Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré, whom House Speaker Nancy Pelosi named to head a security review of the U.S. Capitol, has stated that he believes the U.S. Capitol Police and the House and Senate sergeants at arms were “complicit” in the deadly Jan. 6 riot.
Mr. Honoré has said in TV and radio interviews that the invasion was an inside job, that the Capitol Police force is “40% Trumpsters” and “gave way” to the protesters.
“They had help inside that force,” he told digital show host Roland Martin.
“They were either that stupid or ignorant, or they complicit. I think they were complicit,” he said on MSNBC last month.
“Once this all gets uncovered, there were some complicit actions at the Capitol Police,” he said from his home in New Orleans, where he became famous for leading Hurricane Katrina military relief efforts in 2005.
Mrs. Pelosi named Mr. Honoré on Jan. 15 to lead a safety security review. On Monday, she told Democrats in a letter that she plans to establish an independent commission to investigate the riot by Trump supporters and that Mr. Honoré’s work will continue.
“For the past few weeks, General Honore’ has been assessing our security needs by reviewing what happened on January 6 and how we must ensure that it does not happen again,” Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, said in the letter. “He has been working with Committees of Jurisdiction and will continue to make proposals.”
“We will be forever grateful to the Capitol Police for their life-saving courage and heroism in securing the Capitol and protecting Members,” she added.
However, since Jan. 6 Mr. Honoré has depicted the Capitol Police’s 2,300 officers and civilians as corrupt.
“A police chief has been fired, but now we need to look at a special investigation,” he said on MSNBC. “Was he complicit along with the sergeant of arms in the House and the Senate? It gives [the] appearance of complicity. He complied because he might have thought 45 [Mr. Trump] was coming to the Capitol, and they gave way to the protesters who easily breached the Capitol. This is a crying damn shame.”
He told liberal radio host Joe Madison: “By percent, 30 to 40% of line officers are Trumpsters.”
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson played some of clips of Mr. Honoré’s declarations Wednesday night and said: “Speaking of misinformation and conspiracy theories, there’s no evidence for any of that. It’s all made up. It’s crazy.”
Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican, tweeted: “General Honoré is an extreme partisan and should be the LAST person to head up an investigation of what happened at the Capitol on Jan 6th.”
Mr. Trump promoted and addressed the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally in a long-shot bid to press Vice President Mike Pence to reject votes from electors in battleground states so that their legislatures could reelect him president. Mr. Pence declined, saying he had no such power.
After Mr. Trump’s Jan. 6 speech concluded, protesters converged on the Capitol building and burst past a security perimeter. Throngs pushed through broken windows and under-manned entrances. More than 200 rioters have been arrested and charged with crimes. Four rioters and a Capitol Police officer died.
That day, Mr. Honoré said on MSNBC there was a simple solution: “All they had to do was tell D.C. police we want you to send over 400 officers. Tell the National Guard we want 300 officers or 3,000 or tell the Maryland State Police to send troops over. They gave the ground to the protesters, and they trashed the House. Our biggest threat is domestic disturbance like we saw here today.”
In contrast, during the height of rioting last summer in Portland, Oregon, Mr. Honoré said the Department of Homeland Security should not have sent law enforcement personnel to protect the federal courthouse, which Antifa marauders were trying to burn down.
He said a camouflage uniform is “not to be used as an instrument of protest suppression. That uniform is designed to blend into terrain, not to make you look like a warrior. They wearing these uniforms as a function of intimidation to look like warriors. Real soldiers just don’t walk up to people and start beating on them. Real police don’t do that.”
After Jan. 6, Mr. Honoré said on Roland Martin’s “Daily Digital Show”: “I think the Capitol Police were complicit. I dealt with those people when I was in the Pentagon on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and we used to provide military support to civil authorities for inauguration and major events inside the city of Washington.
“And that’s a well-oiled machine. And what we saw yesterday, the Capitol Police make decisions in coordination with the sergeant of arms in the Senate and sergeant of arms in the House. Yesterday at 3 o’clock, I called for all of them to be fired. … But that was complicit.
There’s people inside the chain of command of the Capitol Police that allowed this to happen. … They selectively applied the law and they allowed their buddies in yesterday and they destroyed a good portion of our house. People need to go to jail.”
Mr. Honoré urged his Twitter followers to boycott Fox News show host Sean Hannity’s advertisers. He said Mr. Hannity “speaks Russian.”
• Rowan Scarborough can be reached at rscarborough@washingtontimes.com.
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