‘Breadcrumbs Lead to Speaker’s Office,’ Rep. Jim Banks Warns as
GOP Slams Capitol Police Leadership Over Capitol Riot
Mary Margaret Olohan / @MaryMargOlohan / February 07, 2022
Rep. Jim Banks heavily criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for
her failure to hand over key documents related to the Jan. 6 Capitol
riot, saying in a Monday interview that Republican lawmakers believe
the severity of the riot was due to a “systemic breakdown and failure
at the highest levels of the Capitol Police.”
The Indiana Republican, who is on a panel of GOP lawmakers that
is unofficially investigating the riot, spoke with The Daily Signal
following an Axios report headlined “GOP’s shadow Jan. 6 committee
targets Capitol Police ‘negligence.’”
Banks criticized the article and strongly disputed any implica-
tion that Republicans are focusing negative attention on Capitol
Police officers themselves, noting that Republicans believe it is the
leadership of the police force that was at fault.
“We’re not attacking the Capitol Police, but we do believe
strongly that there was negligence and a breakdown of leadership at
the highest levels of the Capitol Police,” Banks told The Daily
Signal.
Banks characterized the investigation by House Democrats’ Jan. 6
select committee as a “political witch hunt.” Banks said that both
he and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, were “denied the opportunity to serve
on the committee” because they questioned why Pelosi refused to turn
over documents related to decisions made on the day of the riot.
“The breadcrumbs lead to the speaker’s office,” he told The Daily
Signal, adding:
She’s covering something up, and the American people deserve to
know what those documents say, but so far she’s refused to hand them
over. The buck stops with her, and the question that deserves to be
answered is why the National Guard wasn’t called to help protect the
Capitol. Somebody made that decision.
And I suspect that those documents in some way, shape, or form
implicate the speaker of the house. She doesn’t want to release them
because at the end of the day, no matter what those documents say, I
imagine they deviate from the political witch-hunt narrative that
Nancy Pelosi and [Rep.] Liz Cheney [R-Wyo.] have painted about Jan 6.
Members of the Democrat-led Jan. 6 committee continue to ignore
vital questions related to Capitol security, Banks said, noting that
Republicans have interviewed dozens of Capitol Police officers and
others on this topic.
“We’ve learned a lot and we’re nearing the end of our interview
process,” the Indiana congressman said, promising that Republicans
will publish a report containing key findings of their interviews and
make recommendations for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of
California, whom Republicans hope will be the next House Speaker.
“We’ve found that we’ve had broad support from the United States
Capitol Police officers, the rank-and-file officers who know that
they deserve more and better from their leadership and who know that
leading up to Jan. 6 and on Jan. 6, there were systemic breakdowns
and failure at the highest levels of the Capitol Police that led to
what happened,” Banks said, adding:
And if we’re serious about preventing something like Jan. 6 from
ever happening again, we need to look at what happened there and make
those changes so that we can prevent it. Unfortunately, the Pelosi/
Liz Cheney effort has no interest in pursuing those angles. Instead,
they’re just out to get their political opponents and weaponizing
their power to go after those who they disagree with.
Banks, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, emphasized
that he and fellow Republicans support the Capitol Police and the
rank-and-file officers.
“The bottom line there is that the head of the Capitol Police
union has told us and said very publicly that they weren’t prepared
for what happened on Jan. 6 because of a breakdown in the intelli-
gence gathering and dissemination process,” Banks told The Daily
Signal.
“And even though they had intelligence that something was going
to happen on Jan. 6 for weeks beforehand, the Capitol Police officers
were never made aware of that,” he continued. “They weren’t equipped
for what happened on Jan. 6. They had outdated and in some cases
expired equipment.”
It is “incredibly” baffling that the officers were not trained
for “a riot or a large, violent crowd at the United States Capitol,
” Banks said, particularly in light of the rioting and protesting
that had taken place previously in both the nation’s capital and
across the country.
The congressman said that he has heard this same sentiment ex-
pressed “over and over” by both the head of the Capitol Police union
and by individual officers on the force.
Republicans repeatedly have asked that information shared by fed-
eral agencies with the “sham” Jan. 6 committee also be shared with
the minority party, Banks said.
But, he told The Daily Signal, there has been “no transparency.”
“They will only give it to the committee,” Banks said of federal
agencies and their relevant information. “And as the public trust in
this sham committee is diminished so substantially, it’s unfortunate
that agencies like the FBI won’t share that information with members
of the minority party.”
He added:
The way they’ve conducted this Jan. 6 commission clearly violates
House rules. Without minority participation, without providing these
records to the minority party, it’s a bad precedent for the future of
the institution, but it is pretty clear that Nancy Pelosi and Liz
Cheney aren’t interested in precedent or rule of law. They’re only
interested in attacking and abusing their power to send their poli-
tical opponents to jail.
Questions about FBI involvement, both before and after Jan. 6,
are serious questions that need to be answered, Banks said, but Demo-
crats are not willing to share that information with the minority
party.
“That doesn’t mean that we’re not trying,” he said.
“When Jim Jordan is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and
has oversight of the FBI, it’ll be important that he and others in
our party continue to ask these important questions and demand
answers from this administration, who’s clearly not willing to pro-
vide information to members of Congress of both parties,” Banks said.
I find these articles shed a lot of light on the corruption that
exists withing the Democratic party but we are all at fault because
conservative Americans didn't want to believe it. Now we are paying
for our naivity.
Time to pray to God for another chance.
I continue to ask, "What are they hiding?"
Conservatively,
John
Conservativelyjohn.com 