Attorney general speaks ahead of Jan. 6 anniversary

Attorney General Merrick Garland’s speech on Wednesday also responded to questions being raised about the speed of the Jan. 6 investigation and what it will cover.

Promising that the department would continue to “speak through our work,” he said complex investigations are built “by laying a foundation,” with the straightforward cases being the ones that are resolved first.

“In circumstances like those of Jan. 6, a full accounting does not suddenly materialize,” Garland said, laying out the various ways evidence is collected and leads are followed.

His speech also pushed back on criticisms from allies of former President Trump who have claimed that the department’s prosecutions are politicized. Garland said the department was following “the facts,” and “not an agenda or an assumption.”

“The central norm is that, in our criminal investigations, there cannot be different rules depending on one’s political party or affiliation, There cannot be different rules for friends and foes. And there cannot be different rules for the powerful and the powerless,” he said.

Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks to the press on January 5, at the Capitol, in Washington, DC.

Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that “the actions” the department has taken so far to respond to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol “will not be our last.”

He called the Capitol breach an “unprecedented attack on our democracy,” as he pledged that the Department would do everything “in our power to defend the American people and American democracy.”

He pointed to the “well-worn prosecutorial practices” the department has followed in bringing the variety of charges against those who breached the Capitol grounds.

“In complex cases, initial charges are often less severe than later charged offenses,” Garland said. “This is purposeful, as investigators methodically collect and sift through more evidence.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks to the press on January 5, at the Capitol, in Washington, DC.

Ahead of the one-year anniversary of the deadly Jan. 6 riot, Attorney General Merrick Garland said he will work to protect Americans’ right to vote, calling it the “cornerstone of our democracy.”

Garland said he will do this in a way that “adheres to the rule of law and honors our obligation to protect the civil rights and civil liberties of everyone in this country.”

He recalled the violence of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol as lawmakers met to certify the results of the presidential election – specifically pointing to court documents and videos that showed people punching “dozens of law enforcement officers, knocking some officers unconscious.”

“Those involved must be held accountable and there is no higher priority for us at the Department of Justice,” Garland said, before holding a moment of silence for the officers who were killed in the attacks.

Garland said the Justice Department has charged more defendants in criminal threat cases in 2021 than in any other year in at least the last 5 years.

He said they are guided by the commitment to protect civil liberties, including the First Amendment. Garland said speech becomes illegal when there is a threat to another person.

“The time to address threats is when they are made, not after the tragedy has struck,” he added.

Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks to the press on January 5, at the US Capitol, in Washington, DC.

Attorney General Merrick Garland is delivering remarks and providing an update on the Department of Justice’s investigation on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

The investigation is the biggest one in FBI history, with more than 700 people charged by the Justice Department in connection with the riot and hundreds more offenders still at large.

Some more context: The Jan. 6 attack reframed the face of a domestic terrorism threat that the FBI, Homeland Security Department and other agencies say has grown rapidly.

And the Jan. 6 investigation has led to several arrests of what appear to be political extremists on the far right, and extensive investigations into militarized organizations that affiliated themselves with former President Trump and had members participating in the Capitol violence.

But in many ways, the role of the former President, whose rhetoric fueled the mob and continues to animate supporters, is the elephant in the room that Justice Department officials try to not talk about.

CNN’s Evan Perez and Katelyn Polantz contributed reporting in this post. 

Attorney General Merrick Garland is scheduled to deliver remarks soon on the eve of the one year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, and will say the department is “committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law,” according to an excerpt from the remarks. 

Ahead of tomorrow’s Jan. 6 anniversary, four Democratic Attorneys General held a press conference Wednesday to announce their pledge to fight efforts to roll back voting rights and to protect elections from political interference.

“The insurrection wasn’t simply a one day event,” Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said. “It was a culmination of efforts to sow doubts in our elections.”

The attorneys general from Nevada, Delaware, Wisconsin and Colorado placed specific blame on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton who filed a lawsuit in 2020 seeking to overturn election results in four states. Paxton was joined by 17 other Republican attorneys general, but the lawsuit was ultimately thrown out by the Supreme Court.

Jennings continued by warning, “We’re still under threat. Enough people in this country, through social media, have essentially brainwashed into believing this Big Lie.”

