of type of preparations you look at it now you see you know knowing what occurred you see what type of resources were brought to bear around the around the capital that type of information could give us you know sufficient advance warning to plan for more of an attack such as what we saw a great uh paul newman movie uh cool hand luke and i line you probably a lot of people certainly in my generation remember what we have here is a failure to communicate i was right at the end of the film what what we have recent failure to communicate uh do we have a failure to communicate here where when i'm not one who's crazy about like pointing fingers and assigning blind but to whom do we assign that uh failure to communicate i believe that question's for me sir what i what i look at is you know we have a process for communications and being a consumer of intelligence i look at it more of you know we're i think there's a failure of having a wide enough lens to look at what are the current threats that we're facing in in the nation uh now from some of the domestic extremists i think the communications processes are there they need to be worked on a little bit but i think the intelligence community needs to broaden its aperture on what information it collects we now know in in retrospect that the the uh the gathering on uh the the rioters on january 6th didn't begin on january 5th or the 4th or the 3rd it started like weeks before and uh was fomented and encouraged as we now know by by among others our president and somehow that all of that work and all the intelligence that was gathered by the fbi and other homeland security never got it found its way to the people who right here in dc could have used it the most to have avoided the tragedy of january the 6th thank you are the our thanks to particularly the the officers of the capital ps capital police and others who joined them in trying to protect us and in this capital on that uh sad day i know we have several members ready to go and we want you to go as quickly as possible but there's been a request from our witnesses who've been here a long time if we could give them a five minute break and then we will reconvene in in five minutes with additional questions so we will recess for five minutes son on january 4th mpd arrested the leader of the proud boys for destruction of property and possessing high-capacity firearm magazines and on the following day on january 5th the fbi issued a report through the joint terrorism task force which includes going to the u.s capitol police and that report noted that on far-right media the threats included things such as the comments such as be ready to fight congress needs to hear glass breaking doors being kicked in blood from their blm and antifa slaves soldiers being spilled get violent stop calling this a march or a rally or protest go there ready for war we get our president or we die nothing else will achieve this goal did you get that fbi intelligence report so i addressed that right when we started the united states capitol police department did get that report i was just advised to that in the last 24 hours that report made it from the joint terrorism task force over to our intelligence bureau over to a sergeant there and ceased moving forward at that point no leadership myself included over at capitol police was made aware of that at the at the time of the event so there is you've referred in your testimony to the individual who is the head john donahue the director of intelligence on the u.s capitol police and did did he receive that report but he did not pass it on to to you as head of the uscp again i have no knowledge that he received that report i've been told it went over to a official the rank of sergeant and didn't move any further from there um okay that's very concerning were there not procedures for the head of the intelligence on the u.s capitol police to get the intelligence report to review it especially when there were significant other indications of potential violence and and make sure that that you as the leader had that knowledge on which to develop additional plans if additional plans were needed i'm sure that's something that they're looking at in their current after action yes there is a process for it uh but again that's as i mentioned before that was raw intelligence that was coming in and again taken into consideration with everything else none of the other intelligence was showing that we're looking at this type of a a broad insurrectionist type of uh event with thousands of armed coordinated individuals i know you're i know you're saying that that the folks are looking at that now but my question was did you have a procedure for important intelligence to be brought directly to your attention and did that system break down and that's why you did not see the warnings about blood being spilled get violent call you know be ready to come and die yes there is a process in place to make sure that critical important information is brought up to the up to the leadership again that was something that would have gone through the the development and the analysis of that information okay so you're saying the intelligent side of u.s capitol police failed to get that into your hands let me turn to rules of engagement so officers are out there and there's an expanded perimeter which you've you've referred to and you have those kind of perimeter fence that look like bike racks uh and in a normal situation those tell peaceful protesters this is where you stop was there any sort of um discussion uh or training about what to do if protesters started picking those things up and opening holes in that perimeter what were the rules of engagement if i'm a police officer that day on the line for the capitol police how was i supposed was i trained like what do i do when when those perimeter fences are breached do i use spray do i use a stun gun do i use tear gas uh what what am i do i have a clear sense of exactly how i'm supposed to respond yes there is there is a rules engagement there's a use of force policy and there's also civil disobedience unit training that has to do with when you have a non-compliant group how you deal with non-compliance in gaining compliance which would include hand control techniques the application of chemical chemical spray and then impact weapons so on that day you issued rules of engagement that included what specifically i'm an officer what was i supposed to do if those those barricades were breached there's rules and engagements that exist they weren't issued just that day they existed they don't vary from event to event based on threat analysis no sir so that perimeter you said got larger which meant police officers were spread out over a larger area so once it was breached what are the directions to the police on the team to be able to retreat to a defensible point so what we had is we had what's called a incident command system established you have an incident command for both the exterior the resources on the exterior of the building that would provide those officers those cdu units with specific directions on where to go what's the next step you're going to retreat up to the upper west terrace which i believe which is what they were told to do uh as well as an instant command system inside the building handling the joint session and activities going on inside so i'm out on the the the plaza and the the crowd swarms past me i have an assigned place to go to retreat to that is defensible the incident commander would be providing direction to people in the field on what where to retreat to to uh make the next stance so noah no advance in for information and how do you avoid the situation of those who are guarding a door closing and locking the door and leaving police officers stranded outside of that locked perimeter um so your question how do you prevent that is that what you're saying how do you prevent that if there aren't if you've got folks who are guarding a door and protesters trying to get through it so they're trying to lock that and prevent it and there isn't a pre-plan for how to deal with officers who are stranded outside of those doors how's that handled have do you have drills on that do you have set instructions on that again that's something i would look for the the on-site official the on-site instant commander to provide those officers with directions where to uh relocate to okay let me put it this way have you ever held a drill to respond to this this situation where a crowd pushes past the exterior barricades not not this level of uh situation no sir to what level have you had such drills we've we've done uh various exercises with uh people you know um activities on the on the grounds during civil disobedience training how to handle uh riotous groups okay thank you thank you i'm going to turn just that seconds left to our former sergeant of arms for the the senate uh mr stinger uh at the time that the we were in the in the senate chamber and the protesters the writers reached the perimeter of the senate there was a very quick rush to try to lock the doors and there's there were people searching for how do you lock these and there's many entrances on the balcony have there ever been any sort of a drill with the sergeant of arms team or with in partnership with the capitol police on how to secure the doors to the chamber as a last point of defense uh yes sir they at least once a year they hold the chamber action drill uh where they would work together with the uh capitol police with the door keepers to do a lockdown so they know how to when when they should lock down and when they should do it so that is done as an actual drill where people have to run get the keys lock the doors they know what doors are supposed to guard are they supposed to guard them from the inside or from the outside and so forth yes sir and when was the last such drill of that nature conducted i'd have to i'd have to go back