Nancy Pelosi admits responsibility for National Guard absence at the Capitol on January 6

New footage of the moments that followed the January 6 riots emerge in which the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, takes the blame for the lack of security at the Capitol.

The images were recorded by Pelosi's daughter, Alexandra, while they were both in the back of a vehicle. They were released within the framework of a new documentary produced for HBO, a platform owned by the Warner Bros. conglomerate. Said audiovisual material was also transferred to the Republican commission that investigates the responsibility of elected officials on January 6.

In the recordings, Nancy Pelosi asserts that she should have called the National Guard to ask for help in the face of the protests that gathered in front of the United States Congress and that ended with its assault by the protesters.

"We have a responsibility, Terry," Pelosi is heard saying to her chief of staff, Terry McCullough, as they are being taken away in a vehicle from the Capitol. "We had no responsibility for what was happening there, and we should have. This is ridiculous."

"You're going to ask me in the middle of it, when they've already entered the inaugural scene, 'should we call the Capitol Police?' I mean the National Guard. Why wasn't the National Guard there from the beginning?" said the former president of the House of Representatives. McCullough explains that "they thought they had enough resources," an answer that does not satisfy Pelosi.

In other images revealed on the same occasion, Chuck Schumer, leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate since 2021, is seen speaking on the phone with a senior Pentagon official. According to MSNBC, it was Ryan McCarthy, Secretary of the Army. Schumer angrily demands that the secretary demand that then-acting President Donald Trump ask protesters to leave the Capitol.

These statements arise when accusations persist between one side and the other about who was really to blame for the lack of security at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Republicans have assured that Nancy Pelosi, above the Capitol Police Board, had sufficient power to decree exceptional measures in case of urgency. However, Democrats insist that the interim Administration refused to send in the National Guard.

Trump's actions on and around January 6 are at the center of a criminal investigation led by special prosecutor Jack Smith. Smith accused Trump of conspiracy to defraud the United States for his role in allegedly inspiring protesters to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election.