Despite U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) and Congressional investigators' claims to the contrary, evidence is slowly emerging that USCP officers were purposefully under-deployed on January 6, 2021. (Something this writer has suspected and investigated for over two years.)
Recent testimonies by USCP officers in the various J6 trials, newly-acquired access to USCP radio transmissions, and USCP whistleblower statements are giving us direct answers to that question. They are also revealing the very real possibility there has been a cover-up to keep this hidden from the American public.
There have been less than 300 J6 rioters charged with criminal violence against police. Arguably, had the USCP been "all hands on deck" that day, there would have been no breach of the Capitol Building. As such, Ashli Babbit and three other protestors would likely still be alive. Four members of the USCP and DC Metro Police, along with a growing number of J6'ers, (those being federally prosecuted for their actions on January 6), might not have taken their own lives in the aftermath.
Then, of course, there are the stories of those hundreds of "accidental tourists" who have had their lives thrown into chaos, even ruined, just for walking through an open Capitol Building door. Maybe even . . . one of those doors that was held open by a USCP officer.
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Much of the phenomena surrounding PDS, (police derangement syndrome), that I mentioned in Part 1 of this series played out in my social media threads after posting that story. Despite my long-term and ongoing belief that many of the unfolding events of January 6 were pre-planned, organized, manipulated, and allowed to proceed . . . there are quite a few who are convinced the frontline, uniformed USCP officers were knowingly complicit. Here's a sampling of the comments:
‘The Capitol Police were willing participants by following those D.C. fascists’ orders. I have no sympathy for them or their families.”
“Don’t sign up to collect a paycheck defending a corrupt government.”
“They're a disgrace to the Uniform and America. How f-ing dare they.”
Another, directed at me and my investigations, specifically:
“You're being played.”
The far left was not silent, either. They generally express the sentiment that every USCP officer should have replicated Lt. Michael Byrd’s lone shot and created a thousand more Ashli Babbitts. Unlike much of recent history, most of the modern left is oddly all-in on Back the Blue as far as January 6 is concerned.
Still . . . well over 90% of those who read Part 1 offered positive feedback. (Thank you.)
An important point made in Part 1, is that I have often been forced to reevaluate initial assumptions about what I saw as more evidence is either revealed or clarified. For instance, in my first article about January 6, posted on January 13, 2021, I misidentified the “fluorescent-sleeved jackets of . . . officers racing down steps toward the first upper tier above street level,” as “Capitol Police.” They were not. Those were members of the D.C. Metropolitan Police (MPD). Many of those who negatively responded to Part 1, were also misidentifying the actions of certain law enforcement officers as those from the USCP, when in fact they were part of the MPD.
This might seem a minor distinction — especially amongst the All Cops Are Bastards (ACAB) crowd — but these details are eminently important for us to get exactly right as we work our way toward discovering, and then eventually presenting to the American people, the topmost truth about the day. Namely . . . who it was ‘up the chain,’ that either set up, orchestrated, or allowed those events to transpire.
To the many as yet unanswered questions, curious events, and suspiciously-unindicted characters, we don’t have to agree on the detailed interpretation of each of these. We also don’t have to agree on every single event, video capture, or behavior of each police officer to come to a mutual agreement on a point I’ve made many times regarding January 6:
“I saw bad people doing bad things, good people doing good things, and even good people who did really stupid things.”
This applies to both individual protestors and individual police officers, alike.
Washington Monument lawn on January 6th
My questions about the deployment, orders, and actions of the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) on January 6 began in my first published article. From the moment my Uber driver dropped me off at the Washington Monument, (at approximately 9:30 a.m.), and until I arrived at the lower west terrace of the Capitol Building, (at exactly 1:19 p.m.), I never saw, nor did my camera capture the presence of a single law enforcement officer.
As that crowd grew from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, can you imagine not seeing any police presence mingled with such a throng, in the nation’s Capital? There were most certainly police and Secret Service at The Ellipse — where the president would be speaking — but the density of the crowd prevented me from getting into that area. When I began my walk toward Capitol Hill, again, not a single police officer was seen. As I approached the Peace Monument, I could hear sirens signaling the arrival of MPD units. At the reflection pool, I could then see the fluorescent jackets of MPD officers streaming down steps to the lower west terrace.
That’s when I heard the first flash-bang grenades and saw the release of tear gas in the distance. No barricades or police lines were inhibiting my approach — as they’d already been removed by the initial agitators and provocateurs — so I broke out in a run to that lower terrace and began capturing the unfolding violence at exactly 1:19 p.m. (Only three minutes after President Trump exited The Ellipse stage.)
For a solid year, I publicly asked, “Why wasn’t there a police presence at the Monument lawn?” “Why didn’t I see any police on the mile-long walk to the Capitol?” “Why were there so few USCP officers on duty at the Capitol, itself . . . considering the planned rally, marches, and events scheduled on the Capitol lawn that day?”
I initially estimated that fewer than 200 USCP officers were at the Capitol Building on January 6. A year later, on the first anniversary of the event, I returned to D.C. and attempted to get some of these questions answered. I tried to ask USCP officers those questions, and I also wanted to know what their orders were that day. I was especially interested in what I perceived to be a stand-down order at approximately 2:00 p.m. None of the officers I queried would answer.
They wouldn’t speak to me, at all, about anything.
