Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demanded congressional leadership “take some responsibility” over the Capitol security failures on Jan. 6, 2021, in newly unearthed video footage.
In the film taped by Pelosi’s daughter for an HBO documentary, the California congresswoman is seen fuming about the failures to pre-emptively deploy the National Guard as she evacuates the Capitol with staff.
“How many times did members ask, are we prepared? Are we prepared? We’re not prepared for the worst,” Pelosi said. “We’re calling the National Guard now? They should have been here to start out.”
According to Just the News, the tapes were obtained and released by the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee led by Chairman Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga.
“We will have totally failed,” Pelosi said on camera, “And we’ve got to take some responsibility.”
Previous footage of the speaker’s evacuation on Jan. 6 released in June showed Pelosi admitting her own culpability in the failures to secure the Capitol.
“Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?” Pelosi asked incredulously in the back of an SUV. “They clearly didn’t know, and I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more.”
As speaker of the House, Pelosi had been urged to deploy the National Guard multiple times ahead of the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6. Pelosi, however, refused to accept an offer from the White House at the time to station National Guard reinforcements at the Capitol, and her hand-picked panel to investigate the riot concealed evidence of then-President Donald Trump’s requests for added security.
The former House leader’s refusal to approve additional troops became the center of a minority report published by House Republicans in December 2022. Republican House members barred from Pelosi’s select committee found the speaker’s office coordinated closely with senior security officials in the run up to Jan. 6, 2021, but failed to accept support from the National Guard over concerns surrounding “optics.” Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned in the riot’s aftermath, said Pelosi’s deputies turned down requests for preemptive deployment of the National Guard six times before the date of electoral certification.
Pelosi’s select committee refused to investigate the House speaker and only interviewed former Police Chief Sund once over the two-year probe.
“It was clear they wanted to get as far away as possible from any institutional failures that occurred that day or anything that put any kind of fingerprints on congressional leadership,” Sund told a D.C. radio program earlier this year.