and check but try and do it once a year okay i think i'm out of time and i thank you very much to the chairman thank you senator uh senator scott you're recognized thank you chairman first off i want to thank everybody for your hard work um the we have national guards now she'll guard up here we've had them i guess since around the sixth can you all tell us how you made the decision to bring the national guard here each of you to the extent you're involved or if you're not involved how the decision was made that's the the national guard presence we have here now so not as a result of the uh the riot but the national guard has put up the fencing and and all that okay so that was that began to be developed uh the evening of the sixth when we made the request we got the national guard in we started looking to the future what was going to be what was going to be next we started talking about bringing in the first section of global fencing which basically went right around capital square which is constitutional independence first first uh we got that that in place then we started looking at what necessary national guard uh resources working with uh the national guard representative so that was developed with um capitol police uh working with you know i believe sergeant arms at the time in the evening going into the into the seventh uh that we developed that okay well you the only one involved or were the sergeant-at-arms involved i i believe so i'd have to go back and and and pull that information we were working on a number of different uh aspects of it at the time but i had my general counsel as well as our operations people working on the request and the coordination with the national guard and what was the what was the purpose of the original um the national guard that came and put up the fencing what was the re what was the rationale what was the threat assessment so when just make sure i understand you're talking about the national guard that came on the sixth no the net in the presence of state after oh the one that stayed after um so what was the the the threat was what was the threat assessment and why why was it set up that they would be here for you know it seems like now months on end well again beyond you know uh the eighth again you know my departure date was the eighth so the information i have is up until the eighth uh it was based they were putting them in place based on the mass insurrection that we had on the sixth uh i wasn't aware of any additional intelligence at that point they were just concerned about possible violent extremists regrouping and staging another attack on the capital so so you haven't you haven't seen anything that uh that would give us a threat assessment now that we have a concern that we need to have the national guard presence it doesn't mean there's not some but you haven't seen anything no sir i i've been uh really um not in that environment since the eighth okay anybody else that's that's uh any of the others that are here to testify do you have any uh do you have any threat assessment you've seen that there's a reason that we have the national guard here today is that does everybody is that a no from everybody no one has any any idea why we have the national guard here oh this is chief conte yeah uh my my my guess is in response to all the things that uh that have happened but to your questions specifically about uh specific intelligence i have not personally seen uh anything uh that would suggest that and are do are you involved in the decision at all of why the national guard's here no sir i am not and you they they would they've not shared any any threat assessment with you at all with regard to why the national guard's here that has not been uh shared with me no does that surprise you uh i can't say that i'm i'm really uh surprised quite frankly we have talked about the uh we have talked about you know intelligence in terms of what we expect to see in the city uh there are several on law enforcement calls that that take place between the metropolitan police department and other federal partners but again the capital uh police and that structure there it's something that you know they're not they're not beholden to the mayor of the district of columbia or anything like that so we've changed the information that we have but again i just have not seen anything specifically from them that suggest uh defense still being the way that it is now and i should add also sir that i mean obviously i think that there needs to be a reimagining of the security posture uh there something certainly uh should be there but i'm not exactly sure the answer to that is razor wire and the deployment that we currently see and the former sergeant arabs you you don't have any any reason no one's given you any you've not seen any information that would suggest that we have a threat an imminent threat that we need the national guard here uh i have not and i have not either i same resign on the seventh and have been gone since so i have no information okay so who would be making the decision that the national guard needs to be here then and where would the threat assessment come from does anybody know i'd maybe look at the current uh leadership over at maybe the capitol police in conjunction with the current um sergeant arms okay so it would be the capital head of capitol police and ex sitting in the acting sergeant-at-arms that is correct for to give you the current information on that and would they coordinate with uh the metropolitan police well if there was uh intelligence uh that would uh indicate the need for such activity uh it would usually be shared with our partner our local law enforcement would share our perimeter and our borders and if there was a threat out there would that be public would would there be some public information that they would put out normally again that all has to do with the nature of the threat the threat the classification level of the threat but again that would be uh shared with law enforcement within the district of columbia through through the joint uh jttf as well as the executive board for the jttf i mean i'm just i'm just i'm flabbergasted that that not that you don't know now but then there's no public information about why we have all this all these national guards here i mean does that surprise you uh it's it's a significant uh security deployment again i believe it's it's based on the the facts of what they they've seen you know hindsight being what it is uh it's the facts of what it would occurred on january 6 this unprecedented uh insurrection yeah thank you mr chairman thank you senator senator hassan you're recognized for your questions [Music] thank you mr chair and thanks to all of the witnesses for being here today i especially want to take a moment to acknowledge the heroism of the officers of the u.s capitol police law enforcement and other employees of the capitol who bravely worked to protect our democracy on january 6 and who have done so much work to restore our capital since that day i also want to thank all of the families of our law enforcement and capitol hill staff for what they went through watching this unfold in real time i want to start with a question to chief conte if i could chief washington d.c is obviously no stranger to large assemblies and protests so what is the standard process for protests in washington dc when it comes to interagency coordination and information sharing and following the events of january 6 what recommendations do you have for improving coordination and information sharing thank you for that question uh there are several discussions meetings that take place between the municipal police department as well as our federal partners we oftentimes have coordination calls with the national park service simply because in a lot of the federal lands they authorize the permits uh for for the federal land so there's coordination that has to happen there between the metropolitan police department our u.s park police u.s capitol police u.s secret service with respect to the intelligence again you know our partners from the fbi they're often a part of those part of those discussions uh i think uh that the thing kind of going forward that certainly needs to be looked at with respect to specific intelligence has been outlined throughout some of the testimony today when there is specific information that warrants us to perhaps posture differently our notification system uh needs to be different uh the jttf distribution list that we have is not something that is a monitored list uh 24 hours a day seven days a week that would generate an immediate response uh to that uh when those uh communications are sent out uh there are staff members who at some point will will get to that information but i think that uh as again that has been laid out you know when we're talking about something uh of this magnitude that could potentially happen and ultimately did happen in our city it should posture us to move differently uh perhaps with uh convening phone calls you know immediately and not you know counting on on an email or something making it through the chain to the levels that it need to make you know for other decisions to be made well thank you for that answer uh one of the things i would observe is sometimes ahead of events like these just scheduling ongoing check-ins with leadership at all of the agencies that need to coordinate can have the effect of sharing information in real time i want to move to a question to mr stenger mr irving and mr sund the secretary of homeland security has the authority to designate events with national and international significance as national special security events but that didn't happen for january 6 even given the threat information readily available ahead of time designated events are eligible for expanded federal support related to the security of the events so prior to january 6 did anyone from the department