A day after Capitol Police cleared a Republican representative of criminal wrongdoing, the Democrat-led Jan. 6 Commission said it still has questions over tours given one day before the insurrection.

The commission sent a letter to Rep. Barry Loudermilk on Wednesday, requesting he come before the committee. Loudermilk gave tours of the Capitol complex one day before a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. The group disrupted the counting of Electoral College votes and forced members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence to retreat to a secure location.

Loudermilk gave the tour at a time the Capitol was off-limits to the public due to COVID-19 concerns.

Evidence uncovered by the committee shows Loudermilk leading the tour group through various tunnels and entrances throughout the complex.

“Individuals on the tour photographed and recorded areas of the complex not typically of interest to tourists, including hallways, staircases, and security checkpoints,” the commission noted. “The behavior of these individuals during the January 5, 2021 tour raises concerns about their activity and intent while inside the Capitol complex.”

The Jan. 6 Commission said individuals on the tour attended Trump’s rally on Jan. 6 and marched to the Capitol. The commission said video evidence shows at least one group member making threatening comments about members of Congress.

“The individual who appeared to photograph a staircase in the Longworth House Office Building filmed a companion with a flagpole appearing to have a sharpened end who spoke to the camera saying, “It’s for a certain person,” while making an aggressive jabbing motion,” the committee wrote to Loudermilk.

Capitol Police said, however, that there is no evidence that Loudermilk led a reconnaissance tour of the complex.

WASHINGTON —

Intelligence reports compiled by the U.S. Capitol Police in the days before last year's insurrection envisioned only an improbable or remote risk of violence, even as other assessments warned that crowds of potentially thousands of pro-Trump demonstrators could converge in Washington and create a dangerous situation.

The documents, obtained by The Associated Press, underscore the uneven and muddled intelligence that circulated to Capitol Police officers ahead of the Jan. 6 riot, when thousands of Donald Trump loyalists swarmed the Capitol complex and clashed violently with law enforcement officers in their effort to disrupt the certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election. The intelligence reports in particular show how the police agency, up to the day of the riot itself, grievously underestimated the prospect of chaotic violence and disruptions.

The contradictory intelligence produced by law enforcement leading up to the riot has been at the forefront of congressional scrutiny about the Jan. 6 preparations and response, with officials struggling to explain how they failed to anticipate and plan for the deadly riot at the Capitol that day. The shortcomings led to upheaval at the top ranks of the department, including the ouster of the chief, though the assistant chief in charge of protective and intelligence operations at the time remains in her position.

There was, according to a harshly critical Senate report issued in June, “a lack of consensus about the gravity of the threat posed on January 6, 2021.”

“Months following the attack on the U.S. Capitol, there is still no consensus among USCP officials about the intelligence reports’ threat analysis ahead of January 6, 2021,” the report stated.

The documents, known as a “daily intelligence report” and marked “For Official Use Only,” have been described over the last year in congressional testimony and in the Senate report. The AP on Friday evening obtained full versions of the documents for Jan. 4, 5 and 6 of last year. The New York Times highlighted the Jan. 4 report in a story last year on intelligence shortcomings.

On each of the three days, the documents showed, the Capitol Police ranked as “highly improbable” the probability of acts of civil disobedience and arrests arising from the “Stop the Steal” protest planned for the Capitol. The documents ranked that event and gatherings planned for Jan 6. by about 20 other organizers on a scale of “remote” to “nearly certain” in terms of the likelihood of major disruptions. All were rated as either “remote," “highly improbable" or “improbable,” the documents show.

“No further information has been found to the exact actions planned by this group,” the Jan. 6 report says about the “Stop the Steal” rally.

The Million MAGA March planned by Trump supporters is rated in the document as “improbable,” with officials saying it was “possible” that organizers could demonstrate at the Capitol complex, and that though there had been talk of counter-demonstrators, there are “no clear plans by those groups at this time.”

