Jacobs, other Congress members discuss Capitol riot
WASHINGTON, DC — Soon after droves of Trump supporters and others breached the Capitol building Jan. 6, streamed through chambers and offices and then were allowed to walk out, Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-San Diego, headed to her office to regroup.“It was pretty scary,” Jacobs said Friday, recalling how she and Representatives Jason Crow of Colorado and Ruben Gallego of Arizona reacted to the riot. “I immediately went back to my office once we were all clear and had a glass of whiskey with Jason, who’s my neighbor, and then decided it was important that we call for impeachment.”
Jacobs reflected on last month’s attack on the Capitol with the two congressmen in an online discussion Friday about how the country should respond to the siege. The three Democratic representatives called for greater accountability, investigations and military reforms during the hour-long discussion moderated by Truman National Security Project’s President and CEO Jenna Ben-Yehuda.
Jacobs said she felt fortunate to be sitting next to the two representatives, both military veterans, and she described how Gallego helped other Congress members correctly put on evacuation masks to protect them from gas that day.
The discussion came two days after U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered a stand down of all military units to exam extremism in the ranks.
Crow, an Army veteran and member of the House Armed Services Committee, said extremism is a growing problem in the military and should be addressed with reforms in recruiting and with greater accountability of commanders.
“About 80 percent of recruits come from military families,” Crow said. “We are developing a military culture, a military class in our country. That’s not good for our democracy, to have a military/civilian divide.”
Crow said there should be more diversity in recruitment, and recruits should be vetted to keep out extremists.
He also said commanders should be held accountable for rooting out extremists and creating a diverse force, and promotions should be tied to those efforts.
“Until that happens, you’re just going to have binders of policies sitting on a shelf somewhere,” he said.
Gallego also sees a need for better vetting of recruits.
“A lot of people are missing the point that some of these men and women are coming into the military as extremists already, and they’re basically using the military as their training grounds for them to continue their evolution,” he said.
The military also should have multicultural training and civic education for troops, he said.
The representatives called for continued investigations of the attack and into security lapses at the Capitol building.
Jacobs said she learned from her time at the United Nations and the State Department that intelligence communities do not take public discussions of threats seriously, which she said played a role in the security failures on Jan. 6.
“We prioritize information that we gather secretly, but so much of this is now happening online on social media,” she said. “We need to figure out how we actually take seriously information that is just public and out there.”
Jacobs said racism and white supremacy also played a role, and that online threats would have been taken more seriously if they had been made by people of color.
All three representatives agreed that those responsible for the attacks — including the rioters, the politicians who fed the fire and media members who egged them on with misinformation — should be held accountable.
Crow said investigations are being conducted on several levels, including the Government Accountability Office investigation he is leading in the House of Representatives.
The FBI also is conducting an investigation of everyone engaged in criminal conduct related to the attack, and Crow said Congress likely will create something like the 911 Commission to do its own investigation.
A comprehensive assessment of security on Capitol Hill also is being conducted by retired Army Lt. General Russel Honoré, who is expected to release a report the first week of March, he said.
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Source: By Gary Warth | The San Diego Union-Tribune