Day 35: "Intelligence failures." - a podcast by Matt Kiser

1/ Officials in charge of Capitol security on Jan. 6 blamed “intelligence failures” by the federal government for the “coordinated, military-style” attack on Congress that threatened the peaceful transfer of power. Testifying before a joint bipartisan committee of senators, former Capitol Police chief Steven Sund said he never saw a Jan. 5 FBI report warning that extremists were preparing to travel to Washington to commit violence and wage “war” on Jan. 6. “A clear lack of accurate and complete intelligence across several federal agencies contributed to this event, and not poor planning by the United States Capitol Police,” Sund said. “But none of the intelligence we received predicted what actually occurred.” Former House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving said that while they were informed that Congress would be a target and some protesters could be armed, “the intelligence was not that there would be a coordinated assault on the Capitol, nor was that contemplated in any of the inter-agency discussions that I attended in the days before the attack.” Acting D.C. police chief Robert Contee added that he and Sund called the National Guard for help after the mob stormed the building, but a top Pentagon official said he would recommend against deploying the National Guard for fear of the “optics” of armed troops in front of the Capitol. (NBC News / Politico / New York Times / Washington Post / Bloomberg / CNN / USA Today / BuzzFeed News / ABC News / Wall Street Journal)

2/ The House is expected to approve Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief proposal this week, after the House Budget Committee advanced the bill on Monday. The House will likely pass the bill, which includes $1,400 in direct payments to Americans, money for vaccine distribution and funding to state and local governments, in a party-line vote. It’s unclear, however, whether raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025 will be included in the final Senate version of the legislation. Republicans, meanwhile, have proposed raising the federal minimum wage to $10, but only if businesses are required to use the E-Verify system designed to prevent employers from hiring undocumented workers. (CBS News / USA Today)

3/ The Biden administration is preparing sanctions to punish Russia for poisoning and jailing Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, as well as the SolarWinds hack on government agencies and private companies. The administration is calling the Sola...

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