WASHINGTON — Hours after a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol and assaulted dozens of police officers in an attempt to reach members of Congress, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., then the House speaker, referred to the then-president as “a domestic enemy.”
The comments came in video shot by documentary filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi, Pelosi’s daughter, that HBO recently turned over to Congress. NBC News on Tuesday reviewed more than 30 minutes of video from the roughly 48 hours surrounding the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, including video that showed Pelosi being led away from the building by her security detail as she pressed her staff members to get the National Guard to respond to the Capitol.
The newly surfaced remarks go further than the public ones she made on Jan. 7, when she said Trump had “incited an armed insurrection against America” and “instigated” an attack that would “forever stain our nation’s history.”
The same day, the HBO video shows, Pelosi spoke to her staff while she was sitting under an ornate mirror that had been smashed when the pro-Trump mob ransacked her office hours earlier.
“We take an oath to protect our country from all enemies, foreign and domestic,” she said. “There is a domestic enemy in the White House. And let’s not mince words about this.”
The previously unaired video also shows Pelosi taking responsibility for not pressing law enforcement officials harder about their preparations ahead of the attack.
“Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?” Pelosi asked. “They clearly didn’t know, and I take responsibility for not having them just prepared for more,” she said as she was being escorted away by security on Jan. 6. “It’s stupid that we should be in a situation like this.”
“They thought these people would act civilized? They thought these people gave a damn? What is it that is missing here in terms of anticipation?” she added.
The comments also indicate that Pelosi was skeptical about the motivations of the law enforcement community, which is generally conservative-leaning. (A high-ranking FBI official, for example, was warned in the hours after the attack that many within the bureau were “sympathetic” to the Capitol rioters.)
“Shame on us,” Pelosi said as her security unit whisked her off to nearby Fort McNair, where several congressional leaders ended up on the night of Jan. 6 when the facility turned into a command center for those in the order of presidential succession. “Shame on us. I’m suspicious of them and their motivations, tell you the truth.”
The House Jan. 6 committee ultimately shied away from focusing on the law enforcement failures in the lead-up to the attack. Instead — as Pelosi did in the immediate aftermath of the Capitol riot — it zeroed in on Trump’s role.
The new video also reveals that Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., made a quip about Trump’s pardoning rioters, a position that Trump, again the Republican presidential nominee, now endorses by referring to Jan. 6 defendants as “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots.”
When Pelosi’s daughter asks her early Jan. 7 how she feels about being “done” with Trump after Congress certified his election loss, a tired Pelosi says in the new video that there must be consequences for his actions.
“I just feel sick about what he did to the Capitol and the country today,” Pelosi says. “He’s got to pay a price for that.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
