Senate Democrats excoriated the FBI over its handling of the lead-up to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot in a new report on Tuesday, following months of criticisms from Republicans that the bureau is biased against conservatives.
The report, titled "Planned in Plain Sight," detailed a series of security and intelligence failures in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, most notably accusing federal agencies of repeatedly downplaying, ignoring, or not publicizing warnings of violence. The agencies received multiple tips and had been informed of plans being circulated online to descend on Washington, D.C., but "failed to fully and accurately assess the severity of the threat identified by that intelligence,” according to the report.
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“Despite the high volume of tips and online traffic about the potential for violence — some of which the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Office of Intelligence and Analysis were aware of as early as December 2020 — these agencies failed to sound the alarm and share critical intelligence information that could have helped law enforcement better prepare for the events of January 6, 2021,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement.
Peters accused intelligence agencies of exhibiting a "shocking failure of imagination" in order "to take these threats seriously, and there is no question that their failures to effectively analyze and share the threat information contributed to the failures to prevent and respond to the horrific attack that unfolded at the Capitol."
The panel's work builds on the findings of the House Jan. 6 committee, which focused on former President Donald Trump's role in the deadly riot. The Senate report, meanwhile, primarily targeted what the committee called an inadequate response from top federal agencies. Both reviews were led by Democrats.
The report alleged that the while the FBI communicated its intelligence on threats to partner agencies informally, the bureau did not issue "urgent warnings anticipating violence." This includes information about members of the Proud Boys, a right-wing group, planning to kill people in the nation's capital.
The FBI, the report said, "failed to seriously consider the possibility that threatened actions would actually be carried out,” dismissing “each individual threat as not credible in isolation” without fully considering “the totality of threats and violent rhetoric.”
The report's findings come at a prickly time for the bureau, which has faced calls to be dismantled by some Republicans expressing outrage over Trump's federal indictment in the classified documents matter and Hunter Biden's plea deal.
Trump was indicted earlier this month in special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into the mishandling of classified documents after leaving office. Smith said the charges were related to "felony violations of our national security laws as well as participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice.”
The Justice Department wrote in a court filing last week that President Joe Biden's son Hunter had agreed to plead guilty to two counts of "willful failure to pay" his federal income taxes and would enter a "Pretrial Diversion Agreement" pertaining to possession of a firearm "by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance."
U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware brought the limited charges amid whistleblower allegations that the DOJ investigation was politicized and as the president insists his son has done nothing wrong. Weiss’s office said Hunter Biden faces “two misdemeanor tax offenses and a felony firearm offense" and that “the investigation is ongoing.”
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Republicans have long contended Hunter Biden's lucrative business dealings in Ukraine and China indicate he may have committed crimes related to foreign lobbying or money laundering, but they say the new charges fall far short of that.
Swaths of GOP lawmakers and 2024 hopefuls have condemned the Trump indictment, arguing it serves as proof of a two-tiered justice system that unfairly targets conservatives. The Biden deal, which many Republicans have called a "slap on the wrist," only intensified the GOP outrage.