Jennings and her colleagues pledged to work diligently in their states to protect the integrity of future elections, and spoke out against Republican state legislatures working to roll back voting rights or make it easier for local officials to overturn election results.

“We need to make sure the will of voters is protected,” said Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul. “We need Republican leaders to join us in speaking out against these attacks.”

Kaul applauded Republicans like Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, for leading the efforts as vice-chair of the Jan. 6 select committee, but called for more Republicans to speak out against the threats to fair elections.

A year after the Jan. 6 insurrection, the Justice Department continues to press forward on the biggest investigation in FBI history, with 700 people already arrested and hundreds more offenders still at large and several more years of prosecutions ahead.

But the expansive investigation has yet to shed light on how vigorously the former President and political allies could be investigated for inciting rioters by spreading a lie that the election was stolen and asking them to march to the Capitol.

After opening aggressively, with prosecutors raising the prospect of using a rarely used seditious conspiracy law to charge some Capitol attackers, the Justice Department since Attorney General Merrick Garland took office in March 2021 has settled into a less headline-grabbing approach that justice officials say is intended to keep the probe away from the political maelstrom.

Garland, a former appeals court judge, has made restoring institutional norms a top focus of his tenure, after a Trump era that regularly injected politics at the department. That includes a reminder to prosecutors that they should only speak in indictments and other court proceedings.

His quiet approach has not satisfied Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans who openly discuss their interest in identifying crimes they believe the Justice Department should prosecute. It’s also opened Garland to criticism that he hasn’t been as publicly dynamic or aggressive as the nation needs to counter a threat to democracy.

“I think Merrick Garland has been extremely weak and I think there should be a lot more of the organizers of Jan. 6 that should be arrested by now,” Rep. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, said on CNN this week.

Justice Department spokesperson Anthony Coley defended the agency’s efforts. “We are proud of the men and women of the Justice Department, who are undertaking the largest investigation in the department’s history,” Coley said in a statement. “They are following the facts and the law and the Constitution while working at impressive speed and scale to hold accountable all those responsible for the attack on the Capitol, and will continue to do so.”

For the FBI, which came under criticism for failing to do more to prevent the attack, the Jan. 6 anniversary is also a moment to urge the public to help with more tips to solve notable unsolved crimes, including the police assaults and the pipe bombs found that day near the offices of the Democratic and Republican parties just steps from the Capitol.

Steven D’Antuono, assistant director for the FBI’s Washington field office, said those inquiries are priorities as part of the broader complex investigation.

Read more about the investigation here.

United States Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said that his department fielded nearly 10,000 threats against members of Congress in 2021, marking the highest number of threats ever against the legislative branch 

“There’s 9,000 a year, or this this past year, 9,600,” he told reporters as he left after testifying before the Senate Rules Committee. “So you’re getting multiple a day.”

Earlier this week, Manger was doing an interview with the Washington Post’s Tom Jackman when he received an alert of another threat. “I think it was an anonymous text, you know, of someone who was threatened to kill a senator. And you know, as I’m talking to [Jackman], this thing pops up on my phone.” 

Manger said the department does not respond to every instance, because not every threat is considered credible, rather, “some of them are basically just sort of concerning statements.”

“If you say ‘I’m going to kill so and so’ that’s a threat. You know, we investigate that as a criminal act. Some of them are, you get something that say they’ll call a congressman’s office and say, ‘Hey, I know where you live. I watched you walk your dog yesterday.’ And you know, now, there’s no law against that message. But is it of concern, certainly a concern to that particular congressman? Absolutely.”

He said the threats have increased for the past four or five years, and more than doubling since four years ago. But at the same time, the force has suffered from a loss of officers, with Manger saying the current force is down 447 officers from where they should be.

“In 2017, I think there were somewhere around 4,000,” he said. “Last year was 8,600. This year was 9,600. So the workload is increasing. We’ve increased the number of people who have worked at investigating strikes against Congress, but I’m telling you, we’re barely keeping our heads above water.”

Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said not increasing his department’s budget would deal a significant blow to the agency trying to grow after the Jan. 6 riot exposed catastrophic failures. 

“It would impact just about everything we are trying to do in terms of making and sustaining improvements,” Manger said in a hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday, if the department is held to their previous budget.