Another event by a group known as Prime Time Patriots was similarly described as having a “highly improbable” chance for disruption, with the report again stating that “no further information has been found to the exact actions planned by this group.”

Those optimistic forecasts are tough to square with separate intelligence assessments compiled by the Capitol Police in late December and early January. Those documents, also obtained by AP, warned that crowds could number in the thousands and include members of extremist groups like the Proud Boys.

A Jan. 3, 2021, memo, for instance, warned of a “significantly dangerous situation for law enforcement and the general public alike" because of the potential attendance of "white supremacists, militia members and others who actively promote violence."

“Unlike previous post-election protests, the targets of the pro-Trump supporters are not necessarily the counter-protestors as they were previously, but rather Congress itself is the target on the 6th," the report states.

Adding to the mixed intelligence portrait is a Jan. 5 bulletin prepared by the FBI's Norfolk field office that warned of the potential for “war” at the Capitol. Capitol Police leaders have said they were unaware of that document at the time. FBI Director Chris Wray has said the report was disseminated through the FBI’s joint terrorism task force, discussed at a command post in Washington and posted on an internet portal available to other law enforcement agencies.

Capitol Police officials have repeatedly insisted that they had no specific or credible intelligence that any demonstration at the Capitol would result in a large-scale attack on the building. Despite scrutiny of intelligence shortcomings, Yogananda Pittman, the assistant chief in charge of intelligence at the time of the riot, remains in that position.

The current police chief, J. Thomas Manger, defended Pittman in a September interview with the AP, pointing to her decision when she was acting chief to implement recommendations made by the inspector general and to expand the department’s internal intelligence capabilities so officers wouldn’t need to rely so heavily on intelligence gathered by other law enforcement agencies.

On the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol, lawmakers and other high-profile politicians are penning remembrances, thank yous to law enforcement and stark warnings about the future of American democracy.

Perhaps the direst warning came from former President Jimmy Carter, who in an op-ed piece for The New York Times wrote that "our great nation now teeters on the brink of a widening abyss."

In his piece, Carter urged Americans to "set aside differences and work together before it is too late."

"Without immediate action, we are at genuine risk of civil conflict and losing our precious democracy," Carter wrote for the Times.

In a Wednesday night appearance on MSNBC, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, blamed the riots on former President Donald Trump and the falsehoods he spread about widespread voter fraud.

"The root cause of January 6th is still with us today," Schumer tweeted. "It lives on through Trump's Big Lie that's undermining faith in our political system and making our democracy less safe. The Senate will take action to move forward on legislation to protect our democracy and the right to vote."

Sen. Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat who is currently one of the most powerful lawmakers in Washington, penned a remembrance, echoing former President Franklin Roosevelt in calling Jan. 6 "a day that will live in infamy."

Manchin also thanked law enforcement and honored the officers who died days after the attack.

"America is always at her best when we focus on what we have in common and put our country above politics," Manchin wrote.

Stacey Abrams, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Georgia, tied her Jan. 6 remembrance with the issue of voting rights.

"Jan. 5 was democracy at its finest. Jan. 6 showed democracy in peril. Let me be clear: Insurrectionists did not and will never erase the voices of 2.3 million Georgians, a majority being voters of color, who exercised their power and delivered progress in the face of darkness," Abrams tweeted.

In referencing Jan. 5, Abrams was referring to Democrats picking up two Senate seats on a pair of runoff elections in Georgia the day before the Capitol riot. She also referenced a series of Republican-backed bills that passed in Georgia and other states following the riots that aim to limit access to the polls.

A deeply divided Congress is about to show the world a very unsettled view from the U.S. Capitol: Rather than a national crisis that pulls the country together, the deadly riot on Jan. 6, 2021, only seems to have pushed lawmakers further apart.

Some members are planning to mark the anniversary of the Capitol insurrection with a moment of silence. Others will spend the day educating Americans on the workings of democracy.

And still others don't think the deadliest domestic attack on Congress in the nation's history needs to be remembered at all.