of homeland security contact you about a potential national special security event designation and we'll start with you mr sund and then move to the others thank you ma'am no i'm not aware of anybody from dhs reaching out and requesting you know if we want to follow up if this wanted to be a national special security event or if we were going to request that to be or if they were going to identify and designate what they call a seer or special event rating to the event no i'm not aware thank you mr stenger and mr irvin uh no no one uh contacted me thank you and the state with me senator no contact with me or my office well thank you for those answers i look forward to following up with the department of homeland security about this during the next hearing on this topic mr sund my last question the officers of the capitol police work each and every day to keep the u.s capitol safe and secure we are all grateful for the brave work of the u.s capitol police officers on january 6. tragically the law enforcement community has now lost two officers to suicide since january 6 as a result of the insurrection and the events then my thoughts and i'm sure the thoughts of all of us here today are with the families of mpd officer jeffrey smith and u.s capitol police officer howard liebengood mr sund what mental health resources are currently available to the united states capitol police officers and are these resources sufficient the department has brought in significant mental health resources and i certainly do appreciate uh your recognition of that i've talked to a number of officers who have definitely gone through uh the battle and feel the that they're feeling a lot of trauma from it but i know the chief of police the acting chief has brought in significant resources we had the employee assistance program but they brought in a number of outside uh contractors that have very have gotten very good response so i think there's a lot of mental health resources available and i know a number of officers are taking advantage of it which i'm happy to see well so am i and i i would encourage all officers who uh feel that they could benefit from um counseling uh to to reach out for it and i would certainly encourage and i'm sure my colleagues here would too that all leadership in law enforcement reach out to us if they feel the resources are strained or or need bolstering in some way thank you all for your service thank you very much for your testimony and for being here today to the chair and ranking members of our respective committees uh thank you so much for organizing this hearing thank you senator hassan chair now recognizes senator hawley for his questions thank you mr chairman i want to begin by saying a special thank you and a special acknowledgement to captain mendoza who shared her testimony earlier today earlier this morning captain mendoza is a native of missouri and an alumna of park university if if memory serves and i just want to say to her i want to thank her for being here today but also for her incredible bravery and courage on january 6th and on behalf of the entire state of missouri i want to say thank you for what you have done thank you for what you represent and i also want to take that opportunity to say again now as i said on the night of that terrible day a thank you to all of the law enforcement from all of our various branches who responded in this dire emergency to face these criminal rioters these violent criminals to repulse them from the capital and to secure this space so that the work of congress could continue so thank you and a special thanks to captain mendoza from the state of missouri uh mr sunda if i could just return to to the question about the national guard activation i just i'm a little bit confused about the timeline here and i want to ask you that mr irving some questions just so i can get this clear in my own head i'm looking at your written testimony you testified that you spoke with mr irving at 109 actually both of the sergeants at arms at 109 pm and i understand there's a little bit of dispute about the timeline here but you you do say that mr irving advised you that he needed to run it namely the request for the national guard he needed to run it up the chain of command have i got that right that is correct sir okay mr irving could i just ask you when mr sun says that you told him you needed to run it up the chain of command to whom were you referring there senator i do not recall a phone call at 109 when i was on the floor of the house during the electoral college session my phone records do not reflect a telephone call at that time and had i received a call at that time i had everyone with me i had mr stanger leadership we would have approved it immediately so i i have no recollection of that call and neither do i have a a record of it you you say i think that you spoke uh with mr sun later at approximately 1 30 is that right that is correct after i left the floor and on that call he had indicated to me that conditions were deteriorating and that he might be making a request at a later time okay and you did you then say that you needed to run it up the chain of command or words to that effect no not to my recollection i notified leadership and i went to michael stenger's office to receive updates from mr sund as to conditions outside and to determine whether he needed to make a request or not and when the request was made shortly after two we approved it and when you say we who's we we approved it i was in michael stenger's office so next to uh mr stanger and so you did not consult congressional leadership you weren't waiting at any point for input from congressional leadership is is that your testimony mr irving i got that right yes i advise them as we would do with many security protocols but you weren't waiting for them at at any point there was no delay you're saying and getting national guard requests because you didn't at any point actually wait for the input of the speaker or the majority leader or anybody else no absolutely not mr sund is that your recollection my recollection was at 109 while i was sitting in the command center watching things rapidly deteriorate i made a phone call the phone call was made in the presence of i believe both my assistant chiefs and possibly my my general counsel at which time i made the initial request uh that we need to activate the the national guard uh the situation's bad on the west front i followed up at 122 to check on the status of the request okay one of the things i'm trying to to get clear on here is who would constitute the chain of command now it sounds like mr irving is saying that he actually never made that statement and he didn't consult anybody else i mean my understanding is from the statute to usc chapter 29 section 1970 that in an emergency situation i would think that this would qualify that the capitol police board does not have to consult with members of the senator house leadership in order to make a request for deployment of the national guard or request of other executive departments and executive agencies so it would seem strange to me that there was any talk about a chain of command that would evolve anybody other than the capitol police board given the statute but it seems there seems to be some confusion about about the basic facts and and who asked for what when um let me just ask you this mr sun on monday january the 4th you've testified that you approached the house and senate sergeant-at-arms to request the assistance of the national guard and mr irving stated that he was concerned about the optics of having the guard deployed is that right am i remembering that correctly that is correct sir on the on the fourth it actually um wasn't a phone call it was an in-person visit over to his office uh where i went and requested uh the national guard and mr irving could you just clarify when you when you use the the term optics or and maybe your recollection is you didn't so maybe you could speak to that did you talk about being concerned about the optics of the national guard and then could you just elaborate on what you meant by that again this is monday january the 4th now yeah on monday january the 4th senator safety was always the deciding factor making security plans and the issue the issue on the table was whether the intelligence warranted troops at the capitol and the conversation with mr sun was not i did not take it as a request he was merely informing me that he had received an offer from the national guard and then when we included mr stanger the three of us discussed the specific issue as to whether the intelligence warranted the troops and the answer was no it was a collective answer no and then mr stenger put forth uh his recommendation to have them on standby and my recollection was mr sun was very satisfied with that in fact he briefed the following day that he was satisfied and i heard no uh concern any time thereafter were you concerned this use of the word optics the appearance what it would look like to have the guard this is what mr sundis testified was a concern on january 4th that there was a reluctance to to request assistance because of the appearance was there something that you were what's the appearance that that you were concerned about mr irving if if indeed you were were you concerned that having the guard present would would look like it was too militarized were you concerned about the criticism of the guard being deployed in washington during rioting earlier this summer the summer of 2020 would just just give us some insight into your your thinking there as you recall it senator i was not concerned about appearance whatsoever it was all about safety and security the the any reference would have been related to appropriate use of force display of force and ultimately the question on the table when we look to any security asset is does the intelligence warrant it is the security plan match with