Capitol riot report: Anger as Trump’s role excluded but new details of security failures revealed

Amid criticism of Capitol police failings, Amy Klobuchar says the event ‘wouldn’t have happened’ without false claims of election fraud from former president

A new report into the 6 January Capitol riot has avoided investigating Donald Trump’s role in the event, and instead revealed how failures in intelligence allowed warnings to go amiss.

According to CNN on Tuesday, two Senate committees found no wrongdoing by the former US president, who allegedly incited the rioters at a “Stop the Steal” rally before storming Congress.

Rather, the Senate committees found that a “decentralised” intelligence operation within the US Capitol Police allowed warnings of an attack to go amiss — despite it becoming “aware” of the risks in the weeks before 6 January.

The Capitol police said its intelligence unit was aware of a “large demonstration attracting various groups, including some encouraging violence” ahead of 6 January, but that it did not forecast an attack.

“What it didn't know,” the Capitol police said in a statement on Tuesday, “was [that] the large-scale demonstration would become a large-scale attack on the Capitol Building — as there was no specific, credible intelligence about such an attack”.

“Neither the USCP, nor the FBI, US Secret Service, Metropolitan Police or our other law enforcement partners knew thousands of rioters were planning to attack the US Capitol,” it added. “The known intelligence simply didn't support that conclusion.”

The four senators involved in putting together the Capitol riot report told CBS on Tuesday they were surprised that frontline officers were “left to defend us, left to defend our staff, left to defend democracy”, in the wake of intelligence failings.

Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat and one of the four senators, continued by saying that it if not for Mr Trump’s false allegations of election fraud, “this wouldn’t have happened”.

As the report required the support of both Republicans and Democrats, Senate aides told CNN that it “did not attempt to look at the origins and development of the groups or individuals that participated in the attack on the Capitol”, including Mr Trump.

Nor did it refer to the riot as an “insurrection”, as alleged by Democrats — many of whom were threatened by rioters on 6 January, and who voted to impeach Mr Trump in January — and disputed by Republicans.

The report was put together by information taken from public hearings, private communications and five transcribed interviews, including with former acting defence secretary Chris Miller and acting US Capitol police chief Yogananda Pittman.

It comes after Republicans voted against the formation of a bipartisan committee to investigate the Capitol riot in May, in another rebuke to Democrats calling for a further and fuller inquiry.

“The failure to adequately assess the threat of violence on that day contributed significantly to the breach of the Capitol,” said Gary Peters, a Democrat senator and the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, according to The New York Times. “The attack was quite frankly planned in plain sight.”

Ms Klobuchar told CBS on Tuesday: "Our country needs this 9/11-style commission to get to the bottom of all this.”

“While the prosecutions are going on you could be looking at the causes and everything, but our mission right now was to protect this Capitol going forward”.