Where they stand on remembrance can be largely attributed to their political party, a jarring discord that shows the country's lawmakers remain strikingly at odds over how to unify a torn nation.

The president who had been fairly and legitimately defeated, Donald Trump, told his followers to "fight like hell" to stop the certification of Joe Biden's election and said he would march with them to the Capitol, though he did not. The result was violence and mayhem that left five people dead in the immediate aftermath, hundreds facing charges and millions of dollars in property damage.

But the lack of bipartisan resolve to assign responsibility for the siege or acknowledge the threat it posed has eroded trust among lawmakers, turned ordinary legislative disputes into potential crises and left the door open for more violence after the next disputed election.

It all sets Congress adrift toward a gravely uncertain future: Did Jan. 6 bring the end of one era or the start of a new one?

"One thing that people should consider when thinking about Jan. 6 is ... people should think about the fragility of democracy," said Joanne Freeman, a professor of history and American studies at Yale, whose book "Field of Blood" chronicles violence and bloodshed in Congress in the years before the Civil War.

Seeing few historical parallels, Freeman warned, "We're at a moment where things that people have taken for granted about the working of a democratic politics can't be taken for granted anymore."

Map of Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection arrests:

The aftermath of Jan. 6 hangs heavy over snow-covered Capitol Hill, in the relationships that deepened between lawmakers who feared for their lives that day and those that have frayed beyond repair.

The Capitol, before the riot a symbol of the openness of American democracy, remains closed to most visitors in part because of the coronavirus pandemic public health concerns, but also because of the escalated number of violent threats against lawmakers. Representatives are required to pass through metal detectors because Democrats say they cannot trust their Republican colleagues not to bring firearms to the House during floor proceedings.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., said every time he leaves his office he scans the hallways for potential threats — a feeling he said that, as a Black American, is familiar, but one that he never expected as a member of Congress.

"The lack of freedom of movement — without fear — is not there at the Capitol. And I'm a member of Congress," Bowman said.

Bowman has asked Biden to declare Jan. 6 a National Day of Healing.

But Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a member of Republican leadership, has no plans to memorialize the day, and he doesn't think others should, either.

"This thing has already become way too politicized, and that would just further exacerbate it," he said.

Trump's false claims of voter fraud have continued to foment, met mostly with silence from Republicans in Congress unwilling to contradict his version of events.

Some two-thirds of House Republicans and more than a handful of GOP senators voted against certifying the election results that night, after police had battled the rioters for hours, sometimes in hand-to-hand combat. That the Republicans would carry on with their objections, after all that, stunned Democratic colleagues. Views hardened.

Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican who went forward with efforts to block the certification after the riot, brushed off questions about it, saying he's talked about it enough.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said he had no second thoughts about his vote to block certification.

"I am proud of leading the effort to defend voter integrity," Cruz said. He decried the siege as "unacceptable," a "terrorist attack." But he also said the insistence by Democrats and the media of no mass voter fraud "only inflamed the divisions we have."

An investigation by The Associated Press found fewer than 475 cases of voter fraud among 25.5 million ballots cast in the six battleground states disputed by Trump, a minuscule number in percentage terms.

Table of those arrested:

Unlike past national traumas — including the 2001 terror attacks — the country has emerged from Jan. 6 without an agreed upon road map for what comes next.

Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot whose New Jersey-area district recently marked the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, said people have repeatedly recalled "in these sort of bewildered tones" how united the country was that day — compared to now.

"It feels like a huge break from our history," Sherrill said.

The result is not just a breakdown in trust among colleagues, but also a loss of common national commitment to the rules and norms of democracy.

Routine disputes over ordinary issues in Congress can quickly devolve into menacing threats — as happened when several Republican lawmakers started receiving violent messages, including a death threat, after voting for an otherwise bipartisan infrastructure bill that Trump opposed.

The two Republicans on the House panel investigating the attack, Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, face calls to be banished from their party.