the intelligence and again the collective answer was yes mr chairman can i just ask one one final question thank you madam chair thank you um speaker pelosi has asked retired lieutenant general russell honore to lead an immediate review of capital security in light of the attack the general has said that the leadership of the capitol police that'd be you mr sund and both of you gentlemen the house and senate sergeants at arms he's criticized you for and i'm quoting now the appearance of complicity during the attack and also said that you were potentially undertook complicit actions those are his words during the attack mr sund were you complicit in this attack on january 6th absolutely not sir i've heard those comments as well and i think it's disrespectful to myself and to the members of the capitol police department mr stinger were you complicit in the attacks on january 6th mr stinger were you complicit in the attacks on january 6. mr mr irving were you complicit in the attacks on january 6th absolutely not senator yeah i i think of course none of you were there's absolutely no evidence to that effect and mr sun i think your comments are appropriately taken to allege that you any of you were complicit in this violent mob attack on this building i think is not only extremely disrespectful uh it's it's really quite shocking and this person has no business leading any security review related to the events of january 6. thank you for your indulgence madam chair uh thank you very much next a member a new member of both committees senator padilla thank you madam chair now there's been a lot of questions i've been popping in and out from uh multiple committees but i understand there's uh been a lot of questions already about intelligence what was known uh what was assessed what was shared uh et cetera and differing opinion they'll try not to be too repetitive first a quick question for chief son and the two sergeant-at-arms i imagine like most people you saw most if not all of the house impeachment manager's presentations before the united states senate uh as they sort of laid out the case set the impeachment question aside we know how that was resolved but in terms of how january 6 didn't just happen but the lead up to january 6th is there anything from that presentation that you would disagree with so to just make sure i understand the video i watched and all the information the the video that was portrayed is all accurate uh video as far as the you know any of the other uh commentary associated with the video i can't say i watched every single bit of it but i can tell you the video a lot of that video was video from the united states capitol police and it was all accurate okay thank you mr stanger mr irving same question uh yeah uh the video i saw certainly reflected what i could see from my window on the day of january 6. and from my perspective senator i have not diagnosed the why the attack occurred at the time we left all information to the intelligence agencies that we had at the time and i would say now to leave it to the after-action investigations to make determinations okay uh question for uh chiefs on specifically now there is a an intelligence division within the department correct yes sir okay uh and now having read your letter uh to speaker pelosi you make reference to events on both november 14th as well as december 12th that you had sort of comparable intelligence in terms of risk assessment threat assessment in the events of november 14th and december 12th not leading into anything near what happened on january 6th is that my correct interpretation of your letter yes that is the correct interpretation letter of the letter both the assessments indicated that we were going to have various militia groups and extremists in attendance in addition to the fact that as chief conte had testified to earlier uh weapons were recovered uh during both those events okay and so to the best of your recollection in the lead up to january 6th since it was comparable assessment comparable intelligence roughly uh you therefore proceeded with comparable preparation and posture yeah that is that is absolutely correct we proceeded with the posture of seeing it could have uh instances of violence we knew it was going to be focused on the capital we knew that there was going to be members of proud boy antifa uh participating and like i said before not capitol police not metropolitan police not any of our federal agencies had any information we're going to be facing an armed insurrection of thousands of people now if we take our experience with terrorism globally and look at case studies uh both incidents that were have been prevented and those that were successfully executed against the united states is it plausible and i know hindsight's 2020 is it plausible that the november 14th december 12 incidents may well have been trial runs the very extremist organizations you've referenced involved with the organizing and participation of november 14th december 12th to gain counter intelligence on how you and your partner agencies would be planning and preparing for such incidents well as you rightly point out when you look at some of the uh terrorist attacks that have occurred there has been pre-planning there has been pre-surveillance pre-collection of intelligence on the security features i don't know if the november and december were two instances of that but i would suspect with the fact that we're finding this was a coordinated attack i wouldn't doubt there was um pre-surveillance so we know they were we don't know they weren't that's my correctness correct and i know the intelligence folks will be here at a subsequent hearing but we're all in this together in your letter and your uh testimony earlier today you uh bluntly say the intelligence community missed this that is correct sir that's the way i feel now who was commander-in-chief on december 6th when you say commander-in-chief who was the president of the united states uh donald trump sir overseeing the intelligence community that missed us repeat your answer for the the entire 18 agencies that represent the intelligence community yes sir that you would be commander in chief and who is that again president donald trump okay let me ask a couple questions on a different topic i think it's obvious to many across the country i was one of three senators who was not in chambers on january 6th i had you know the benefit if you will of watching the events occur in real time both inside the capitol and outside the capitol on television one thing that was not lost on me and many people that i've talked to is the difference in both police presence and response on january 6 compared to events from last summer when peaceful protesters were demonstrating in the nation's capital in the wake of george soy's murder last summer they were met with significant force a couple of data points to date some 250 individuals who were involved in the capital insurrection of january 6 have been arrested more will likely be arrested in the coming weeks and months but only a small number about 52 of these individuals were arrested on january 6th by contrast during the largely peaceful protest of last summer 427 people were arrested on january excuse me on june 1st alone 289 people were arrested similarly some 300 protesters were arrested during the kavanaugh hearings in 2018. so question mr sun how can you tell us exactly how the capitol police preparations for january 6th differed from preparations for the protests from last summer and if you can specifically address if they were the same or different use of ford guidelines in place on january 6th compared to the protests of last summer or any criteria for making arrests on january 6th versus the protest from last summer okay and if you could do that in about a minute yes ma'am i will do that very concisely okay so i want to look at it from planning and preparations we plan for every demonstration the exact same way it doesn't matter the the message of the uh the person doesn't matter the demographics of the grievance involved in the demonstration we do it the exact same way we develop our information we develop our intel and we base a response plan on that so let's transition to preparations i will tell you we handled the 15 major demonstrations involving black lives matters groups you know following the the death of george florida over the summer we had a total of six arrests six arrests no use of less lethal capabilities no use of lethal force capabilities the uh events the everything that we put into place for january 6 far exceeded any planning that we did for any events in 20 in in 2020 with the full activation of the department the size of the perimeter that we expanded the deployment of additional protective equipment the deployment of less lethal and the application of less lethal uh with far exceeded anything uh any other event that i can recollect on the nation's capital uh so i'll just leave it at that we included and prepared much more thank you we're going to go and thank you senator padilla we're going to go to senator haggerty and then to senator king who's been very patient and been on with us online uh quite a while senator haggadrew thank you chairman klobuchar thank you very much for for having us here today and holding this hearing i want to begin by thanking all the law enforcement officers that are represented here today you and your families thank you for your sacrifice and certainly my heart goes out to those families and their loved ones who lost their lives uh in this in the spring of uh in spring and summer of 2020 many people criticize the use of the national guard to help restore order in washington following some of the worst rioting in decades mayor bowser said that the guard presence was and i quote unnecessary and may be counterproductive and a dc national guard leader even had to tell his troops a quote again some of the dc public does