Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) claimed responsibility for the failure to deploy the National Guard to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to video footage released by House Republicans on Monday.
As rioters stormed the Capitol building, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 84, raged at the lack of “accountability” and accepted “responsibility” for inadequate security ahead of former President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally. Video Clip Footage filmed by the congressman’s daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, for the HBO documentary was shown.
“Terry, we are accountable,” Pelosi can be heard telling her chief of staff, Terry McCullough, as she was driven away from the Capitol building. “We had no accountability for what was going on there, and we should have. This is absurd.”
Pelosi then appeared to rebuke McCullough, who asked whether the National Guard should be called in during the unrest.
“You’re going to ask me in the middle of the inauguration should we call in the Capitol Guard already? No, the National Guard. Why wasn’t the National Guard there to begin with?” the former House speaker said.
“I thought there were enough resources,” McCullough explained, but the California Democrat wasn’t satisfied with that answer.
“It’s not a question of how they knew: They didn’t know! They clearly didn’t know. And I take responsibility for not making them better prepared,” Pelosi said.
The exchange is part of about 45 minutes of footage recently provided to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives Subcommittee on Government Oversight. According to Politico.
a Report of a riotA 2022 report written by House Republicans found that Democratic leaders had concerns about the “perception” of having a National Guard presence at the Capitol in the aftermath of the summer of 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
In the days after the riot, the chiefs of sergeant-at-arms for both the House and Senate and the chief of the Capitol Police resigned.
Pelosi’s spokesperson Video clip rejected He issued a statement accusing House Republicans of attempting a “cover-up” of January 6th.
“Numerous independent fact checkers have confirmed that Speaker Pelosi did not plot her own assassination,” Aaron Bennett wrote on X. “No amount of cherry-picked, out-of-context footage will change that.”
“Three years later, House Republicans are still trying to cover up what happened on January 6th,” he added. “It’s shameful, unpatriotic and pathetic.”