Despite dozens of court cases and published reports showing no widespread voter fraud, Trump's baseless claims have become the party standard and led to what some call a "slow-motion insurrection" as his supporters work the machinery of local elections in ways that are alarming voting rights advocates.

Democrats are redoubling efforts to approve stalled election legislation that seeks to bolster ballot access and protect election officials from harassment. But to pass the bill in the evenly split Senate, they are considering dramatic rules changes to overcome a Republican filibuster.

Many of Trump's supporters have argued they are the ones fighting to save democracy. Two-thirds of Americans described the siege as very or extremely violent, according to an AP-NORC poll, but only 4 in 10 Republicans recall the attack that way.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the false story that the election was rigged or stolen has just continued "to be spun and spun and spun."

She said, "The danger is when people act on it."

Yet unlike the hundreds of Americans being prosecuted for their roles in Jan. 6, many members of Congress face no reprimand — and could be rewarded for their actions.

Hawley and Cruz are both considered potential 2024 presidential candidates.

GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, who rushed to Mar-a-Lago to patch things up with Trump after initially being critical of the insurrection, remains on track to become the next House speaker if Republicans — with Trump's help — win control in the November election.

And GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has seen her profile — and fundraising — skyrocket as she shares Trump's baseless theories and decries the treatment of defendants jailed for their role in the attack.

"We're in this no man's land, where basically anything goes, and that's a very unsettling place to be in a legislative body," said Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt. "And it's really a very unsettling place for the country to be."

___

Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Judge Tanya Chutkan sentenced Robert Scott Palmer to the longest sentence for any person convicted for their role in the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

Palmer was given a 63-month sentence to be served in federal prison. He received an additional 36 months of supervised release and was ordered to pay $2,000 in restitution. Judge Chutkan said she would recommend that Palmer be housed in a federal prison close to his home in Clearwater but could not guarantee that would happen.

Palmer pleaded guilty to his role in the attack on the Capitol on 1/6. The government said Palmer threw a wooden plank at officers, sprayed the contents of a fire extinguisher at the officers before then throwing the extinguishers. He then searched for more materials to assault police with including throwing a fire extinguisher a second time.

According to the sentencing memorandum, Palmer was eventually pepper sprayed by law enforcement, but that didn’t stop him. The government said Palmer assaulted another group of officers with a 4–5-foot pole that he threw like a spear at the officers. He was then shot by officers with a non-lethal bullet that hit him in the abdomen.

The government said Palmer admitted in interviews that his goal was to subvert a democratic election and that he hoped for military intervention to overturn the election to keep then-President Donald Trump in power.

The judge was critical of Palmer’s actions on 1/6 and said that the U.S. Marshals, Capitol Police, and others who fought to keep the insurrectionists out of the Capitol and away from the elected leaders were “the real patriots that day.”

“The men and women who kept democracy functioning that day and saved lives, they deserve the thanks of this nation,” Judge Chutkan said as she pronounced the sentence. “They didn’t deserve to have fire extinguishers thrown at them.”

When pronouncing the sentence, Chutkan said part of the reason for her sentence was, “It has to be made clear that trying to violently overthrow the government, trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power, and assaulting law enforcement officers in that effort is going to be met with absolutely certain punishment.”

This story was originally published by Tim Kephart at abcactionnews.com.

Video above: Executive privilege move won't open a Pandora's box, White House says

Former President Donald Trump on Monday sought to block the release of documents related to the Jan. 6 insurrection to the congressional committee investigating the attack, challenging the decision of President Joe Biden.

In a federal lawsuit, Trump said the committee request was "almost limitless in scope," and sought records with no reasonable connection to that day. He alleged the committee is seeking potentially millions of presidential records that he asserts are covered by a broad range of privileges, including those that cover presidential communications and conversations between lawyers and a client.