not agree with our mission and may have nefarious intention toward our servicemen and according to a january 5th washington post report top pentagon officials emphasized that on january 6 the guard would have a quote far more muted presence than in june saying that we've learned our lessons will be absolutely nowhere near the capitol building mr sunday stated that despite attempting to attain national guard support on capitol hill on january 6 he was unable to get approval such support and several people today have referred to concerns over the optics of january the 6th so my first question is directed to mr sun do you think that the backlash against the use of national guard troops to restore order back in summertime led to reluctance in advance of january 6 to utilize guard troops to protect the capital uh sir i i cannot uh really testify to what the inner workings was or working decisions over at the pentagon regarding either the decisions from the over the summer or the memo that was put out by the secretary of the army on uh the fourth uh however i was uh very surprised at the amount of time and the pushback i was receiving uh when i was making an urgent request for their assistance that's regrettable uh i'd also like to follow up on a line of questioning that senator hawley brought up uh speaker pelosi indicated that she intends to establish a commission to examine the events of january 6. of course that's why we're here today examining those issues speaker pelosi's also appointed a retired army lieutenant general russell honrae who is going to lead the investigation what happened but days after the attack general honore said i think once all this gets uncovered again i'm quoting him it was complicit actions by capitol police before he added that you mr sund were quote complicit along with the sergeant-at-arms in the house and senate my question is do any of you believe that comments like these by mr honor rights suggest that he is someone who is well suited to conduct a serious and unbiased review of the events of january 6. if so please explain i'll go ahead and start with that response as i mentioned before i found the the comments that he made regarding myself and also the capitol police officers uh highly disrespectful to the hard-working women and men of that police department and also to myself i welcome and i look forward to an after-action that will move this agency forward move our partnership with the federal agencies forward but it has to be done in an unbiased fashion i couldn't agree more mr sun any other responses i i would disagree with the generals what he said i don't believe that's true there's a lot of people that put themselves in very much danger on that day and uh i think so saying something like that is just not the good taste yeah i i i can't imagine uh that being said myself implying that you all were complicit in this but i thank you for for your answers for your service i yield back madam chairman thank you very much senator hegarty next senator king you may be muted senator king oh i got it okay great thank you madam chair and i want to thank the witnesses first for their uh patients this morning and they're thorough going answers this has been a long hearing and and uh i really appreciate it i appreciate the fact that uh although you all are no longer other than the chief in washington no longer in your positions you've come forward to to give us the benefit of your observations it seems to me one of the clear and there's no i'm not going to plow this ground again but one of the clear pieces of information we've learned today a is an intelligence failure not necessarily a failure of intelligence but a failure to communicate intelligence and i think that's something uh that we all need to to think about and you can be very helpful to us in uh in in suggesting what should be the the chain of communication in terms of of of intelligence you can't adequately prepare if you don't have the information uh and it clearly uh seems to me there were some failures uh chief sunda i have a a a specific question for you and it's more forward-looking and i but i'd appreciate your insights the question is how do we protect the capital from either of an angry mob or probably more likely uh one or two or three uh malignant actors without turning it into a fortress how do we allow the american people to go in the rotunda to tour the capitol to picnic on the grounds to uh play with their kids uh that it seems to me going forward that's really one of the challenges we want security but we don't i i would hate to see the us capital turned into a fortress your thoughts mr sund i think you need your mic on there thank you there we go ma'am thank you very much i'll go back to your original comment with the with the intelligence and the in the communications i think we have the process in place for when we have credible intelligence especially high-level credible intelligence to quickly get to where it needs to be i think my big concern is you know on the on the collection on how wide we're casting the net collect to collect our intelligence that would have revealed this was coming uh and we were facing this type of mass insurrection i definitely want to say the capitol police is well versed well trained on handling what you're talking about a mumbai style attack a couple of uh you know attackers armed active shooter events things like that those are the type of events that we are ready for it is the thousands of people that are storming the capital that creates a big issue with us so when you talk about you know physical security and i mentioned in one in my opening statement and one of the initial questions i think there are options for maintaining a an open environment an open campus type of environment while putting some substantial physical security measures in place both for the building the skin of the building as well as farther out you know time and distance is our best friend and the most important thing is to you know provide some kind of protection farther out so the officers have more you know more time to deal with it but that's something that i think should be discussed uh in a closed or classified session i i i understand but uh and i hope that that is a discussion madam chair that we can have i think that's a a very important uh uh because we we just as i say we we don't want the united states capital to be uh so protected that it's inaccessible to the american people amplify on your on your intelligence it seems some intelligence answer it seems to me you're saying we it's communicated adequately but we didn't have the collection that we needed for example the norfolk virginia letter is it how do how does it get filtered and where does it get filtered again the the north norfolk uh the norfolk field office letter that's something something considered because even the on the fifth at noon on the fifth i held a um joint conference call with the members of the board uh my executive team a dozen of the top law enforcement and military officials from washington dc where we discuss the upcoming events on the 6th the upcoming events on the for the inauguration any kind of threats any kind of issues we may have and even though i had you know we had the director of the field office the uh for the washington field office of the fbi nothing was mentioned about it uh so i think my big uh big point is i think we need to look out there's significant evidence coming out that the insurrection that occurred on the 6th was planned coordinated well in advance coordinated almost a point where you're looking between number of states where you're you're having events coordinated and it's that detection that i think would have been key to putting the uh effective security in place with it for this event finally when we're when we're talking about uh providing this this level of security do you is there a playbook is there a uh a a contingency plan that's literally sitting on a shelf somewhere that says uh demonstrations around the capitol here's what you do it i mean some of the timing things for example the deployment of the national guard might have been faster had there been a pre-determined set of phone numbers actions steps to be taken does that exist and if not should it exist to the level where you're including a national guard there's a process where we handle uh special events and demonstrations uh but i i tend to agree that we need to streamline the process that we request the national guard in the future and and yeah because clearly there was a important there was a delay there that was an important part of the uh important part of the the response at the time uh madam chair i again i want to thank these witnesses i think they've really made a contribution and they made a contribution when they were serving in their respective positions thank you i yield back thank you thank you senator senator simmons cinema is recognized for her questions oh thank you mr chairman my first question is for chief conte what coordinating actions were taken in the weeks leading up to january 6 to share intel across federal and local law enforcement and what security planning took place and with which agencies thank you for that question so there were a series of several meetings that took place uh leading up uh to the events of january the sixth there are weekly law enforcement uh partners calls that take place where our federal partners are part of that uh there's the first amendment uh coordinating calls that took place at least two of those uh prior to this event there's a national uh park service uh permit call that also took place uh prior to this event and as chief sun uh mentioned uh call involving several of the law enforcement entities leading up to the events of january of the 6th so there are significant amount of phone calls or virtual meetings that took place leading up to january 6. thank you and could you talk a little bit