The latest tumult occurred Tuesday, when Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas accused the Capitol Police of having “illegally” investigated his office in November. Both Nehls and the police agree on basic facts about the incident in question that indicate no laws were broken when an officer entered Nehls’ office.
But in a Fox News interview, Nehls alleged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, “is weaponizing the U.S. Capitol Police to investigate me, to try to silence me, intimidate me, and quite honestly, to destroy me.” He provided no evidence for that claim and Pelosi noted Wednesday that she has “no power over the Capitol Police.”
While far more attention has been paid to the committee looking back at the insurrection, the U.S. Capitol Police is undergoing a quieter reform process to fix its intelligence and operational failures on Jan. 6. The department is collecting more data and changing its processes for sharing and acting on information about threats.
Some Republicans have attacked both the efforts to look back on the insurrection and the Capitol Police’s measures to go forward in stopping a future attack.
“Frankly, I’ve been a police chief for over 21 years, and I have never allowed politics to influence my decisions,” U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday. “I feel like the men and women of the U.S. Capitol Police are being dragged into partisan differences, and that’s unfair to them and it’s unfair to this department.”
