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JUDY WOODRUFF: Advance warnings of violence ignored, an unprepared Capitol Police force, a president who for three hours refused to tell the mob to disperse, and hundreds of personal threats against election officials across the country over the past nine months.These are just some of the findings in a new three-part investigation by The Washington Post into the forces that led to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Here to walk us through it is one of the more than two dozen reporters who worked on the project, The Post's senior Washington correspondent, Philip Rucker.Phil Rucker, welcome back to the "NewsHour."
Thank you so much for being here. So, there has already been, as you know, so much reporting on January 6. There have been investigations. Why did The Post decide to do an additional deep accounting?
PHILIP RUCKER, The Washington Post: A couple of reasons, Judy. And thanks for having me here. First, there was more information to learn. We talked to more than 230 sources in the government, other key officials and figures who were involved in the run-up to January 6, the event itself, the aftermath. We reviewed thousands of pages of court documents and other internal records at the FBI and Justice Department and found out scores of new details about what led to the attack, the aftermath of it and, most importantly, I think, some of the red flags that were ignored by the FBI, the DOJ and the other agencies in those days before January 6.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, let's start with the red flags, because the report says red flags were everywhere beforehand, that this was carefully planned from one end of the country to the other. What's an example of one of those?
PHILIP RUCKER: For example, on December 20, the FBI got a tip that there had been a threat made against lawmakers, and specifically Senator Mitt Romney, the Utah Republican who was sort of enemy numero uno for President Trump at the time, that people were planning online to wage violence against these lawmakers. The FBI closed the case within 48 hours. They deemed it not a significant enough case to warrant further investigation or action. There was a thought within the FBI and within other law enforcement agencies that the people coming to Washington January 6 would not actually be as violent as they turned out to be. Those red flags were ignored.
JUDY WOODRUFF: This was the plan they saw to sneak guns into Washington.There was conversation online about that.
PHILIP RUCKER: There was.And even the morning of January 6, we learned through our review of police chatter at the U.S. Park Police that hundreds of demonstrators, pro-Trump supporters were gathered at the Washington Monument, at the Lincoln Memorial, and they weren't just gathered for a peaceful protest.A man was seen with a pitchfork.There were others carrying gas masks and other sort of battle gear.There were backpacks that were left unattended.All these are red flags for law enforcement.And yet they decided not to act in those hours before what we all saw happening at the Capitol.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And another disturbing finding, senior -- you mentioned law enforcement -- that senior leaders in law enforcement were taking care not to do or say anything that might aggravate the president.And this ended up in some instances of creating a bigger problem.
PHILIP RUCKER: It's exactly right.They didn't want to get on the president's bad side politically.They were wary, of course, of what had happened six months prior at Lafayette Square in the Black Lives Matter protests, where there was a sense that the military had become this political prop for President Trump.So they were very sensitive to any suggestion that a decision by law enforcement or the Pentagon could be seen as political in nature.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Hence the delay in getting the National Guard.
PHILIP RUCKER: Exactly.
JUDY WOODRUFF: To the Capitol.And you had then immediately -- or, rather, in the aftermath, you describe how unsubstantiated claims of fraud are now not only believed by so many Americans.They are being actively promulgated and promoted by some in the media.And one example of that -- and we have a clip of it -- is -- this is FOX News, today is starting to stream a new series of reports by its anchor Tucker Carlson, arguing that January 6 was actually an act of patriotism.
