One of the unanswered questions about the insurrectionist invasion of the U.S. Capitol is whether Trumpist sympathies within the law enforcement community contributed to the woefully inadequate response by the Capitol Police and the national security establishment.
Security failures occurred on at least three levels. One was in the planning done — or not done — to prepare for what was unquestionably going to be, at best, a massive, angry protest at the Capitol. An array of legislators had asked Capitol Police leadership what their plans were for dealing with the expected throng. Those officials refused to provide details on the basis that they didn’t want to risk having their security precautions leaked to the public, but they insisted they had everything covered. Needless to say, they didn’t.
Then there was the behavior of police at the scene. Videos I’ve seen tell a mixed story, with some showing officers vainly trying to resist the incursion and others suggesting that their response ranged from nonchalance to outright indulgence, as illustrated by the infamous photo above of an officer posing for a selfie with one of the rioters inside the Capitol.
And finally there was the failure by federal authorities to authorize support by National Guard troops as soon as it became clear that the Capitol was under siege. In theory, that authorization had to be granted by the Secretary of Defense, which never happened. Instead, the Secretary of the Army issued the orders long after the rioting began. That last failure is the least surprising, given that Trump himself sits atop the military chain of command.
It seems clear that at least part of the problem at all three levels was a bias on the part of law enforcement that results in a failure to see domestic right-wing fanaticism as the menace it is. Americans who look like us are presumed not to be that much of a threat. As numerous commentators have noted, if the mob at the Capitol had been mostly black — not to mention if it were made up of foreigners — the security response would have been of an entirely different magnitude.
If a kind of naïve heedlessness were at the root of the lapses, that would be bad enough. But I can’t help wondering whether it’s worse. Is it possible that law-enforcement decision-makers not only underestimated the threat to the Capitol last week, but on some level viewed it favorably? Were there security officials who shared the mob’s conviction that the election had been stolen, and felt that lawmakers could use a good shaking up to persuade them to undo that injustice?
Perhaps I’m being alarmist. But there have been numerous reports recently about the degree to which right-wing extremism has infected Germany’s security services. Could it not happen here?
There will be countless inquiries and investigations in the months ahead, and we can only hope that questions like these will be answered.