By Aiyeku Timothy
House Sergeant-at-Arms, Paul Irving, is currently under pressure to resign alongside Senate Sergeant-at-Arms, Mike Stenger, following the invasion of the Capitol by pro-Trump supporters on Wednesday.
It was the first time since the War of 1812 that the building was breached.
Current Senate minority leader and soon to be Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, pledged to ensure their resignation if they fail to do so.
“If Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Stenger hasn’t vacated the position by then, I will fire him as soon as Democrats have a majority in the Senate,” Schumer said in a statement to Politico.
“The Capitol Police will and should really do a quick review here of what went wrong and what they need to do to be sure nothing like that could happen again,” Senate Rules Committee Chairman Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, also said on Thursday
“You want to take one more really hard look at what you thought your crowd security concerns might be for January 20.”
Lawmakers, civil rights leaders and former law enforcement officials wondered how the defenses at the center of the nation’s government could have been so easily overrun.
“They were outmanned today. They were outgunned,” Rep. Dean Phillips, a Democrat from Minnesota, said, describing the Capitol Police.
“They did the best they could with what they had but that was not nearly enough.”
Capitol Police have received meticulous training and contingency plans for a host of scenarios from terrorist attacks to biohazards, but they were caught lagging behind when the threat arrived in the form of mostly white men carrying American flags.
