Recently, I ran across a review of this book. The author of the review said that Sund tends to whine about the events of Jan 1, 2021. I have to agree to some extent but I think, under the circumstances, he has a right to be disappointed in our Federal Governments actions and attitudes on Jan 6th that help the disaster in DC at the Capitol be more deathly than it needed to be.
First of all, as leader of the Capitol police, he details what anybody in that position was, and likely is up against. The Police Chief is actually, despite his title, at the low end of the pecking order. He has to get instructions from the leaders of both the House and Senate. Often, especially when one party has control of one body, and the other has the other, that creates a situation where the instructions are given at cross purposes. For example on Jan 6th, a large percentage of the House, especially, was Republican and they wanted the group to back them up on rejecting the legal election and transfer of power to Joe Biden. The Democrats, knowing that the result was likely to be deadly as the radicals had already been on social media planning a violent effort wanted it stopped.
But in addition, the intelligence community seems to have dropped the ball. Now admittedly, this is from one viewpoint, but it sounds like it is fairly obvious from what actually DID happen on Jan 6, 2021 when domestic terrorists like the Proud Boys and the oath Keepers broke into the Capital, and used the equipment left there as part of the preparation for the swearing in of the new President as weapons to break into the inside of the Capitol and threaten not just the police but also the members of Congress, up to and including the Vice President who was there strictly to count the votes from the Electorial College and declare the winner, who was obvious by that time.
By that point, the vote was clear. Biden was the new President, but Trump wouldn’t concede and in addition had riled up his rabid supporters to the point where they were willing to kill if it took that. While any candidate certainly has the right to challenge the results of an election, there is a limit to what they can legally do. After recount after recount is done, in one state they even called in a special pro-trump group to recount for the third time and STILL the vote went for Biden, even giving Biden a few more votes than previously.
So, we had right wing media stirring up violence against a duly elected President because of the vaunted ego of one man. In addition, the Capitol Police’s intelligence devision was in disarray and never apparently shared the very real threat with Police Chief Sund. In addition, some of his allies in the other DC law enforcement departments knew about the threatened violence but for whatever reason never communicated that to Sund either.
Meanwhile, we had the Pentagon, with people like General Miley concerned more about the “optics” of federal forces in uniform at the Capital than they apparently were about the safety of the members of Congress and their ability to do their job. The DC National Guard piddled around, waited and didn’t show up to help until all the violence took place. In the meantime, at the Capitol, several deaths occurred along with many injuries.
Now, General Miley had been stung once, admittedly. He got used by TFG in a power grab with the pose in front of the Episcopal Church with the Bible in his hands. Miley and Esper both apologized to the public for that apparent partisan action. The theory that Sund suggests was at play is that Miley was determined not to let Trump have an excuse to claim that the National Guard was there to keep him in power. I suspect there is truth to that.
We need to take action to move the Capitol police out of the control of partisan interests. That is especially true when the parties obviously have totally opposed goals, and one party is willing to “burn it all down” to get their own way.
