Yahoo! News has gotten access to an unredacted version of the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General's report on the department's handling of identified far-right threats in the weeks and days before the Jan. 6, 2021 attempted coup. The Yahoo! News report adds a bit of meat to prior reporting on the subject, most substantively due to the uncovering of a four-page report from one of the DHS intelligence analysts who was trying frantically to get the department to warn relevant law enforcement offices of far-right plans to attack the U.S. Capitol, but the underlying story is one we've already known:
Intelligence officials inside DHS were aware of specific militia plans to capture or kill members of Congress. They were aware that maps of the tunnel systems lawmakers might escape from were being shared online. They learned of militia plans to smuggle weapons into Washington, D.C., and saw posts from extremists expecting to die in the planned-for firefight.
The DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis had been gathering a great deal of publicly accessible online data about a plan to violently attack the U.S. Capitol and kill lawmakers so as to create justification for Donald Trump to impose martial law and nullify the election lawmakers were gathering to certify—and that information went absolutely nowhere. No warnings were issued. Capitol police officers were flying blind on that day.
RELATED STORY: Jan. 6 warnings held back by officials at DHS, watchdog finds
The obvious question remains why, and we're still publicly no closer to a satisfying answer to that question than we were in March. The Office of Inspector General's report blames miscommunications and confusion over new guidelines for data collection and report production, generally ascribing the lack of action to bureaucratic fumbles rather than an intent to brush threats of violence under the rug.
Institutional sluggishness is generally a far more likely reason for government incompetence than malice, and so the inspector general's report didn't exactly climb out onto thin ice when it ascribed the inability to warn law enforcement of the upcoming attack to internal confusion about what was reportable behavior and what was not. With that said, however, we know that the Department of Homeland Security under Trump was an absolute cesspool of malice; in fact, that's why the guidelines the analysts were frustrated by had changed in the first place—and you can blame Trump “acting” DHS secretary Chad Wolf in particular.
In the months leading up to the Jan. 6 coup attempt, the DHS group responsible for threat assessments was gutted by the Trump administration. The "slashing" of operations inside the department was a direct result of a Trump-era scandal in which top DHS officials used the department to promote known-false claims portraying Black Lives Matter protests as linked to organized "anarchist" and "antifa" extremism.
A internal DHS review blamed high-level officials for concocting false intelligence meant to support Donald Trump-pushed claims meant to discredit the protests. At the top of the scandal was Trump DHS "acting" secretary Chad Wolf, who aggressively pushed those false claims in public appearances.
At heart, the scandal revealed the abuse of the department's "threat assessment" capabilities in an attempt to boost partisan false messaging, the same sort of intentional hoax promotion that riddled Trump’s government and that led directly to a hoax-premised attempted coup. It was that Wolf scandal that led to review and reform of threat assessment guidelines dictating what analysts could and couldn't use as evidence of a "threat," changes that left analysts confused, in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 attack, as to what Proud Boys and militia-linked messages they were allowed to cite in justifying the release of a threat assessment to be distributed across government.
The delay wasn't due to a lack of online evidence, though. Yahoo! News reveals one message from a frustrated threat viewer complaining: "I mean people are talking about storming Congress, bringing guns, willing to die for the cause, hanging politicians with ropes but still not meeting threshold lol."
The inability of the DHS threat assessment group to issue a warning to law enforcement about online plans to capture and kill lawmakers, therefore, can be directly traced back to Chad Wolf and the Trump administration's abuse of the program to falsely implicate protesters in Portland, Oregon and elsewhere in a supposed leftist plot that never existed. That's still not the only flag that Trump appointee mismanagement or outright corruption might have played a role in leaving Capitol Police in the dark about planned militia attacks on the Capitol, however.
Both Chad Wolf and his deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, were among the government officials whose text messages leading up to the coup were "accidentally" deleted in a phone "reset" that wiped out Congress-demanded data from DHS and the Secret Service. The DHS Inspector General was pointedly singled out for his own sluggishness in attempting to retrieve the data and for not notifying Congress of the deletions when he first learned of them.
None of that is conducive to settling the stomachs of those who believe that Wolf and other Trump appointees intentionally downplayed the threat of violence on Jan. 6 either to appease Trump, who orchestrated the event, or to assist him in provoking violence. Former DHS chief of staff Miles Taylor, who worked with Trump, is among those who believe Trump's aim on Jan. 6 was to manufacture such violence.
"I believe Donald Trump wanted people to die," Taylor has emphasized. "He wanted people to die … who were elected officials, en masse, so he could call out the military, so he could invoke the Insurrection Act, so he could prevent the peaceful transfer of power."
Taylor is not alone in believing Trump was looking to use the violence as justification for remaining in power. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 coup attempt has assembled testimony from numerous individuals who confirmed that Trump resisted taking any action to quell the violence after telling his crowd to "march" to the Capitol, instead watching the attacks unfold on television. Trump sent a tweet singling out Vice President Mike Pence as an enemy as the crowd moved through Capitol hallways and offices; he did not send a video message telling rioters to disperse until after the violence had been largely quelled.
What we do not know is the full number of Republican allies in and out of government who took specific actions to help Trump achieve the violence he sought to use. With the discovery of albeit-incomplete text messages between the White House and those allies, however, we know that the number is not zero.
