Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said on Sunday that she’s confident in Washington D.C.’s preparedness on Jan. 6, pointing to the “major changes” made to security and protocol after the attack four years ago.
“Yes,” Klobuchar said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” when anchor Jake Tapper asked whether D.C. is prepared for “whatever might happen” on Monday.
“And I’ll make clear that in any of these events, as you saw in New Orleans, horrible things can happen, and we know that. But how prepared are we?” Klobuchar continued.
Klobuchar said that on Jan. 6, 2021—when Congress last gathered to count the certified electoral votes for the incoming president—lawmakers and officials learned that there were lapses in security protocol.
“What we found out last Jan. 6—and this could have been any event, but this one is etched in our minds forever, with the police officers dying, so many people hurt—we literally had cops that couldn’t get at the riot gear. It was locked on a bus. A four-hour delay to call in the National Guard because of some rule that had been in place that created a phone tree. Architect of the Capitol, who is kind of the boss of a bunch of the employees, wasn’t even there.”