The January 6 Committee: One Major Accomplishment Overshadowed by a Glaring Shortcoming

The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol had the potential to make major contributions to understanding the disgraceful events of January 6, 2021, and preventing a recurrence. As it concludes its work, what did the Committee accomplish?

The Committee’s main accomplishment was developing a clear and compelling exposition of Trump’s many transgressions relating to January 6 and indeed the whole post-election period. While it uncovered no game-changing new evidence, the Committee did add a great deal of corroborating detail as well as some dramatic flourishes.

The Committee presented its work mainly through professionally choreographed hearings that resembled a TV miniseries more than a typical congressional investigation. The Committee’s case against Trump, which relies mainly on the testimony of Republican witnesses, should be highly persuasive to all but diehard Trump acolytes. It demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that Trump’s reckless behavior led directly to the riot and that his dereliction enabled it to fester for hours. It also establishes to a virtual certainty that Trump’s claims of a stolen election were utterly, and almost certainly knowingly, false.

While the Committee’s approach has been criticized as one-sided, the GOP is mainly responsible for this. Republicans voted down legislation to establish an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate the events of January 6, leaving a congressional committee as the only alternative. House Republican leaders then foolishly chose to boycott the Committee, and Trump along with many of his supporters refused to cooperate with it. In any event, the story of January 6 as regards Trump has only one credible side. His behavior was clearly impeachable on several grounds and demonstrated his unfitness for public office. Whether it was also criminal remains to be seen.

However, the Committee largely ignored a parallel January 6 scandal that rivals Trump’s outrageous behavior: the epic security failures that allowed an unruly gang of yahoos to successfully take over the seat of our democracy. The January 6 rioters included some truly bad actors who committed serious acts of violence in breaching the Capitol. For the most part, however, the rioters were unarmed, unorganized, and unfocused. How could a ragtag mob like this seize the Capitol of the United States and do so with relative ease? Why did it take so long to clear them out? And most important, what does their success portend for a possible future attack on the Capitol that might be better organized and more weaponized?

While individual police officers offered heroic resistance, their leadership failed them as well as Congress and the American people. Law enforcement agencies were woefully unprepared for the assault on the Capitol. (Some experts describe January 6 as the worst U.S. intelligence failure since 9/11.) Once the Capitol was breached, the agencies were unable to mount a coherent response for hours thereafter. Had security forces properly prepared and effectively executed their responsibilities, the attack, if it came at all, almost surely would have been repelled.

The few existing inquiries into January 6 security failures describe a host of problems including underestimating threats, poor planning and coordination, lack of leadership, failure to share intelligence, and bureaucratic indecisiveness. Recently released interview transcripts show that such problems were specifically made known to the Committee. Several congressional law enforcement officials resigned in the aftermath of the riot. However, there has been no other accountability on the part of law enforcement. Rather, agencies obfuscate, contradict, and blame each other. (See, e.g., here and here.) Even where countermeasures have been identified, agencies are slow to implement them.

Nevertheless, the Committee, in its singular focus on Trump and apparent zeal to fix exclusive blame for January 6 on him, essentially turned a blind eye to these security failures. The Committee’s hearings completely passed over them and its final report gave them short shrift. Two appendices to the report describe law enforcement and intelligence actions but provide no useful analysis.

The Committee has been widely (and rightly) praised for its exhaustive treatment of all things Trump relating to January 6. Its inattention to security issues has received considerably less attention, although it has not gone entirely unnoticed. (See here and here.) One commenter pointedly observed:

“The [report] summary systematically elides the egregious failures of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to predict and respond to the violence of Jan. 6. More than that, it goes out of its way to present those agencies in a positive light, despite their catastrophic neglect.”

The Committee’s disregard of security issues is particularly mystifying since they were a key part of its mandate. The House resolution establishing the Committee, as set forth on its website, specifically recites some of the intelligence and law enforcement failures relating to January 6 and lays out a number of specific security-related subjects for the Committee to investigate. Even the Committee staff was evidently taken aback by its apparent indifference to these subjects.

On balance, the Committee’s failure to address security issues outweighs its accomplishments regarding Trump. The basic narrative of Trump’s outrageous behavior was all too clear before the Committee began its work. The Committee usefully reenforced and expanded upon this narrative but came up with nothing fundamentally new. On the other hand, the equally outrageous security failures are more complex, obscure, and difficult to sort through. They cried out for greater scrutiny, which the Committee could and should have provided. Instead, it produced nothing worthwhile on this crucial front.