about what you see as the mistakes that were made or the holes um that didn't help connect all those dots in those meetings and coordinating prior to january 6. so i i think the the major issue at least from my perspective i think that in terms of the the sharing of information how it's shared i think that that uh that is where the focus uh should be again we're talking about uh a report that came from the norfolk office uh on the day before the night that night it's around after seven o'clock p.m uh that was sent to email boxes you know as the chief of police for the metropolitan police department i assure you that my phone is on 24 hours a day seven days a week and i'm available for any phone call uh from any agency that has information with respect to something of this magnitude uh happening in now city uh certainly if there was uh information about one of our police stations being overrun or a federal building being overrun that was related to the metropolitan police department i assure you that i will be on the phone directly with the uh officials that are responsible for the law enforcement response are to give them that information firsthand not really relying on technology in the form of an email in hopes that that information makes it to where it needs to uh where it needs to be so i think that that's critical to chief simon's point there were several phone calls leading up to this and no specific information that talked about uh the events that we saw and experienced on january the 6th and i really do believe that there should be quite a bit of attention given to that i appreciate that my next question is for mr sund so you outlined that the fbi report was sent via email to the capitol police the evening of january 5th and that you never received to the report um is there an understanding within the system of how that report did not make it to you or to uh other individuals in leadership in the capitol police the night of january the 5th i appreciate that question ma'am uh actually as i mentioned earlier in the uh discussion this is a report that i am just learning about within the last you know the informing yesterday of the report so i'm not sure of what investigation may be going on i've since since january 8th have left the department what investigations i know the chief has put additional safe safeguards in place to make sure something like that doesn't happen again but i'm not sure of what the outcome of was why that didn't get pushed farther was there an expectation or a process or procedure prior to january 6 that should have gotten that memo up to your attention the night of january 5th there's there's a process that ensures that information uh from the joint terrorism task force and through our task force officers gets over to our intelligence division and would be moved up to our um intelligence analyst and the director of that intelligence division and then based on that information uh he could push it then up to the assistant chief or directly to me he has my cell phone number uh we talk regularly and so to you and as you mentioned you were just learning about this recently but would it have been an expectation that the fbi would have called capital police or someone on the joint task force to alert the new intelligence in an in an expedited fashion knowing that this information made it to the capitol police intel team on the fifth what i'm trying to understand is how it did not get to the higher levels to make preparations the night of the fifth right let me i'll just go ahead and echo what chief conte had mentioned that i do think that deserves additional focus i think if we have information that's coming in the day before a major event that that has that level of specificity that it could get a little more attention than you know just being handled either through an email or electronic uh format was there any intelligence that you did receive in the several days leading up to january 6 that caused you to change any of the security plans amongst the united states capitol police so yeah just to just reiterate you know all the intelligence and all the information that we've been receiving during the development this um the event for the sixth outlined very similar to what the intelligence report that we that was published on the third outlined we were expecting large number of protesters coming in we expected a potentially violent uh group we knew they were being focused on the capital and we knew that someone had a uh may be armed and is that is what was really driving up until even you know regardless of what was put out the third this was information that we we knew we were developing our security plan around that and that's when we looked at you know we based on our review of the november and december mega events determined we were going to adjust our fence line and push our fence line out and when we wanted to do that that's when i'd requested the national guard knowing we're going to need support for the fence line thank you you know chief conte you stated that the intelligence that you had received on january 6 didn't differ from the previous maga marches the two previous was there any conversation or consideration about the fact that the january 6 was scheduled on a very important day that congress would be in session certifying the results of the election and was that different in a consideration around security than the other two marches which had been on weekends without congress being in session absolutely and that's reflected in the response posture for the metropolitan police department uh for the two prior demonstrations that happened uh the maga one and two marches the metropolitan police department we did not call up officers from surrounding jurisdictions to be stationed physically within the footprint of the district of columbia we did not do that before the mayor in addition to uh calling up those additional resources again called up the national guard specifically uh for the reasons that we outlined to them uh to which would allow the metropolitan police department to be a lot nimble in our response that in us in essence enabled us to be to be able to respond quickly to assist the capitol police officers so those response those responses were different uh we were disrupting individuals or intercepting individuals who were armed with firearms in our city in violation of the mayor's order many of whom that were on pump on our federal federal grounds so the metropolitan police department's posture certainly was escalated beyond what we did the prior two marches thank you mr chairman i appreciate your indulgence i see i've gone over my time i have a few extra questions that i'll submit thank you okay very good thank you senator cinema and thank you for your emphasis on the uh fbi report and the issues that i everyone here seems to acknowledge with uh getting uh that that it didn't go at the right place and just putting send isn't enough for a report like that okay uh next we have senator cruz and then after that will be um senator ossoff and if there's any other senators who wish to ask questions who haven't asked questions you should tell us because those are the last two we have senator cruz thank you madam chair and let me say to each of the witnesses here today thank you for being here thank you for your testimony and and thank you also for your service i want to thank each of you and and also each of the heroic law enforcement officers who who demonstrated extraordinary courage uh in fighting to repel the terrorist attack that unfolded on the capitol on january 6th and and we are grateful for the bravery and the courage in the in the face of a truly horrific attack in the aftermath of that attack there is naturally a process to assess what could have been done to better prevent that attack to better secure the capital and i think everyone recognizes that that hindsight is different from a decision made in the moment facing the threat immediately but this this hearing is nonetheless productive for analyzing the security decisions in law enforcement decisions that were made real time and for learning from them what can be done differently to ensure that that an attack like that never again occurs chief sander i want to focus on [Music] with some detail your your written testimony and just walk through what what occurred uh in the days preceding january 6th and then on january 6. so in your written testimony you say on monday january 4th i approached the two sergeant-at-arms to request the assistance of the national guard as you had no authority to do so you go on to say i first spoke with the house sergeant-at-arms to request the national guard mr irving stated that he was concerned about the quote optics of having national guard present and didn't feel the intelligence supported it he referred me to the senate sergeant-at-arms to get his thoughts on the request i then spoke to mr stenger and again requested the national guard instead of approving the use of the national guard however mr stenger suggested i ask then how quickly we could get support if needed and to lean forward in case we had to request assistance on on january 6th can you describe at a little more length those conversations with with the two sergeant-at-arms on on january 4th absolutely sir the first conversation occurred monday morning i went over i'd have to refer to my notes but sometime maybe around 11 o'clock in the morning i saw met with mr irving in his office that's where i made the first request for the for the national guard uh he had indicated i don't know if i really like the optics you know i don't think the intelligence really really supports it uh he had like we had said recommended i talked to the senate sergeant arms i went over and met with uh later on the day uh either i'm trying to recall if he's in person or over the phone i have to go back to my my record my timeline where i reached out to him and they