Honore Will Brief House Members on Capitol Security Report

(Bloomberg) -- House members on Monday will receive closed-door briefings with details of a top-level report on enhanced security needed to prevent another breach of the U.S. Capitol.

Three separate briefings from retired Army Lieutenant General Russel Honore will be given to members of both parties, a person familiar with the matter said.

Word of those briefings came Sunday after House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy issued a statement critical of Honore. That included a suggestion that Honore carried a political bias into his review, and that he’d been chosen by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to reach a desired result: “turning the Capitol into a fortress.”

Pelosi said last week that she’d received Honore’s draft report of an initial security review of the Capitol complex security in the wake of the Jan 6. assault by supporters of former President Donald Trump, and that members may get a presentation.

“It’s going to take more money to protect the capitol,” Pelosi said, in a way that will also allow people to visit safely “and not be concerned with what happened last time,” referring to the Jan. 6 attack.

Pelosi commissioned Honore to lead the review on Jan. 15, and to look at security infrastructure, inter-agency processes and command and control. “The general is a respected leader with experience dealing with crises,” she said.

The speaker’s call for an independent commission has some bipartisan support, yet the effort risks getting tangled in the bitter aftermath of Trump’s impeachment by Democrats over the deadly assault.

McCarthy, in his statement, questioned Honore’s “political bias because of statements he made before his review,” including an “inflammatory accusation that Capitol Police officers themselves were complicit in the attack.”

“While there may be some worthy recommendations forthcoming, General Honore’s notorious partisan bias calls into question the rationality of appointing him to lead this important security review,” McCarthy said.

“It also raises the unacceptable possibility that the Speaker desired a certain result: turning the Capitol into a fortress,” said McCarthy, who didn’t detail what recommendations he saw in Honore’s report.

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