"Multiple European security officials told Insider that President Donald Trump appeared to have tacit support among US federal agencies responsible for securing the Capitol complex in Wednesday's coup

"Today I am briefing my government that we believe with a reasonable level of certainty that Donald Trump attempted a coup that failed when the system did not buckle." - NATO Intelligence official

Yikes on bikes.
"The French police official said they believed that an investigation would find that someone interfered with the deployment of additional federal law-enforcement officials on the perimeter of the Capitol complex...
"...the official has direct knowledge of the proper procedures for security of the facility."

We know that:

1) Sund told Representatives that he had requested additional National Guard back-up. That did not happen.
2) National Guard was deployed for "traffic control" at...
...the Capitol perimeter. Though this was a fairly small number of Guard troops, none were deployed to help inside the perimeter.
3) Additional Guard support was delayed by Sec. of Army Ryan McCarthy, Sec. Def. Christopher Collins, and allegedly by Trump himself for 90 minutes.
4) Before the rally, the DoD circulated memos hamstringing the National Guard's ability to respond to a riot.
5) Sund also told the FBI Capitol Police didn't need back-up when the Capitol perimeter was being breached.

Multiple people absolutely interfered.
"It is routine for the Capitol Police to coordinate with the federal Secret Service and the Park Police and local police in Washington, DC, before large demonstrations. The National Guard, commanded by the Department of Defense, is often on standby too.
"On Wednesday, however, that coordination was late or absent."

Yup. And the stories about why it was absent don't add up.
"Kim Dine, who was the chief of the Capitol Police from 2012 to 2016, told The Washington Post that he was surprised that the Capitol Police allowed demonstrators on the steps of the Capitol. He said he was also mystified that few rioters were arrested on the spot."
The article lays out the systematic failures of crowd control. I recommend reading them all.

I've attended protests in DC before. I can't imagine being allowed to march from the White House to the Capitol in large numbers without having any real crowd control.
Notably, DC Mayor Bowser had called on the National Guard for support and they were supposedly helping with crowd control at this point AND were stationed at the perimeter of the Capitol.

Why they didn't direct traffic to the designated protest zone away from the Capitol...
...makes no sense to me.

The piddly barricades and sparse coverage by Capitol Police is also baffling. Basically everything that allowed people to get to the Capitol building itself makes no sense to me.
"Thank God it didn't work, because I can't imagine how hard it would be to sanction the US financial system."

It would be a fucking mess. And being on the receiving end of sanctions in the middle of an already poorly managed pandemic and economic crisis? Jesus.

More from Cate Eland

I want to break down Lindsey's letter, because it is breathtakingly hypocritical and stoking division with every sentence, despite claiming to be concerned with healing.


1) "But now, in your first act as Majority Leader, rather than begin the national healing that the country so desperately yearns for, you seek vengeance and political retaliation instead."

Trump incited an attack on the Capitol, on Congress, and on a free & fair election.

Trump has yet to concede, to apologize, or to admit he was lying about the outcome of the election. He has done nothing that demonstrates he does not continue to present a danger to our nation.

Trump's supporters continue to conspire to overthrow the government--with Trump's implicit, and quite possibly explicit--support. At this very moment, over 20,000 troops are stationed in our nation's capital to ensure the inauguration of President-Elect Biden can be completed.

It is not "vengeance" or "political retaliation" to insist a man that has fomented and continues to inspire a violent insurrection against the government is unfit ever to hold office again.

This is, in fact, a bare minimum protection for our country against future harm by Trump.

More from Politics

This idea - that elections should translate into policy - is not wrong at all. But political science can help explain why it's not working this way. There are three main explanations: 1. mandates are constructed, not automatic, 2. party asymmetry, 3. partisan conpetition 1/


First, party/policy mandates from elections are far from self-executing in our system. Work on mandates from Dahl to Ellis and Kirk on the history of the mandate to mine on its role in post-Nixon politics, to Peterson Grossback and Stimson all emphasize that this link is... 2/

Created deliberately and isn't always persuasive. Others have to convinced that the election meant a particular thing for it to work in a legislative context. I theorized in the immediate period of after the 2020 election that this was part of why Repubs signed on to ...3/

Trump's demonstrably false fraud nonsense - it derailed an emerging mandate news cycle. Winners of elections get what they get - institutional control - but can't expect much beyond that unless the perception of an election mandate takes hold. And it didn't. 4/

Let's turn to the legislation element of this. There's just an asymmetry in terms of passing a relief bill. Republicans are presumably less motivated to get some kind of deal passed. Democrats are more likely to want to do *something.* 5/

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