The committee’s request was a "vexatious, illegal fishing expedition," unprecedented in scope and "untethered from any legitimate legislative purpose," the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit takes aim at the core oversight functions of Congress, saying the records being sought by lawmakers are not for "legitimate legislative purpose" and the committee does not have the powers of a law enforcement agency. It seeks an injunction to bar the archivist from producing them. Biden has said he would not block the release to the committee, because the Jan. 6 attack was such an unprecedented event that executive privilege should not factor in.

Lawmakers are seeking the documents as part of its investigation into how a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6 in an effort to halt the certification of Biden’s win.

The committee demanded a broad range of executive branch papers related to intelligence gathered before the attack, security preparations during and before the siege, the pro-Trump rallies held that day and Trump’s false claims that he won the election, among other matters.

Trump's lawsuit says the "boundless requests included over fifty individual requests for documents and information, and mentioned more than thirty individuals, including those working inside and outside government." The suit says the request could include "conversations with (or about) foreign leaders, attorney work product, the most sensitive of national security secrets, along with any and all privileged communications among a pool of potentially hundreds of people."

The lawsuit was filed by Jesse Binnall, an attorney based in Alexandria, Virginia, who represented Trump in an unsuccessful lawsuit late last year seeking to overturn Biden’s victory in Nevada. Trump and his allies have continued to make baseless claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election.

WASHINGTON —

The CEO of a Chicago company said he was arrested after breaching the U.S. Capitol during Wednesday's violence in Washington.

Brad Rukstales, CEO of the marketing technology firm Cogensia, apologized for what he called a "moment of extremely poor judgment."

"It was the single worst personal decision of my life," Rukstales said in a statement posted on Twitter.

Cogensia, based in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, sought to distance itself from its CEO, whom the company said has been placed on leave of absence.

"Mr. Rukstales' actions were his own; he was not acting on behalf of our company nor do his actions in any way reflect the policies or values of our firm," Cogensia said in a statement posted on LinkedIn.

Neither Rukstales nor Cogensia were reachable for further comment. The U.S. Capitol Police did not respond to a request for comment to confirm the arrest.

Five people died as a result of Wednesday's insurrection, including a U.S. Capitol Police officer. A federal murder investigation has been opened into the officer's death. House Democrats plan to introduce articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump as early as Monday for "incitement of insurrection," according to sources familiar with the matter and a draft article obtained by CNN.

Video: U.S. Congressman questions Capitol protest security

"Without qualification and as a peaceful and law-abiding citizen, I condemn the violence and destruction that took place in Washington," Rukstales said in his statement.

The Cogensia CEO said that following the rally in Washington, he "followed hundreds of others through an open set of doors to the Capitol building to see what was taking place inside."

Rukstales said he was arrested and charged with unlawful entry.

"My decision to enter the Capitol was wrong, and I am deeply regretful to have done so," he said.

A number of other people present at Wednesday's unrest have faced consequences from their employers. Navistar, a direct marketing company in Maryland, fired an employee who was photographed wearing his company ID badge inside the U.S. Capitol building.

"While we support all employees' right to peaceful, lawful exercise of free speech, any employee demonstrating dangerous conduct that endangers the health and safety of others will no longer have an employment opportunity with Navistar Direct Marketing," the company said in a statement provided to CNN.

Video: Scenes from Washington protests

NEW YORK (AP) — The manager for actor Chuck Norris says the "Walker, Texas Ranger" star was not present at last week's deadly riot at the Capitol in Washington.

A photo of a man resembling Norris apparently with a member of the mob began trending online.

USA Today reported that a Twitter user shared an Instagram story screenshot that was a Capitol rioter selfie with someone that looked like Norris.

According to USA Today, the tweet read, "Wait, so are we just not going to mention the fact that Chuck Norris was at the MAGA insurrection?"

But Norris manager Erik Kritzer tells The Associated Press on Tuesday the person in the photo is not Norris.

Kritzer acknowledged that the man photographed looked somewhat like Norris but said, "Chuck is much more handsome."

"Walker, Texas Ranger," in which Norris played karate-kicking lawman Cordell Walker, ran on CBS from 1993 to 2001.

