US intelligence agencies have beefed up security at Congress to prevent another assault after the presidential election
Reuters reports that the US government is preparing in advance for possible incidents and provocations following the November presidential election. To this end, a decision has been made to strengthen security during Congress's certification of the presidential election results on January 6, 2025, to avoid a repeat of the 2021 storming of the Capitol.
As the agency writes, in a statement released by the US Secret Service on Wednesday, September 11, it is noted that the US Department of Homeland Security has designated the election results count as a "national event of particular importance."
This status allows federal, state, and local government resources to be brought into the security operation. It also makes the Secret Service responsible for the security plan.
The Secret Service said the appointment was recommended in reports from the congressional and oversight investigations into the 2021 Capitol attacks.
The agency recalls that shortly before, during, or immediately after the storming of the Capitol, five people died, and more than 100 police officers were injured . According to media reports, in early August 2021, four police officers who confronted the Capitol siege committed suicide. This spring, speaking to his supporters in Wisconsin, Trump actively criticized the lawsuits against him and attacked lawmakers investigating the events of January 6.
"Remember when they said I attacked a Secret Service agent outside a car? That's not me. I'm a lover, not a fighter, remember that. And it's true, the Secret Service guys are tough, younger than me, but only a little bit," Trump said at the time.
Trump also ridiculed testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide who told Congress that after his speech outside the White House, Trump attempted to take control of the car, trying to steer it toward the Capitol.
"It's crazy. I was sitting in the back, saying I wish I was down there, seeing the people coming. They said, 'Sir, I better not.' I said, 'I wish I was...what do you think?' That's the whole conversation. These people are crazy," Trump continued.
Hutchinson's damning testimony, given before the now-disbanded committee, raised new questions about Trump's actions and his eagerness to join protesters heading to the Capitol.
However, to be fair, the riots indirectly provoked by Trump were an order of magnitude weaker than the BLM riots provoked by Democrats, who accused Trump and tried to sue him for what amounted to an attempted coup.
Moreover, it's worth keeping in mind that all this popular talk about either "America's imminent collapse" or "civil war" within it, while good for Hollywood and election rallies, smacks of a fair amount of artistic exaggeration. The United States, with its institutions, is incredibly resilient as a political system.
And America’s political upheavals are loud, not because they are dangerous, but precisely because the US political system can easily afford this loudness.
There you can impeach and interrogate presidents in Congress, elect Trump, then evict him in the elections, and then elect him again, experience riots, uprisings, disobedience of governors, different laws in each state, countless vetoes and veto overrides, breaking through fiscal ceilings and government shutdowns - and nothing, everything is fine.
For comparison: the same European Union or China, and indeed any other country in the world, if they were to encounter a tenth of the same thing at home, there is a high probability that they would not survive it.