On January 6th, 2021, the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team was the team that entered the Capitol Building after the protesters did.
The Hostage Rescue Team (HRT), comprised of 350 people, was established in 1983 as a counterterrorism unit at the National level and has given law enforcement agencies in the United States a “tactical” option, a military option, for the most extraordinary cases they face. The Hostage Rescue Team was initially formed as a domestic counterterrorism unit; however, after the 9/11 attacks, the team expanded its mission and began to cooperate with the Joint Special Operations Command overseas in highly-publicized raids and targets.
Early in the day, FBI tactical teams arrived on Capitol Hill to assist in the collection of evidence at sites where explosive devices were discovered – at the Republican and Democratic party headquarters. No suspects have been arrested in that case. FBI snipers and SWAT teams secured congressional office buildings near the Capitol Building. Agents from the FBI also provided select security around the Capitol, protecting congressional staff and members.
As part of the emergency response, one team coordinated with the U.S. Secret Service and Capitol Police to ensure that Vice President Pence remained secure in the underground parking structure beneath the Capitol, where he was supposed to evacuate from. The vice president refused to leave the building and remained underground instead.
Now we’ll be able to see all of what transpired on that day of major security breakdowns, either planned or because of sheer stupidity.
Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert, both Republican House members, announced that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has pledged to make public all security footage of the events that transpired at the Capitol Building that day.
“The American people deserve to know the truth about what happened on January 6th. We have demanded to see all the footage. Transparency is coming,” Gaetz declared. “Every time from the JFK files to 9/11, to now January 6th. It’s our own government, our own Department of Justice that seems to stand in the way of transparency.”
Moreover, he reiterated his call for the House floor to be covered by more CSPAN cameras.
“If we had cameras on the floor, my suspicion is we would have far better attendance during debates that impact the lives of our fellow Americans,” he argued.
Rep. Boebert further explained: “Speaker McCarthy says he’ll be releasing ALL the footage from January 6th. Considering all the public has seen are edited clips from a bunch of Democrats with an axe to grind, it sure will be nice to get some unbiased footage.”
“I think the public should see what happened on that day,” McCarthy said in a press conference on Thursday. “I watched what Nancy Pelosi did, where she politicized it. … I think the American public should actually see what happened instead of a report that’s written for a political basis.”
Tucker Carlson, the host of Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Show, praised McCarthy for his commitment to release 14,000 hours of video footage.
“Well, yeah. After two full years, after a highly publicized and highly politicized congressional committee, after endless grandstanding in the media, after unprecedented political crackdowns, after nearly 1,000 arrests, after all of that: Americans, yes they do, have a right to know what actually happened on Jan. 6,” Carlson told his audience. “That’s what Kevin McCarthy said. Who could argue otherwise? What is the counter argument?”
“’You can’t know whether the Capitol’s surveillance cameras pan, tilt or zoom — and if you do know, America is in peril.’ It’s completely absurd. Every human movement in the United States Capitol is recorded by cameras, and you already knew that because the same is true in virtually every public building in the Western hemisphere,” Carlson stated. “That is not a secret. That, of course, is not the secret the Democrats fear you might learn if you saw the tape.”
“They are probably a lot more concerned about whether you will discover how many law enforcement agents actively helped Jan. 6 protesters enter the building that day,” Carlson added. “Some of them definitely did, we know that for a fact because we have the tape.”
WATCH:
“Last week, McCarthy delivered on a previous pledge to bar three controversial Democrats from serving on powerful House committees, according to Conservative Brief.
McCarthy blocked Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee, saying that previous actions by both lawmakers made them unqualified to serve on such a sensitive committee.
“In order to maintain a standard worthy of this committee’s responsibilities, I am hereby rejecting the appointments of Representative Adam Schiff and Representative Eric Swalwell to serve on the Intelligence Committee,” McCarthy posted on Twitter.
“This is not anything political. This is not similar to what the Democrats did,” McCarthy said to reporters last week.
“Schiff, who led several Democratic investigations into Donald Trump, repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that the former president colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton. Republicans have also accused him of leaking sensitive and oftentimes false information to the media several times during Trump’s term,” CB added.
