Is the call coming from inside the House?
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney confirms that it is. Rumors have been flying around about several members of Congress having given information to the rioters about the Capitol's layout and how to navigate the cavernous maze that makes up that building, including one particularly disturbing story regarding a Congressperson giving an insider's tour to a group of people on January 5, who were back the next day rioting, breaching the Capitol, and committing insurrection.
Nicolle Wallace asked Rep. Maloney if that story was true, and if there will be investigations into these concerns. He responded, "I can confirm that. I don't have firsthand knowledge of it, but I spoke to a member who saw it personally, and he described it with some alarm." He described continuing despicable behavior of these GOP representatives towards the same Capitol police who are there to protect them since the riot, defying their instructions to go through metal detectors, insisting they will carry guns, and Maloney lamented, "it's a sad reality that we find ourselves at a place where the enemy is within, and we cannot trust our own colleagues."
REP. MALONEY: Again, I don't have all the specifics on that. My understanding is that there was a member showing people around. And that was the reason that when the person who relayed that story to me objected, the answer comes, "Well, they're with a member of Congress." So this issue, right, if a member of Congress wants to do it, traditionally, it has been assumed to be safe. That's why I sit on the House Intelligence Committee. No one does a background check of me. I've been elected by the people. I swear an oath to our nation's secrets and for most of American history, we could rely on the fact that people would conduct themselves a certain way.
But now we can't be sure a member of Congress won't bring a gun to the inauguration. We can't be sure a member of this body wouldn't be bringing people around the night before who the next day may have been participating in the murder of a Capitol police officer. I can't believe I'm saying these things, but this is where we find ourselves and we don't plan to be caught off guard again. Some of us are asking tough questions right now to make sure that we aren't caught short at the inauguration.
Wallace asked who the member was who conducted the tour, but Rep. Maloney refrained from naming them, because he wanted to make sure he knew all the facts. He added, though, "I think you'll find that that's going to be a real story."
When Wallace asked about the process for investigating this aiding the insurrectionists, giving a tour, and maybe showing them how to get around, and giving them maps, etc., he skipped right over her suggestion it would be a Congressional matter for the Ethics Committee. This was a crime. "I think the criminal code is the right place to start. I think we're talking about specific acts of criminal behavior under federal sedition laws," he said. While maintaining that, of course, holding differing political views is never a crime, acting on them to break the law is.
"[I]f people are coordinating in realtime with people who are behind organized efforts to do violence up here, to attack this building, to participate in the beatings and the murder of Capitol police officers, then the hell with the Ethics Committee. These people need to be charged criminally."
