Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa., said when Sherrill raised concerns about the tours it “rang a bell for me” because she witnessed a group of six to eight visitors on a tour in the Capitol’s tunnels ahead of the Jan. 6 riot. She couldn’t recall whether it was one or two days before.
“It was noticeable to see people getting tours from congressional aides in the Capitol because that hasn’t happened since Covid struck,” Scanlon said. “There are rules that we’re not supposed to be giving those tours and we’re not supposed to have outsiders in the Capitol now because of the danger of infection.”
Scanlon said she believes staff aides of Congress members – not lawmakers themselves – were conducting the tours but could not identify which congressional offices. She said she initially figured it must be new Congress members who were unaware of the coronavirus rules.
She said she identified the group getting the tour as Trump supporters based on their significant “red attire” and because some weren’t wearing masks and others weren’t wearing them properly.
“We know there’s a lot we’re going to learn moving forward with respect to what transpired on the 6th,” she said. “We’ll have to get to the bottom of it.”
Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va. was also one of the signatories to Sherrill’s letter. The two had been Naval Academy classmates together and had worked together on other issues. Sherrill had mentioned to Luria that “in hindsight,” there had been large tour groups going through the Capitol in the days before the riot in a time when tours were closed to the public due to COVID-19 precautions.
In the days leading up to Jan. 6, Luria had also noticed several groups of eight to 15 people walking through areas of Capitol office buildings and the underground tunnels connecting the Capitol and its surrounding office buildings. It appeared to her the groups were of Trump supporters, she said, wearing “MAGA hats and different promotional, campaign-related things” indicating their political affiliation. She did not recognize any members of Congress or staff among the groups.
At the time, she said they thought nothing of it other than the COVID-19 risk. Members and staff, however, are allowed to bring people through the Capitol complex, though the number of people is limited because of COVID-19 precautions.
Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, who chairs a congressional panel overseeing funding for the Capitol Police, told reporters the tour groups don’t mean that “anybody, a member of Congress was necessarily conspiring. But we should be looking into every single aspect of this.”
The Ohio Democrat noted many staff and lawmakers were still processing such a traumatic event.
“When you have a traumatic event or a big event in your life, a day or two later you start looking back at little pieces here or there that may fit into a larger puzzle that you didn’t necessarily notice in the moment or notice because nothing was going on,” he said.
Ryan said they referred the tour issue on to the Capitol Police on Jan. 7, but he and other lawmakers were “having a hell of a time getting information from the Capitol Police leadership,” calling the agency a “black box.”
The Capitol Police’s Office of the Inspector General, which is investigating the security lapses, has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
Rep. André Carson, D-Ind., who also signed Sherrill’s letter, said he did not witness the tours himself but grew suspicious after watching a video of Trump supporters reciting the “Lord’s Prayer” outside the Capitol the day before the riot. He later spoke to his Democratic colleagues about the tours.
“To have some folks amongst those touring the Capitol facility, they were obviously casing our U.S. Capitol in order to cause disruption,” said Carson, a former police officer who worked in counterterrorism for the Indiana Department of Homeland Security before being elected to Congress.
“With the information I receive regularly, in terms of sources and methods and how things work, my law enforcement instincts started to connecting dots,” said Carson, a member of the House Intelligence Committee.
Like others, he could not say which Republican lawmakers might have led the tours, adding that he’s waiting to hear from investigators.
Asked whether he believes some of them could be accomplices in the attack, he said, “That would be most unfortunate. If not, certainly gullible at best.”
Carson, who is Black and Muslim, was singled out by name in a handwritten note of Lonnie Coffman, a 70-year-old from Alabama, who was charged on 17 gun and ammunition charges in connection to the riot.
“I’m certainly concerned for my family,” he said, noting he has been critical of the House Sergeant at Arms over security even before the riot. “We get death threats regularly.”
Contributing: William Westhoven of the Daily Record
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