“We’d have to suspend our health and wellness initiatives that we have started but I think the biggest impact would be our inability to increase our staffing which is so critical,” Manger said.

“All that we would be able to do is replace the people that left. We can’t survive and continue, we have to increase our staffing,” he added.

US Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger told lawmakers on the Senate Rules Committee Wednesday that the department is “absolutely” better prepared to defend the Capitol today than it was on Jan. 6, 2021, but said there is still a “challenge” in keeping up with the number of threats directed at lawmakers.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, asked Manger about the flood of threats directed at lawmakers in 2021, and referred to previous statements from Manger who said the department tracked more than 9,000 threats in 2021, an increase that is straining the department’s resources to analyze threats.

The gravity of the Jan. 6 anniversary is not lost on Manger, who said the department now has a blueprint for a response.

“We have an incident action plan prepared for tomorrow, this is a copy, it’s 25 pages long, everyone’s responsibilities are laid out, this information is shared with everyone,” Manger said.

Of more than 100 recommendations made after the January 6 attack by the Capitol Police Inspector General, Michael Bolton, more than 90 have either been addressed or fully completed. However, Manger acknowledged there is more work to do.

“We have assigned an inspector to work full time for the next several months to look at the recommendations that are not completed and to see what we need to do to complete them,” Manger said.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, noted that the Department of Justice has brought “over 700 criminal cases” against insurrectionists involved in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6.

Klobuchar asked Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger if he agreed that it’s “particularly important” to hold those who attacked Capitol Police officers accountable for Jan. 6.

Manger told Klobuchar, “if they committed a crime they should be prosecuted.”

He said that the Capitol Police are continuing to work closely with DOJ and law enforcement around the country on their investigations into people who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said that the police department “will be tested again.”

“I don’t know who it’s going to be or when it’s going to be,” he told lawmakers during a Senate hearing.

Manger said that “what will be different” is that the police department will be paying much more attention to the information that “we gather ahead of time” and “putting together a better plan” and “not making panic calls later on” like on Jan. 6.

Manger added that he was “not criticizing” the people who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6. He said those people faced a “difficult challenge” that day. He added that he is “not looking behind me,” rather he is “looking forward.”

On Jan. 6, he said, the Capitol Police “didn’t have the people, we didn’t act on the intelligence, and we just weren’t prepared the way we should have been,” and “that’s going to change.”

“Next time that we’re tested, we will not be making those same mistakes,” Manger said.

Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger addressed the “morale” of his department’s officers, saying that an individual’s morale is in the “eye of the beholder.”

He said you’re “always going to have cops” who say the department’s “morale is worse than it’s ever been.” But at the same, there will be cops who are “happy to be there and love their job.”

“These officers need to believe in their hearts that this department cares about them,” Manger said.

He said that on Jan. 6, the Capitol Police department “let them down in so many ways” and the department needs to “take responsibility for fixing those failures” and “making sure that never happens again.”

Manger said that this will “take time” and that for “some officers” it “might take until we’re tested again” and “show we’re ready for that test.”

Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger told members of the Senate this morning at a hearing that his police department needs to “expand and advance our abilities to investigate threats” against Congress.

He said that in order to “expand our protection capabilities,” it is his recommendation that the US Capitol Police should “create a new bureau” to investigate threats and do intelligence work. He said that this would require the appointment of an additional assistant chief at the department.

The official said he believes creating this new unit that focuses on threats and intelligence “is the direction that we need to go.”

He added that it speaks “directly to the IG’s recommendation” that the Capitol Police “move towards more protection-focused” capabilities.

The US Capitol Police board is detailing a list of changes — from trainings to new recruitment efforts, hoping to convince members of Congress the department has significantly improved since the Jan. 6 attack exposed problems, while acknowledging the agency is significantly understaffed.

In a 10-page report obtained by CNN, Senate Sergeant at Arms Karen Gibson, House Sergeant at Arms William Walker, Architect of the Capitol J. Brett Blanton, and Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger wrote that the department has either implemented or started working on 90 of 103 recommendations made by the Capitol Police Inspector General, Michael Bolton.

Manger is testifying this morning before the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration about oversight after the Capitol attack. Changes at the department are laid out in his statement to the committee and in the report, first reported by Politico.

