AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, Pool
- A former Capitol Police leader said he didn’t see a January 5 FBI warning about violence at the Capitol.
- “I actually just in the last 24 hours was informed” that the Capitol police got the report, Sund testified.
- Sund emphasized that the intelligence came in the form of unverified “raw data” from social media.
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Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund testified that neither he nor any law enforcement leaders received a January 5 warning from the FBI detailing possible violence at the Capitol.
The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs and Senate Rules Committees are holding a crucial joint public hearing on the January 6 capitol riots with some of the key figures involved.
In addition to Sund, acting Metropolitan Police Department Chief Robert Contee, former Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger, and former House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving all testified publicly for the first time on the day’s deadly events.
In a question to Sund, Sen. Amy Klobuchar noted that the Norfolk branch of the FBI had issued a threat report on Jan 5. “that detailed specific calls for violence online in connection with January 6, including that protesters ‘be ready to fight’ and ‘go there ready for war.'”
“When a critical intelligence report is received by the Capitol police from an intelligence community source like the FBI, who usually would see it? Did you see it?” Klobuchar asked.
“I actually just in the last 24 hours was informed by the department that they actually had received that report, it was received by one of our sworn members assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which is a task force with the FBI. They received it on the evening of the 5th, reviewed it, and forwarded it to an official at the intelligence division over at US Capitol Police headquarters.”
“And so you hadn’t seen it yourself?”, Klobuchar asked.
“No ma’am, it did not go any further than that,” Sund answered, adding that he doesn’t believe it went any further at the intelligence division at Capitol police.
Sen. Gary Peters, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said he was “struck” that the leadership of the Capitol police did not receive the FBI report, asking Sund, “How can that happen? How did you not get that vital intelligence on the eve of a major event?”
“I know that’s something that’s going to be looked at, and I think that information would have been helpful to be aware of,” Sund said.
“Looking at the information for the first time yesterday, it is strictly raw data, it’s raw intelligence information that has come in, seen on a social media post,” Sund told Peters. “Lots of people post things on social media that need to be corroborated and confirmed, so again, it’s coming in as raw data, so keep that in mind, but I agree that’s something we need to look at.”
Both Stenger and Irving also told Klobuchar that they did not receive the FBI warning.
Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada also pressed Contee on the FBI information shared with the MPD and why it didn’t get up the chain of command.
“What the FBI sent on January 5 was in the form of an email,” Contee said. “I would certainly think that something as violent as an insurrection on the Capitol would warrant a phone call or something. But as Chief Sund mentioned earlier, the information that was sent was uncorroborated, it was raw information that we had and we received through the same [Joint Task Force]. That information was not fully vetted and not been sent up the chains of the Metropolitan Police Department.”
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