Ahead of Capitol Riot, Police Miscalculated Risk
Actions taken by law enforcement before Trump supporters stormed building backfired
Updated Jan. 8, 2021 1:54 pm ET
U.S. officials said they underestimated the potential for Trump supporters to become a mob who quickly seized the U.S. Capitol for hours, making a series of decisions before the attack that backfired spectacularly.
“We have a lot of lessons to learn from this,” said the acting U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., Michael Sherwin, at a briefing Thursday.
In the days before the Capitol rioting, law-enforcement officials were alerted to a noticeable uptick in online discussions about Wednesday’s pro-Trump protests potentially becoming unruly and targeting the building where Congress would count electoral votes.
On Monday, several posters in the chat room boards.4chan.org/pol/ said Trump supporters planned to force an evacuation of the Capitol as lawmakers voted to affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the Electoral College. Multiple posters on a site created last year—TheDonald.win—also discussed storming the Capitol in the days leading up to Wednesday’s attack.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/actions-by-police-before-trump-supporters-attacked-capitol-backfired-spectacularly-11610064600