As the department seeks to course correct operationally, a flood of departures has complicated the effort. Fewer officers among the ranks can make finding the time to train officers a challenge and extend overtime hours.

The report says the department has lost 136 officers since Jan. 6, up from an average of up to 90 per year. Many officers who joined Capitol Police following the Sept. 11 attack are reaching 20 years of service and are retiring, the report says. Others left voluntarily.

“This is in addition to the 175 officers who are on some form of approved leave,” the report says. “This fact, along with the temporary closure of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) as a result of the global pandemic, have contributed to the USCP’s shortfall of 447 officers, causing a rise in mandatory overtime requirements and adding stress to a work force already stretched thin.”

To combat the personnel shortage, the department is hiring contract security officers, increasing recruit classes, issuing retention bonuses and hazard pay, and looking to hire from other federal law enforcement agencies or rehire people who have left the department.

Capitol Police hope to bring on 280 officers per year to jump ahead of attrition, the report says.

The department also has addressed a problem exposed by the Jan. 6 riot — a lack of coordination with other agencies. In the report, the Capitol Police Board says Capitol Police has conducted joint exercises with other agencies such as the DC National Guard. 

CNN previously reported that Capitol Police changed intelligence gathering and sharing within the department and beyond and added a former Secret Service agent to reform operational plans for large events.  

In hearings examining the department’s failures, lawmakers wondered why the agency staffed Jan. 6 with only slightly more officers than on a normal day, and far fewer than for other high-profile events, such as the State of the Union address by the President. 

In an effort to act more autonomously, the report says the department is working to develop its own “SEAR,” or special event assessment rating. SEARs are typically issued by the Department of Homeland Security and can elevate the seriousness of an event to help coordinate planning. However, a Government Accountability Office report in August pointed out a SEAR was never issued for Jan. 6 because agencies were unclear how to request the designation — a lapse that may have limited resources.

Working with other agencies has become a central focus for Police Chief Tom Manger, a former local chief who knows the Capitol region’s law enforcement leaders well. 

In September, the agency displayed its force and partnerships at an event intended to bring awareness to alleged mistreatment of Jan. 6 rioters — a right-wing effort to recast the rioters as political martyrs. The event amounted to a scrimmage when only a handful of protestors showed up in the shadow of hundreds of police from more than a dozen agencies. 

The report also outlines specific training for a crucial unit within Capitol Police: the Civil Disturbance Unit. The CDU platoons combat rioters on the front line. The department says they have given basic CDU training to 110 officers and trained more than 100 others in non-lethal weapons.

Capitol Police intelligence has seen a marked shift as well, the report says. CNN previously reported it was upended just two months before the riot, causing confusion and frustration in the unit that would help determine the department’s plan for Jan. 6.

The report says the department is still looking for a permanent director of the unit. The former director, Jack Donohue, joined in Fall 2020 and left the department in the months following the riot.

Changes include daily intelligence briefings for department leaders — a gap that former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund complained of when he testified following the riot. Sund claimed he never knew about critical intelligence that might have changed his plan. 

The report says the department also now holds quarterly in-person briefings at roll calls and bi-weekly classified intelligence briefings and begun a revision of standard operation procedures that is not yet finished. This change seeks to address a major complaint by rank-and-file that they were blindsided by the flood of people ready to attack.

The report says the department has purchased police simulator training, new riot gear and oxygen supply kids. Further, the department plans to buy new shields, non-lethal munitions and long-range acoustical devices, which can be highly effective crowd control measures.

While the department tightens its operations, it is also honoring the officers who died following the riot.

“The USCP will soon inaugurate the Howard C. Liebengood Center for Wellness so employees have a central location for all their wellness needs,” the report says. Officer Liebengood took his own life just days after the riot.

US Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger told a Senate committee this morning that the department is better prepared today than a year ago to respond to a breach of the Capitol.

“If Jan. 6 taught us anything, it’s that preparation matters,” he told lawmakers.

The police chief noted some of the changes that have been implemented to improve coordination between agencies and disseminate information before high-risk events, including the creation of the department’s first critical incidence response plan to more quickly get assistance from partner agencies.

“And while more work remains to be done, the men and women of Capitol police stand ready to fulfill their mission each and every day,” he said.

During his remarks at a Senate hearing this morning, Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer recounted some of the details of Jan. 6.