may have already talked because he had referred me he said do you have know somebody over at the dc national guard i said yes i do have a good friend over there general william walker he said can you give him a call and see if we needed assistance how quickly could we get assistance and what type of assistance could he give us so that evening as i was driving home at about 6 35 at night i went ahead and called general walker uh and and spoke to him and said hey general walker i don't have uh authority to request national guard but i want to find out if we needed them on wednesday how quickly could you get them for us and is there a way you can kind of you know be prepared just in case we put in there and put in the request at that point he had advised me that he has 125 national guardsmen who are supporting the coveted response in the district of columbia and if we needed a response a quick response he could what he called repurpose them and get them to the armory at which point we could get somebody over to swear them in and try and get them to us as quick as possible we ended our call the next day i met with both ms i met with mr stinger he came over to the office for the 12 o'clock video call that i had hosted with the dozen of the law enforcement officials from the national capital for the from dc we spoke about it briefly there and uh told him what william walker had told me as well as i'd passed on to mr irving i think later on that afternoon they both seemed satisfied with that response so mr irving and mr stenger mr irving as i understand it you have some disagreement with the characterization uh about the concern about the optics so so i would invite both mr irving and mr stenger to to relay your best recollection of that conversation on january 4th senator my best recollection of the conversation on january 4th was a phone call from chief sund indicating that he had received an offer for 125 unarmed guard that could be positioned around traffic perimeter checkpoints at the capitol my recollection again is as we followed up with mr stenger the three of us engaged in a conversation whereby we looked at the offer in light of the existing intelligence and the decision the collect decision amongst the three of us was that the intelligence did not warrant the national guard and my recollection that ended the discussion relative to the the offer and the only question on the table is any should we do perform any follow-up and mr stanger recommended that we ask that we that they be placed on standby and that was the end of the discussion so to to the best of your recollection did you make the comment about optics and and if so what what did you mean by that i cannot remember my exact verbiage had i used any language to the effect i will it was all in reference to whether the intelligence was matched to the security plan and and let me ask both mr irving and mr stenger did did you all have conversations with congressional leadership either democratic or republican leadership on this question of supplementing law enforcement presence bringing in national guard uh either on january 4th or real time in january 6th on january 4th no i had no follow-up conversations and it was not until the sixth that i alerted leadership that we might be making a request and that was the end of the discussion mr sanger for myself it was january 6 that i mentioned it to leader mcdonald's dad so there's been some disagreement about what time phone calls occurred i know senator portman asked earlier presumably everyone has phone records i think it would be helpful if if each of you could forward the relevant phone records to this committee and and chief sanju also referenced in your testimony that you sent an email to congressional leadership if you could forward that to the committee as well i think that would be helpful thank you thank you senator assaf thank you madam chair thank you to our panel just want to take a moment and echo the sentiments of so many of my colleagues expressing appreciation for the men and women of the united states capitol police who endured a great deal on january 6th and showed great heroism and also madam chair if i might express an interest in working with you to ensure that they're well taken care of and their needs are met this discussion of the conversation that the three of you had regarding supplementary security support on january 6 raises the question of who's in charge is consensus between the two sergeants at arms and the chief of the u.s capitol police required to make such a request mr sund the request for the national guard uh needs to go to the capitol police board for approval yes who has ultimate responsibility for the security of the u.s capitol complex which individual i believe that falls under the capitol police board the capitol police board so there is no individual who has personal responsibility for the security of the us capital complex that's where interpret yes had the u.s capitol police conducted exercises simulating comparable events such as a violent riot on or within the us capital complex part of our part of our training for civil disobedience units involves dealing with riotous groups so we do do that training we do do training on people attempting to gain entry into the into the building uh officers are trained on how to handle if someone tries to come through your door uh unauthorized uh but training for thousands of you know armed insurrectionists they were coordinated and well equipped no we have not had that training before january 6 but i'm sure we'll find a way to uh i'm sure they'll find a way to do it now so if i understand correctly mr sund you're saying that personnel had engaged in tactical training regarding techniques to repel attempts to breach the complex regarding rules of engagement but had any comprehensive exercises that included command that included procedures for coordination with supporting agencies that included requests for support that included communications with the department of defense or white house officials or guard units been conducted yes we have we we do exercises that are very similar to what what you're talking about before some of our national special security events uh those are the nsses such as the inauguration we'll do uh tabletop exercises that uh go through the the process of what you're talking about yes thank you and and had the capitol police held any such exercises not pertaining to specific national security special events so in order to deal with emergent contingencies like a riot not associated with one of those moments specifically identified as requiring a whole of government security response yeah one of one of the most important aspects of that you're talking about that we we train our individuals to is what we call the incident command system that's one of the one of the systems that we we feel really under the unprecedented pressure that they exhibited on january 6 begin to break down the incident command system is established specifically so you have people that have the clearest understanding of what's happening either in the field or inside the building in control of the resources to utilize to defend against whatever issue you're having or respond to whatever incident you have it's really an all hazards approach but that is something that's trained we have it as part of our general orders uh that is something that we'll need to look back on to see how it broke under this pressure and i asked this question in part because of the account that's been shared regarding the coordination with the guard unit which was here for covid related mission and if i recall correctly you related that you had a conversation with the commanding officer and discussed mobilizing that unit if necessary first via an intermediary stop at a marine corps facility to then come to the capitol if necessary on january 6 were there not pre-existing channels of communication and procedures in the event you not at a moment such as inauguration over state of the union but on any given day needed a quick reaction force to provide security support well i think when you refer to it i think it's the established process where if you're going to request them in advance or request them for an incident i think we need to look at is those emergency requests uh but there is a process for going through the secretary of the army placing an official request ultimately we did that we we had to do a letterhead after the fact we did the oral request first and set it up that way but i think what i did by reaching out to general walker was to get an idea much like as i was requested to do if we requested them on the sixth what kind of resources could they give us and what type of time frame would we be looking at well but i agree there's already existing process and channels for making the request for national guard right because you in fact anticipated there might be some need based upon intelligence that your department was seeing but on any given day if a foreign terrorist organization decided to mount an attack on this complex do the procedures exist and are the channels in place such that a quick reaction force can be mustered swiftly such that someone in your position knows exactly who to call and they can do so without consulting with the sergeants at arms i think what you're seeing is uh what we need to look at because i'd still be required to consult with the sergeant arms to make the request for national guard okay my time is running short so i want to ask you this what is the intelligence budget for the u.s capitol police and how many personnel do you have in the intelligence division or did you have when you served as the chief i'd have to go back and pull that specific information uh we have a number of uh intel analysts we have a number of people that work there both sworn in civilian but i want to give you a clearer approximately how many personnel are in the intelligence