As Speaker Nancy Pelosi was evacuated from the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while the complex was under attack, her motorcade passed by a pipe bomb at the Democratic National Committee headquarters that law enforcement had yet to render safe, according to video and analysis released this week by House Republicans.
The revelation is the second known instance of a prominent Democrat coming close to the explosive device, and it underscores the threat that elected officials faced that day when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.
Capitol Police officials responded Thursday by saying the makeshift bomb had been rendered mostly inoperable by the time Ms. Pelosi’s motorcade came near it, and that the greater danger to her at that moment was from the mob laying siege to Congress.
According to the video, which Republicans unearthed as part of their push to discredit the findings of the House Jan. 6 committee, Ms. Pelosi’s vehicle came within a few hundred feet of the makeshift bomb when her security detail drove her through a security perimeter and away from the Capitol. Republican investigators have been searching for signs of bias in the Jan. 6 investigation carried out by House Democrats during the last Congress and working to shift the focus to security breaches rather than the actions of former President Donald J. Trump.
Sean P. Gallagher, the assistant chief for uniformed operations for the Capitol Police, has acknowledged that the department made mistakes on Jan. 6, including allowing pedestrians too close to the makeshift pipe bomb at the committee headquarters.
“The perimeter that was set up around the D.N.C. — it looked chaotic because it was chaotic,” Mr. Gallagher said in March in testimony before the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight. “We were dealing with a pipe bomb a couple blocks away at the R.N.C. We were dealing with a pickup truck that had 11 Molotov cocktails, machetes, rifles, handguns, ammunition in it. And at the same time, our officers were suffering injuries on the west front of the Capitol.”
Mr. Gallagher added: “It was mentioned that we didn’t have enough Capitol Police officers. We did not.”
Using footage from the Capitol Police as well as unaired video for an HBO documentary shot by Ms. Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, House Republicans noted that Ms. Pelosi’s motorcade was allowed to travel through a police barricade about five minutes before the Capitol Police finished rendering the device safe.
Police officials began disabling the device at 2:12 p.m. and formally rendered the device inoperable at 2:31 p.m., according to the subcommittee’s investigation. Ms. Pelosi’s motorcade passed by at 2:26 p.m.
Police officials say by the time Ms. Pelosi’s motorcade came near the device, it had mostly been disabled. The Capitol Police said in a statement on Thursday that its bomb technicians had “released the pressure and vastly decreased the threat” that the bomb posed.
One of the clips shows the driver of Ms. Pelosi’s motorcade approaching a street near the pipe bomb that had been cordoned off.
“Is this all the way blocked off? We’re going to Fort McNair,” Ms. Pelosi’s driver said on the video, before proceeding.
A spokesman for Ms. Pelosi, who stepped down from Democratic leadership by remains an influential figure in the House, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A spokeswoman for the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, which obtained the videos, said the new information underscores the importance of their work investigating security failures at the Capitol.
Ms. Pelosi is not the only prominent Democrat known to have come close to the explosive device. Kamala Harris, then the vice president-elect, came within 20 feet of it, according to a report last month by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, who faulted the Secret Service for its handling of the pipe bomb.
“The pipe bomb had been placed near the building the night before, but Secret Service personnel did not identify it during their security sweep on the morning of Jan. 6,” the report stated. “The vice president-elect, traveling in an armored vehicle with her motorcade, entered the building via a ramp within 20 feet of the pipe bomb, and was in the building for approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes before the pipe bomb was discovered and she was subsequently evacuated.”
A pair of Capitol Police officers discovered the bomb while conducting a patrol after a similar device was found at the Republican National Committee building a few blocks away.
“The Secret Service had not employed all its explosive detection tactics and measures for the security sweep, instead providing only canine teams at the D.N.C. building that day,” the report said.
According to the F.B.I., both explosive devices consisted of 8-inch threaded galvanized pipes, end caps, wires, homemade black powder, kitchen timers and metal clips. Steven M. D’Antuono, the former leader of the F.B.I.’s Washington field office, told the House Judiciary Committee last year that they “were viable devices that could explode.”
To date, no one has been arrested or charged with planting the bombs. There is a $500,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest.
In his testimony to Congress earlier this year, Mr. Gallagher praised the actions of the agency’s bomb squad on Jan. 6.
He said people inside the D.N.C. building were told to shelter in place at 1:30 p.m. that day, and the scene was cleared by 4:36 p.m.
“It is my understanding that both of these devices were fully functional and viable pipe bombs,” he said. “However, it is unclear whether they would have gone off on their own had they not been rendered safe by our bomb squad.”
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