He said that the police were “outnumbered” and “underequipped” to handle the insurrectionists storming the Capitol that day. But he praised the actions of the police that, Schumer said, “allowed us to come back that night” and “finish the counting” of the electoral votes for the 2020 presidential election.

Schumer said that the rioters’ objective to overthrow the election failed and in the year since the attack, Congress has “got a lot done to strengthen” the police presence at the Capitol.

He noted that the Senate appointed a new Sergeant at Arms, Karen Gibson, and brought in the “first all-women leadership team” in the history of the Senate Sergeant at Arms. In addition, they selected a new chief of the Capitol Police, J. Thomas Manger, and authorized critical supplemental funding for the Capitol Police — including “tens of millions” in additional overtime pay, hazard pay and bonuses.

Schumer also said that they passed legislation authorizing the chief of the Capitol Police to bring in the National Guard. “We all know what we went through that day trying to get the National Guard to come quickly,” he said

The majority leader reiterated that Jan. 6 was an “attempt to reverse — through violent means — the outcome of a fair and free election.” He said that the “root cause” of that plot is the “big lie” that is still “with us today” being pushed by former president Donald Trump.

Schumer said that “without addressing the root causes” of Jan. 6, the ‘insurrection will not be an aberration” and may “become the norm” if the Senate doesn’t act further.

Law enforcement and federal authorities in the Washington, DC, region are stepping up security efforts in anticipation of the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the United States Capitol. 

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Tuesday that the department is operating at a “heightened level of vigilance, because we are at a heightened level of threat” in general, but he added that DHS is not aware of any credible threats specifically related to the anniversary or Jan. 6. 

“The threat of domestic violent extremists is a very great one,” he told reporters. 

Meanwhile, United States Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger insisted on Tuesday that the department would be able to fend off another mob-like attack one year after rioters crashed through doors and windows, attacked police and threatened lawmakers.

The police department is tracking several events and is monitoring an event at the DC jail most closely, though he said there was no specific or credible threat.

Manger said the department is focused on the most important problems first, such as intelligence dissemination, operational planning and civil disturbance unit preparedness.

DHS is working across the department to ramp up, where appropriate, the operational posture, including deploying more people, operating a 24/7 intelligence watch capability, coordinating with fusion centers across the country to share information, according to a federal law enforcement official.  

The United States Secret Service and Federal Protective Service also have deployment plans to use if needed, the official said. 

DHS is coordinating with the FBI, the Metropolitan Police Department, Park Police, and Capitol Police to ensure that adequate personnel and physical security measures are in place, the official said, adding that they are tracking intelligence indicators to see if we can identify groups of people who may be traveling to the Washington region.

“Unlike before January 6, there is a well-coordinated and cohesive effort,” involving DHS, FBI, state and local law enforcement both in the national capital region and outside the region, the official said. 

Attorney General Merrick Garland plans to give a speech Wednesday afternoon on the “efforts to hold accountable those responsible for the unprecedented attack on the U.S. Capitol one year ago,” according to a Justice Department official.

Garland plans to deliver remarks to the department’s workforce. According to the official, he will “reaffirm the department’s unwavering commitment to defend Americans and American democracy from violence and threats of violence.”

Garland will not discuss specific cases, the official said.

So far, the Justice Department has charged more than 725 defendants in the attack on the US Capitol as part of what prosecutors describe as the largest investigation in American history.

Ahead of today’s Senate hearing, United States Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger insisted on Tuesday that the department would be able to fend off another mob-like attack one year after rioters crashed through doors and windows, attacked police and threatened lawmakers.

Manger said that Capitol police is “stronger and better prepared” today than it was last year. 

Manger said the department is focused on the most important problems first, such as intelligence dissemination, operational planning and civil disturbance unit preparedness.

The police department is tracking several events and is monitoring an event at the DC jail most closely, though he said there was no specific or credible threat.

The official noted that the department tracked roughly 9,600 threats in 2021. Threats could include phone calls, emails or social media posts and don’t necessarily rise to the level of a crime. The threats that worry him most are those that include a previous contact with someone making the threat.

Of more than 100 recommendations issued by the Capitol Police Inspector General, the department has completed roughly 34 changes, and is working to complete 60 others.