In 2016, he announced his support for President Donald Trump.

A New Jersey gym owner and a Washington state man on Friday became the first people charged in the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol to plead guilty to assaulting a law enforcement officer during the insurrection.

The pair of plea deals with federal prosecutors could be a benchmark for dozens of other cases in which Capitol rioters are charged with attacking police as part of an effort to halt the certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory. 

Both defendants face more than three years in prison if a judge adheres to estimated sentencing guidelines spelled out in the plea agreements.

The pleas come less than two weeks after a group of police officers testified at a congressional hearing about their harrowing confrontations with the mob of insurrectionists. Five officers who were at the Capitol that day have died, four of them by suicide.

SEE MORE: 2 More Officers Who Responded To Jan. 6 Capitol Attack Dead By Suicide

The Justice Department has said rioters assaulted approximately 140 police officers on January 6.

About 80 of them were U.S. Capitol Police officers and about 60 were from the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department.

More than 560 people have been charged with federal crimes, and authorities are still searching for hundreds more. 

At least 165 defendants have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or Capitol employees, including more than 50 people charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer, the Justice Department said in July.U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth set a sentencing date of Sept. 27 for both men.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.

This story was originally reported by Jay Strubberg on Newsy.com

Capitol Police is currently investigating 35 officers for their actions during the Jan. 6 insurrection of the Capitol, a spokesperson for the Capitol Police said in a statement on Friday.

Of the 35 officers, six are being suspended with pay.

The investigation is separate from a proposed inquiry that Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced earlier this week. Pelosi is calling for a “9/11 type commission” to look at what caused the Capitol insurrection, and the failures that ensued to protect the Capitol. The unprecedented security failure prompted the chief of the Capitol Police, House sergeant at arms and the Senate sergeant at arms all to resign.

While many videos documented the heroism of officers working to protect members of Congress during the Jan. 6 counting of the Electoral College, some questioned the actions of officers amid the riot. In one video, an officer could be seen wearing a Make America Great Again hat. A separate photo showed an officer taking a selfie with a rioter.

“Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman has directed that any member of her department whose behavior is not in keeping with the Department’s Rules of Conduct will face appropriate discipline,” the Capitol Police said in a statement.

Five people died amid the riot, including a Capitol Police officer. More than 140 officers were injured. The insurrection interrupted the counting of the Electoral College, and forced the Senate, House and Vice President Mike Pence to be moved to a secure location as a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump seized the Capitol building.

The Department of Justice said this week that 250 people have been charged in connection to the Capitol riot.

Despite the admonishment of some members of the Capitol Police, there have been bipartisan calls to honor those who labored to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6. Last week, the Senate voted to award Officer Eugene Goodman a Congressional Medal of Freedom. Also last week, Pelosi announced that she plans on introducing legislation to bestow the Congressional Gold Medal to the Capitol Police and other law enforcement agencies involved in protecting the Capitol.

Two Senate committees are set to release new reports later this month on the security failures surrounding the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, but they are leaving out President Donald Trump’s role in inciting the riot.

The lack of answers is insulting to many who defended the Capitol that day, including two officers who are speaking out about their experiences during the attack.

United States Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino Gonell immigrated from the Dominican Republic to the U.S. at 12 years old in 1991 and deployed to Iraq in 2003. He joined the Capitol Police in 2008.

He is speaking publicly for the first time about Jan. 6, when he fought rioters trying to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election. He says those who breached the Capitol called him a "traitor."

"I served my country," Gonell said. "I went overseas to protect our homeland from foreign threats, but yet here I am battling them in our Capitol."

Gonell led members of the department’s civil disturbance unit. For hours, they battled the rioters attacking the Capitol.

"I got hurt. I would do it again if I have to, it's my job," Gonell said.

Gonell suffered a cut to his hand on Jan. 6. He also suffered a severe foot injury that later required surgery.