On December 16, 2021, Forbes made a convoluted attempt to answer the question about USCP deployment at the Capitol on January 6:
“USCP documents show that at 2pm on that day, only 1,214 officers were ‘on site’ across the Capitol complex of buildings. Congressional investigators concluded, however, that USCP could only account for 417 officers and could not account for the whereabouts of the remaining 797 officers.”
Hmmm.
When I met with the former USCP officer turned whistleblower, Lt. Tarik Johnson, he told me that as the first wave of violence began on J6, my initially-published estimate of “less than 200“ USCP officers at the Capitol Building was very close to the mark.
Johnson further explained that during all previously scheduled protest events, the standard operating procedure was for the USCP to be in an “all hands on deck” stance. On those kinds of days, officers working the night shift were required to stay over and remain on duty through the next day. But on January 6, USCP command was sending those officers home once they’d completed their shifts.
In a follow-up phone conversation I had with Johnson -- just today -- he went even deeper into revealing the specific deceptions the USCP has floated about force deployment on January 6. Concerning those USCP “documents” and “Congressional investigators” that were said to conclude, “could not account for the whereabouts of the remaining 797 officers,” Johnson clarified thusly:
“It’s a bald-faced lie, and you can quote me on that.”
Johnson explained to me that all USCP officers, upon reporting for duty and after every shift, electronically “clock in” and “clock out.” Upon clocking in, every officer is then tracked during their tour of duty and it’s therefore impossible for USCP commanders to not know the whereabouts of those officers. Furthermore, that information should still be available on USCP computer logs. (Assuming they’ve not been purged.)
Why would the USCP cover up information about force deployment that day? Johnson answered:
“Because they don’t want to tell you where they [USCP officers] were, or what they were doing. They don’t want anyone to know how many of our officers were on ADMINISTRATIVE LEAVE that day.” [CAPS mine]
To that statement, I responded:
“So, you’re telling me . . . on a day when the USCP command had themselves issued permits for protests on the Capitol grounds, they had hundreds of officers on administrative leave, and were also sending officers home that morning?”
Johnson:
“You said it, exactly.”
There is also the issue of the “big diversion,” when those two pipe bombs were coincidentally discovered at almost the exact moment the first provocateurs were arriving at the west Capitol barricade line. The discoveries took place at both the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee headquarters — both of those being part of the near-20 buildings under the USCP’s watch.
Johnson was unable to give me an estimate of how many of their officers would have been diverted to both the RNC and DNC, but this emergency response to those pipe bombs doesn’t explain the unknown “whereabouts of the remaining 797 officers.” He says the exact records of how many, and exactly who were diverted would also be readily retrievable from USCP computer records.
In the first Oath Keepers trial, Stephen Brown, a Florida-based event planner, was hired by Ali Alexander (Trump supporter and founder of Stop the Steal.) Brown’s job was to secure permits from the USCP for an event to be held on the Capitol grounds, organize the staging and PA system, and coordinate the scheduling of VIP speakers and stage security, (by members of the Oath Keepers). Brown testified that he’d previously been the planner for many protest events in the nation’s capital, ranging from 5,000 to 300,000 in attendance.
Under direct examination by the defense attorney Stanley Woodward, Brown also described the surprisingly small presence of USCP officers on location while the staging and PA system were being delivered and set up. He went on to describe that at previous events he’d organized on Capitol grounds, he’d seen, “three, four, even five times the size of police presence, including SWAT teams,” than were there on January 6.
The inconvenient truth of the day is that my camera, the testimony of Stephen Brown, and the statements made to me by former USCP Lt. Johnson reveals what appears to be a purposeful under-deployment of their officers that day. A day in which we now know, as I wrote in Part 1 of this series:
“USCP Chief Steven Sund, Asst. Chief Yogananda Pittman, (head of protective and intelligence operations), the MPD, the United States Park Police, the White House, the Pentagon, the National Guard, both the Senate and House of Representative Sergeants-at-Arms, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, the FBI, and other federal agencies all knew that tens of thousands of protestors would be descending upon the Capitol grounds that day.”
An unnamed USCP officer, just days after the melee, told the Associated Press, “During the 4th of July concerts and the Memorial Day concerts, we don’t have people come up and say, ‘We’re going to seize the Capitol. But yet, you bring EVERYBODY in, you meet before. That never happened for this event.” [CAPS mine]
An event for which . . .
Instead of “all hands on deck,” frontline USCP officers were somewhere between one-tenth to one-fifth strength when it came time to respond to what was coming their way. An operational failure(?) that set up not just the breach of the Capitol Building, but also the delay in evacuating the House of Representatives. A situation that most certainly resulted in the death of Ashli Babbitt.
In an exclusive statement given to me by former USCP Lt. Tarik Johnson — which I released on Monday — he said:
“I recently made the decision to leave the Democratic Party to be Unaffiliated for now, for various reasons I choose not to get into at the present time. I submitted my application for this purpose today through my state’s website. I hope and pray that the new Republican-led Congress can uncover what really occurred on J6. I thank Senator Ron Johnson for his call for a ‘Full Accounting’ of the ‘Highly Concerning’ Capitol Police failures for the delayed J6 Evacuations.”
Oath Keeper Michael Nichols, bottom right, with megaphone, on Jan. 6.
(Christopher Morris / VII / Redux)
Responding to Part 1 of this series, one of my PDS-afflicted readers commented:
“Sounds like another exceptional conspiracy theory.”
Tell that to the USCP union members who gave Asst. Chief Yogananda Pittman a 92% “no-confidence” vote following her curiously absent leadership from their command center on January 6.
Part 3 to follow, shortly . . .
