Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi admitted she "totally failed" in her responsibilities for securing the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, the New York Post reported. The newly released footage was taken in the aftermath of the unrest.
House Republicans made the videos public Wednesday after HBO turned over the footage to the Committee on Administration which continues an informal examination of the event. The California Democrat's daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, captured the footage while filming a documentary about her mother.
Failures leading up to that day led supporters of former President Donald Trump to breach the Capitol. Nancy Pelosi scoffed at the notion that they assumed Trump's supporters would "act civilized" when planning security for the day.
"We have totally failed. We have to take some responsibility for not holding the security accountable for what could have happened," Pelosi admitted during the footage.
Pelosi has spent the last three years hammering Trump about his alleged involvement in the so-called insurrection. Although her ire is reserved for the former president in many of the clips, Pelosi is often seen pointing out the glaring failures of her own office.
"How many times did the members ask, ‘Are we prepared? Are we prepared?'" Pelosi said in one of the clips as she was being driven away from the area.
"We’re not prepared for the worst. We’re calling the National Guard. Now? They should have been here to start out," Pelosi said to then-chief of staff Terri McCollough. "We have responsibility, Terri. We did not have any accountability for what was going on there, and we should have. This is ridiculous," she added.
Pelosi lamented that the National Guard wasn't activated. "You’re gonna ask me in the middle of the thing, when they’ve already breached the inaugural stuff, ‘Should we call the Capitol Police?’ I mean the National Guard. Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?" she said
"It’s not a question of how they had … they don’t know! They clearly didn’t know, and I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more," Pelosi claimed in the clip. Other reports show that Trump ordered thousands of guardsmen to be deployed, but his request was denied.
Pelosi didn't take too long before she turned her rage to Trump and his supporters. "It’s stupid. They thought they had what? They thought these people would act civilized? They thought these people gave a damn? What is that is missing here in terms of anticipation," she continued.
One of the most telling aspects of the new footage is how Pelosi began crafting her attack on Trump using the day's events almost immediately. "I just feel sick for what he did to the Capitol and to the country today," Pelosi said of Trump night progressed into day.
"He’s gotta pay a price for that," Pelosi added. She would go on to admonish an official calling for Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund to resign, saying that the "focus has to be on the president," whom she'd later say was "a domestic enemy in the White House."
"I just feel sick."
Never-before-seen documentary footage shows then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Jan. 6 and reacting to the aftermath of the U.S. Capitol riot.
In these excerpts of the footage, which was turned over to Congress by HBO and obtained by CBS News, Pelosi is seen… pic.twitter.com/hQzXXU57u8
— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 29, 2024
Before much information was available, Pelosi was already crafting her narrative about Trump. She has spearheaded the effort to smear him as an insurrectionist in the years since, and this video footage shows that she intended to do so all along.
