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Exclusive: Secret Commandos with Shoot-to-Kill Authority Were at the Capitol on J6th
DOJ, FBI deployed secret commandos with shoot-to-kill authority during J6th Capitol breach
Rosen made a unilateral decision to take the preparatory steps to deploy Justice Department and so-called "national" forces. There was no formal request from the U.S. Capitol Police, the Secret Service, or the Metropolitan Police Department—in fact, no external request from any agency. The leadership in Justice and the FBI anticipated the worst and decided to act independently, the special operations forces lurking behind the scenes.
"I believe that DOJ [Department of Justice] reasonably prepared for contingencies ahead of January 6, understanding that there was considerable uncertainty as to how many people would arrive, who those people would be, and precisely what purposes they would pursue," Rosen later told Congress. He stressed that his department "no frontline role with respect to crowd control," that they were focused on "high-risk" operations.
The contingency units meeting on January 3 included the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, the FBI's national "Render Safe" team, an FBI SWAT team from the Baltimore Field Office, Special Response Teams from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and the U.S. Marshals Service Special Operations Group.
Secret commandos, authorized to shoot to kill, were at the Capitol. FBI and ATF law enforcement confront supporters of President Donald Trump as they protested inside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. Brent Stirton/Getty Images
All of these assets were "pre-deployed" and ready to go over the weekend of January 2-3, staging out of the FBI Academy complex in Quantico, 30 miles south of the Capitol building. If a WMD or terrorist attack occurred, the units were to move via helicopter to the site of the incident. The activation of the catastrophic response units, operating under plans already approved by President Trump, entailed an automatic green light allowing federal responders to take the initiative and spare no resources, including shoot-to-kill authority, to deal with this most extraordinary condition.