Things are heating up as we approach Joe Biden’s inauguration on the 20th. There is a legitimate fear of violent protests, due to the fact that right-wing media has been ginning up the lunatic fringe for some time, and we saw the fruits of their labors on January 6. You probably read about the chief of the Capitol police resigning and stating that he called the Pentagon and begged for troops to be deployed but was ignored, reportedly because the Pentagon didn’t think there was a credible threat, and the optics weren’t good. Apparently the FBI operated along the same lines as well. Washington Post:

A day before rioters stormed Congress, an FBI office in Virginia issued an explicit internal warning that extremists were preparing to travel to Washington to commit violence and “war,” according to an internal document reviewed by The Washington Post that contradicts a senior official’s declaration the bureau had no intelligence indicating anyone at last week’s pro-Trump protest planned to do harm.

A situational information report approved for release the day before the U.S. Capitol riot painted a dire portrait of dangerous plans, including individuals sharing a map of the complex’s tunnels, and possible rally points for would-be conspirators to meet up in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and South Carolina and head in groups to Washington.

“As of 5 January 2021, FBI Norfolk received information indicating calls for violence in response to ‘unlawful lockdowns’ to begin on 6 January 2021 in Washington. D.C.,” the document says. “An online thread discussed specific calls for violence to include stating ‘Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.” [emphasis mine]

I don’t know how there’s any mistaking that message.

The warning is the starkest evidence yet of the sizable intelligence failure that preceded the mayhem, which claimed the lives of five people, although one law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid disciplinary action, said the failure was not one of intelligence but of acting on the intelligence.

Here’s the situation now. We have plenty of information from right-wing media sites that they are mobilizing to demonstrate against Joe Biden’s inauguration.

“House Democrats Briefed On 3 Terrifying Plots To Overthrow Government.” Via Huffpo:

WASHINGTON ― Capitol Police briefed Democrats on Monday night about three more potentially gruesome demonstrations planned in the coming days, with one plot to encircle the U.S. Capitol and assassinate Democrats and some Republicans.

On a private call Monday night, new leaders of the Capitol Police told House Democrats they were closely monitoring three separate plans that could pose serious threats to members of Congress as Washington prepares for Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration on Jan. 20.

The first is a demonstration billed as the “largest armed protest ever to take place on American soil.”

Another is a protest in honor of Ashli Babbitt, the woman killed while trying to climb into the Speaker’s Lobby during Wednesday’s pro-Trump siege of the Capitol. and another demonstration which three members said was by far the most concerning plot, would involve insurrectionists forming a perimeter around the Capitol, the White House and the Supreme Court, and then blocking Democrats from entering the Capitol ― perhaps even killing them ― so that Republicans could take control of the government.

What more does anybody need to act? For reasons which are now being explored, the madness at the Capitol was allowed to be planned and executed, online on social media, as you well know, and in right-wing media, written and broadcast. Apparently the authorities and Donald Trump though it was all rhetoric and playacting, and while in poor taste, it didn’t pose a threat. We now see the folly of that thinking. And it wasn’t just the Pentagon and the FBI. It was also the Department of Homeland Security.

“But while the violence escalated, the call to deploy to the Capitol did not come in time to help,” Ainsley reported. “The roughly 50 DHS personnel, all from various parts of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, were waiting in a staging area inside the Ronald Reagan Building, just 13 blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol. The officers, in blue, and the agents, in green, had waited in the same place this summer, just before they were called in to respond to protests outside the White House in the wake of George Floyd’s death. In that instance, they were called to be deployed by then-Attorney General William Barr.”

DHS’s Federal Protective Service is the agency that reportedly did not give the order to deploy.

“They just stayed there the entire time, waiting,” the former official said.

On Monday, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf resigned.

We’re a nation of many resources to protect our citizenry and property, if the resources can respond and mobilize when a crisis arises. We may have a number of crises in the days ahead. Hopefully, the silver lining, if it could ever be called that, to the Capitol riot, is that other riots will now be contained and insurrectionists put in jail where they belong. Attempting the violent overthrow of the United States government was a felony, the last I knew.

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8 COMMENTS

  1. What truly pissed me off about the FBI non-response was that the excuse was concern over free speech conflicts. Dear Got in heaven, the FBI of all agencies should be thoroughly versed in the difference between free speech and hate speech, If not, they don’ belong in their positions.

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