A whistleblower from inside the Washington, DC Capitol Police Department has leveled a stunning allegation against his own employers. After agreeing to cooperate with a House investigation related to the events of January 6, the insider says Capitol cops are trying to intimidate witnesses into altering testimony to favor their version of events.
What’s more, the whistleblower believes that the House committee investigating that day is going “too easy” on the police in the course of the investigation.
That’s according to a Politico report from Wednesday [1] that describes a too-cozy relationship between Capitol police and the investigative panel, which the anonymous insider said had him worried that there could never be real oversight of police actions that day.
Politico has confirmed that the officer, who has since left the force, was at the department’s command center during the attack.
At one point, a committee staffer asked the whistleblower if an attorney for the police department could be present during his 90-minute deposition. That alarmed him, since he had not told anyone he was cooperating with the investigation, and he had no idea how any of the police lawyers may have known about his interview with investigators.
He would not permit police lawyers to be there and they were not present in the end. But he still voiced his doubts about the entire situation:
They’re not going to do a real review of the Capitol Police. I think it’s a chilling effect that they’re in bed with the general counsel.
Although a department spokesperson says that their actions that day have been “exhaustedly examined by multiple reviews,” the whistleblower remains skeptical:
It’s obvious that they [Capitol Police] want to intimidate people and no one’s going to say anything bad about the department or anything that went on with the lawyers sitting in the room.
It seems like the committee is carrying water for Capitol Police management.
If these allegations prove true, it could mean an entirely new case would be warranted — one untainted by intimidating police presence.