The U.S. Capitol Police have the important job of protecting our elected representatives, and the legislative complex itself. It is a heavy responsibility, one that is constantly tested against hecklers, protesters, rioters, and terrorists.
They are the physical guardians of democracy.
It is therefore crucial that the Capitol Police, even more than other police forces, be seen as above politics. Yet Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is politicizing the Capitol Police into a partisan Praetorian Guard.
On Thursday, the Capitol Police issued a memorandum indicating that they would arrest individuals, vaccinated or not, who did not wear a mask on Capitol Grounds. They were ordered to take this step by the House leadership (without objection by the Senate leadership, now also controlled by Democrats). The order was a response to Republicans who refused to comply with a mask order the day before. It is also a harsher penalty than any that would be enforced anywhere else in the country.
Earlier this week, several members of the Capitol Police testified at Pelosi’s one-sided inquiry into the January 6 riot. One of them, Officer Harry Dunn, has extreme anti-Trump opinions and cheered on left-wing Black Lives Matter riots last summer. Pelosi handpicked the witnesses, barring other officers with different views from testifying, over the objections of the Capitol Police union itself. Dunn also repeated the lie that Officer Brian Sicknick died because of the riot (he died from a stroke).
And earlier this month, the Capitol Police announced that they were opening field offices in California and Florida — about as far as possible from the Capitol, within the continental United States — to investigate threats against lawmakers, as if existing law enforcement and intelligence services were insufficient. It is not clear that the Capitol Police have jurisdiction outside the Capitol; regardless, Pelosi has created the impression of having her own personal nationwide police and intelligence service.
Ironically, as Democrats in cities across the country defund their police departments, promising residents besieged by violent crime that mental health professionals and investments in poor communities are an acceptably substitute, the Democrats have found one police force to love. It is the police force that Pelosi is turning into her own private security force, just as tyrants have done throughout the centuries, from Imperial Rome to the Communist Bloc. The damage will not easily be undone.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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