RELATED STORIES:
Jan. 6 committee considering charges against Trump, Meadows, Eastman, Clark, and Giuliani
There are now missing Jan. 6 texts from the Department of Homeland Security
Trump 'wanted people to die' so he could invoke the Insurrection Act and stay in power
Internal review shows Trump’s DHS concocted bogus intelligence blaming antifa for violence
Intelligence officials inside DHS were aware of specific militia plans to capture or kill members of Congress. They were aware that maps of the tunnel systems lawmakers might escape from were being shared online. They learned of militia plans to smuggle weapons into Washington, D.C., and saw posts from extremists expecting to die in the planned-for firefight.
The DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis had been gathering a great deal of publicly accessible online data about a plan to violently attack the U.S. Capitol and kill lawmakers so as to create justification for Donald Trump to impose martial law and nullify the election lawmakers were gathering to certify—and that information went absolutely nowhere. No warnings were issued. Capitol police officers were flying blind on that day.
RELATED STORY: Jan. 6 warnings held back by officials at DHS, watchdog finds
The obvious question remains why, and we're still publicly no closer to a satisfying answer to that question than we were in March. The Office of Inspector General's report blames miscommunications and confusion over new guidelines for data collection and report production, generally ascribing the lack of action to bureaucratic fumbles rather than an intent to brush threats of violence under the rug.
Institutional sluggishness is generally a far more likely reason for government incompetence than malice, and so the inspector general's report didn't exactly climb out onto thin ice when it ascribed the inability to warn law enforcement of the upcoming attack to internal confusion about what was reportable behavior and what was not. With that said, however, we know that the Department of Homeland Security under Trump was an absolute cesspool of malice; in fact, that's why the guidelines the analysts were frustrated by had changed in the first place—and you can blame Trump “acting” DHS secretary Chad Wolf in particular.
In the months leading up to the Jan. 6 coup attempt, the DHS group responsible for threat assessments was gutted by the Trump administration. The "slashing" of operations inside the department was a direct result of a Trump-era scandal in which top DHS officials used the department to promote known-false claims portraying Black Lives Matter protests as linked to organized "anarchist" and "antifa" extremism.
A internal DHS review blamed high-level officials for concocting false intelligence meant to support Donald Trump-pushed claims meant to discredit the protests. At the top of the scandal was Trump DHS "acting" secretary Chad Wolf, who aggressively pushed those false claims in public appearances.
At heart, the scandal revealed the abuse of the department's "threat assessment" capabilities in an attempt to boost partisan false messaging, the same sort of intentional hoax promotion that riddled Trump’s government and that led directly to a hoax-premised attempted coup. It was that Wolf scandal that led to review and reform of threat assessment guidelines dictating what analysts could and couldn't use as evidence of a "threat," changes that left analysts confused, in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 attack, as to what Proud Boys and militia-linked messages they were allowed to cite in justifying the release of a threat assessment to be distributed across government.
The delay wasn't due to a lack of online evidence, though. Yahoo! News reveals one message from a frustrated threat viewer complaining: "I mean people are talking about storming Congress, bringing guns, willing to die for the cause, hanging politicians with ropes but still not meeting threshold lol."
The inability of the DHS threat assessment group to issue a warning to law enforcement about online plans to capture and kill lawmakers, therefore, can be directly traced back to Chad Wolf and the Trump administration's abuse of the program to falsely implicate protesters in Portland, Oregon and elsewhere in a supposed leftist plot that never existed. That's still not the only flag that Trump appointee mismanagement or outright corruption might have played a role in leaving Capitol Police in the dark about planned militia attacks on the Capitol, however.
Both Chad Wolf and his deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, were among the government officials whose text messages leading up to the coup were "accidentally" deleted in a phone "reset" that wiped out Congress-demanded data from DHS and the Secret Service. The DHS Inspector General was pointedly singled out for his own sluggishness in attempting to retrieve the data and for not notifying Congress of the deletions when he first learned of them.
None of that is conducive to settling the stomachs of those who believe that Wolf and other Trump appointees intentionally downplayed the threat of violence on Jan. 6 either to appease Trump, who orchestrated the event, or to assist him in provoking violence. Former DHS chief of staff Miles Taylor, who worked with Trump, is among those who believe Trump's aim on Jan. 6 was to manufacture such violence.
"I believe Donald Trump wanted people to die," Taylor has emphasized. "He wanted people to die … who were elected officials, en masse, so he could call out the military, so he could invoke the Insurrection Act, so he could prevent the peaceful transfer of power."
Taylor is not alone in believing Trump was looking to use the violence as justification for remaining in power. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 coup attempt has assembled testimony from numerous individuals who confirmed that Trump resisted taking any action to quell the violence after telling his crowd to "march" to the Capitol, instead watching the attacks unfold on television. Trump sent a tweet singling out Vice President Mike Pence as an enemy as the crowd moved through Capitol hallways and offices; he did not send a video message telling rioters to disperse until after the violence had been largely quelled.
What we do not know is the full number of Republican allies in and out of government who took specific actions to help Trump achieve the violence he sought to use. With the discovery of albeit-incomplete text messages between the White House and those allies, however, we know that the number is not zero.
RELATED STORIES:
Jan. 6 committee considering charges against Trump, Meadows, Eastman, Clark, and Giuliani
There are now missing Jan. 6 texts from the Department of Homeland Security
Trump 'wanted people to die' so he could invoke the Insurrection Act and stay in power
Internal review shows Trump’s DHS concocted bogus intelligence blaming antifa for violence