division i'd say approximately right around 30 35 people 30 or 35. and does the u.s capitol police have the capacity to do any intelligence collection other than by making requests to executive branch agencies for raw intelligence or analysis uh again when you talk uh about intelligence collection we're a consumer of intelligence from the intelligence um uh committee or a community i'm sorry we do have the ability to go and look at like open source see what's what people are talking about on open source but going and collecting um in-depth specific intelligence uh is something that we're a consumer of from the intelligence community thank you appreciate your time i yield back sir well thank you very much uh that was our last set of questions and uh we're going to conclude this hearing i wanted to say a few words at the end first of all i want to thank chairman peters and senators ranking members blunt and portman for conducting this hearing in such a professional way we had a bipartisan agreement on how this hearing would be conducted who our witnesses would be and also the plan to have additional hearings including one next week that we'll be announcing tomorrow with the department of defense department of homeland security and the fbi because clearly we have and our members have additional questions i want to thank the witnesses as i said for voluntarily appearing before us i want to thank captain mendoza for her moving words and bravery in many ways she represents all of the officers that were there that day a few things that are very clear to me the first is the statements at the beginning from all the witnesses they may have disagreed on some details and you know okay but there is clear agreement that this was a planned insurrection so and i think most members here i very firmly agree with that i think it's important for the public to know that this was planned we now know this was a planned insurrection it involved a white supremacist it involved extremist groups and it certainly could have been so much worse except for the bravery of the officers secondly we learned about the intelligence breakdown so many of the members of both committees asked about that particularly the january 5th the fbi report that had some very significant warnings from social media about people who were coming to washington who wanted to wage war the fact that did not get to key leaders in the sergeant of arms or the capitol police chief is of course very disturbing really on both ends i mean you can't just push send as we all know we get tons of emails and hope that it gets to the right person especially when we're dealing with something so serious uh the january third intelligence report that was came right out of the capitol police also contained according to washington post reports and other information some pretty foreboding details that i would have thought would have resulted in planning and more preparations the delays in the approving a request for national guard assistance both from the capitol police board and the department of defense the fact that the sergeant-at-arms were focused on keeping the members safe in both chambers while the chief was trying to get some emergency approval to me you can point fingers but you could also look at this as a process that is not prepared for a crisis and i think out of that there's some general agreement just based on talking to a number of members that there should be changes to the capitol police board the approval process and the like and it's clear that that action must be taken not only to protect our capital but also to protect the brave officers charged with protecting the citadel of democracy better intelligence sharing always an outcome when there's failures of intelligence we know that but i think we'll get more details in the coming week some security changes at the capitol requests that have been made for a while on those changes that i think we have to seriously consider and no it does not have to be barbed wire and of course this is a public building and you want the school groups and you want the veterans and you want people to be able to visit here but that doesn't mean that we don't make some smart security changes to this building uh the use of the national guard we know after 9 11 uh the national guard helped for quite a while we also know uh that we have to have a plan going forward as well as consider what happens when we need a greater number of national guard in a crisis and how those approvals are made those are just some of my takeaways i'm sure many others will have more but i do want to make it clear that there are some items of agreement between most of us on this committee and i don't think we should let the words of a few become the story here because i think this has been a very constructive hearing and i want to thank our witnesses uh for coming forward as they did and i want to thank senator peters and we look forward to more hearings thank you well thank you chair uh klobuchar uh i have enjoyed this hearing thank you uh for your leadership it's been good working with you and your entire team with the rules administration committee and certainly want to thank ranking member blunt and portman and all of the members who came here together today to work in a bipartisan way to ask tough questions and to to get answers i want to thank captain mendoza for sharing her experiences certainly a very powerful way to to start this hearing but i truly appreciate each of the witnesses that were here today who who came here today willingly and knew you would be asked tough questions and you were willing to do that and certainly we we appreciate you for for that effort and while this hearing certainly shed some new light and offered some new information on what happened to the lead up as well as to the response to the january 6 attack on our capital it's also raised a number of additional questions that need to be asked for the past two years uh i've i've been working to draw attention to the rise of domestic terrorism and specifically violence driven by white supremist we have only seen the threat of this violence grow not just from white supremacists but also from anti-government groups and people who have been swept up by conspiracy theories and just simple outright lies the events of january 6 and the the answers that we heard today only further highlight a grave national security threat that our current homeland security apparatus is clearly not fully equipped to address our national security agencies were overhauled and they were forged in the aftermath of the september 11th attacks and they're basically built around responding to foreign terrorist attacks and they have been slow to adapt to this evolving threat of domestic terrorism that we have seen in the last few years the homeland security committee was created to oversee reforms to fix the intelligence failures that led to 911 and now i intend to assure that this committee oversees efforts to fix the failures that led to the january 6th attack there's no question our federal counterterrorism resources are not focused on effectively addressing the growing and deadly domestic terror threat the january 6 attack marked a once-in-a-lifetime failure and now we have the duty to ensure that the federal government is doing everything in its power to make sure another attack like this never happens again we must align our counterterrorism resources and our intelligence gathering efforts to ensure we're focused on this dire threat the fbi the department of homeland security and the national counterterrorism center right now are eight months late on a report to assess the threat posed by domestic terrorism and we're going to continue to push them to complete this report as soon as possible so that we can take meaningful action there's no question in my mind that there was a failure to take this threat more seriously despite widespread social media content and public record reporting that indicated violence was extremely likely the federal government must start taking these online threats seriously to ensure they don't cross into the real world violence i also plan to keep the pressure up on social media companies to work harder to ensure that their platforms are not used as a tool to organize violence so this investigation does not end here today and i look forward to our next hearing of where we will continue to seek answers to important questions that were raised today and others that need to be answered before we adjourn however i have to do a bit of quick housekeeping it's my privilege to announce the members of the subcommittees of the homeland security and government affairs committee for the 117th congress the following senators will serve on the permanent subcommittee on investigations john ossoff will be chair ron johnson ranking member tom carper maggie hassan alex padilla rand paul james langford and rick scott the following senators will serve on the emerging threats and spending oversight subcommittee maggie hassan rand paul maggie hassan will be chair rand paul will be ranking member kirsten sinema jackie rosen john ossoff mitt romney rick scott josh hawley and the following senators will serve on the government operations and border management subcommittee that will be chaired by kirsten cinema james lankford will be ranking member tom carper alex padilla john ossoff ron johnson mitt romney and joss hawley so congratulations to our new chairs our ranking members and to all members of our committee i look forward to working with all of you in the months and years ahead officially the record for this hearing will remain open uh for until 5 pm on march 9th 2021 for the submission of statements and questions for the record with that this hearing is officially adjourned you

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Id: jKG0HmfjFg8

Length: 235min 15sec (14115 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021