Jan. 6 evacuation

Unaired footage shows chaos, anger of congressional leaders amid Jan. 6 evacuation

POLITICO reviewed the 45 minutes of video, shot by Nancy Pelosi’s daughter Alexandra, that was recently obtained by House GOP investigators.

By JORDAIN CARNEY and KYLE CHENEY

As then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi fled the Capitol after it was overrun by pro-Trump rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, she grilled her top staffer on a key question: Where was the National Guard?

“You’re going to ask me — in the middle of the thing when they’ve already breached the inaugural stuff — ‘should we call … the National Guard?’” Pelosi asked her chief of staff Terri McCullough incredulously while they rode in an SUV that would take them to Fort McNair. “Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?”

The interaction was shown in a video shot by the former speaker’s daughter, documentarian Alexandra Pelosi, and recently provided to congressional investigators by HBO upon a request by Republicans pushing to undermine the findings of the previous Jan. 6 select committee. The roughly 45 minutes of footage, reviewed by POLITICO, captures extensive conversations among congressional leaders as they struggled to comprehend their rushed evacuation from the Capitol and deal with the immediate fallout.

Though clips of the speaker’s conversations that day were shown as part of the previous panel’s work, and in a separate documentary by Alexandra Pelosi, much of what was handed over recently to a House Administration subcommittee has never been released. HBO didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

While congressional leaders were at Fort McNair, the footage shows that top leaders in both chambers, including Pelosi, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, tried to coordinate a military response to the violence. They also had lengthy discussions about whether to convene Congress at the military base to continue certifying the 2020 election results, though they all vastly preferred returning to the Capitol.

At the center of their confusion was the status of their request for help from the National Guard. Questions around that issue began as they were leaving the Capitol, continued through a series of phone calls placed from Fort McNair to nearby governors, top military officials and D.C. leaders, and have carried over into the work of the previous Jan. 6 committee and current GOP-led subcommittee.

In one clip at Fort McNair, Schumer is speaking with then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and asking him if he denied a request for the National Guard. He argued as the Capitol was being overrun that “we’re like a third world country here.”

In the days leading up to Jan. 6, Capitol security officials had initially expected street violence and skirmishes, not a concerted mob attack, so they did not seek preemptive support from the National Guard. But as the crowd swelled outside the building — fueled in part by Donald Trump’s promise to join his supporters — overwhelmed Capitol Police sought assistance from other police departments and the guard.

Despite their urgent pleas, it took more than three hours for the guard to arrive. Four former members of the National Guard — in private interviews and a subsequent public hearing in April with the current subcommittee — described a frustrating experience of being prevented for hours from being able to respond on Jan. 6 and recounted senior Army officials expressing concern about the “optics” of deploying the Guard.

But they saved their fiercest criticism for McCarthy, who they described as unresponsive to their outreach in the midst of the chaos. McCarthy and then-acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller have acknowledged in their interviews with the previous Jan. 6 committee that they had a miscommunication about the deployment. Two of the four also said that Trump could have expedited the process by cutting through the bureaucratic clutter and calling Pentagon leaders directly on Jan. 6, which by all accounts he didn’t do.

In other clips newly provided to House Republicans, congressional leaders appear confused about whether the request for National Guard assistance was denied. They ask, multiple times, if anyone has heard about it being turned down.

McCarthy, in a phone call, tells Schumer that he “never said no” but that he had to “get permission” and “talk to my boss,” though he doesn’t specify who he is referring to. Pelosi, in a separate phone call, tells then-Vice President Mike Pence, who was sheltering at the Capitol at the time, that they “were disappointed that the [Secretary of Defense] took so long to approve the National Guard.”

She noted guard personnel were already at the Capitol but didn’t have permission to act.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser also told Pelosi and Schumer in a phone call around 3:30 p.m. — based on the time on a television in the same shot — that Capitol security officials requested help “probably more than an hour ago” but there have been “mixed messages” about the status.

“I thought there was some resistance from the secretary of the Army,” Bowser is heard telling Schumer and Pelosi over the phone.

Republicans have spent the last three years attempting to portray Pelosi as singularly responsible for the security breakdown, despite shared responsibility among congressional leaders and evidence that they relied on the assessments of police and security officials. The new footage does not bolster GOP claims of Pelosi being at fault. Instead, it largely aligns with and adds depth to previous snippets of Alexandra Pelosi’s footage released by the Jan. 6 select committee and in an HBO documentary that was released in 2022.

Pelosi herself appeared frustrated after she left the Capitol, questioning why Capitol security hadn’t seemed to adequately plan for the large-scale protest to turn violent, according to the video. Pelosi also suggested that Capitol security officials should have been more transparent with lawmakers about what they were hearing. She noted that the main guidance they gave to members was to use the underground tunnels from the office buildings to access the Capitol, rather than walking outside.

McCullough begins to tell Pelosi that Capitol security officials believed they were adequately prepared — which aligns with testimony other Pelosi staffers gave to the Jan. 6 committee — but the then-speaker cut her off, adding that leaders have a “responsibility” and “we didn’t have any accountability for what was going on there and we should have.”

“What is missing here in terms of anticipation?” Pelosi asked, referring to the security planning. “They thought these people would act civilized? They thought these people gave a damn?”