"They kept saying, 'Trump sent me. We won't listen to you. We are here to take over the Capitol, we're here to hang Mike Pence,'" Gonell said. "They thought we were there for them and we weren't, so they turned against us. It was very scary because I thought I was going to lose my life right there."

Some of the most horrific videos show Gonell steps from Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, who got caught in a doorway.

"I could hear my fellow officers screaming, the agony in some of them," Gonell said. "All I could think was, 'we can't let these people in. There's going to be a slaughter inside.'"

While he fended off the attack outside, Officer Byron Evans locked down areas inside the Capitol and evacuated senators.

"I remember thinking, all that stuff like, 'Byron, this is the day. All those times you've given thought on what you would do, you're doing it,'" Evans said,

For hours, Evans and the senators watched the riot on TV from a secured location.

"I just remember the anger I felt when I saw those images — busting windows, climbing the walls and stuff like that, it was an audible gasp in the room," Evans said.

Around 6 p.m. that evening, the riot had calmed enough that Gonell could finally tell his wife he survived.

"I started texting my wife and I just said, 'I'm okay. See you whenever,'" Gonell said.

Congress resumed certifying the electoral college votes that night. Gonell arrived home around 3 a.m. the next morning but found little relief.

"When I came in, she wanted to hug me and I told her no because I was covered in pepper spray," Gonell said. "My hands were bleeding still, and I couldn't even sleep because I went and took a shower and instead of helping, that re-inflamed the chemicals."

Gonell said he later took a bath with milk in the hopes of washing out the pepper spray.

"That didn't help," he said.

Though they were still reeling from the worst attack the Capitol had seen in two centuries, Gonell, Evans and hundreds of other officers went back to work just hours later.

"I did give my wife a hug and started crying," Gonell said. "I didn't think I would be able to see them. I went to my son's bed and gave him a hug, he was asleep still, gave him a kiss. And I just started crying for 5-10 minutes. I just cried. She kept telling me it was going to be okay. I'm like, 'no, I've got to go back to work.;"

For him, the riot is hardly in the rearview. The failure of a bill to establish a bipartisan commission to investigate the causes of the riot left him devastated and gave him a reason to speak out

"It hurts me that the country that I love, that I came in, that I have sacrificed so much for, doesn't care about us. They don't," Gonell said.

To date, more than 400 people have been charged in the riot.

Video above: GOP blocks bipartisan probe of deadly Jan. 6 riot

Former President Donald Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 election united right-wing supporters, conspiracy theorists and militants on Jan. 6, but the aftermath of the insurrection is roiling two of the most prominent far-right extremist groups at the U.S. Capitol that day.

More than three dozen members and associates across both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers have been charged with crimes. Some local chapters cut ties with national leadership in the weeks after the deadly siege. The Proud Boys' chairman called for a pause in the rallies that often have led to clashes with anti-fascist activists. And one Oath Keeper has agreed to cooperate against others charged in the riot.

Some extremism experts see parallels between the fallout from the Capitol riot and the schisms that divided far-right figures and groups after their violent clashes with counter-protesters at the "Unite the Right" white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. The white supremacist "alt-right" movement fractured and ultimately faded from public view after the violence erupted that weekend.

"I think something kind of like that is happening right now in the broader far-right movement, where the cohesive tissue that brought them all together — being the 2020 election — it’s kind of dissolved," said Jared Holt, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.

"Like ‘Unite the Right,' there is a huge disaster, a P.R. disaster, and now they’ve got the attention of the feds. And it’s even more intense now because they have the national security apparatus breathing down their necks," he added.

But others believe President Joe Biden's victory and the Jan. 6 investigation, the largest federal prosecution in history, might animate the militia movement — fueled by an anti-government anger.

"We’re already seeing a lot of this rhetoric being spewed in an effort to pull in people," said Freddy Cruz, a Southern Poverty Law Center research analyst who studies anti-government groups. "It’s very possible that people will become energized and try to coordinate more activity given that we have a Democratic president in office."

The insurrectionists who descended on the nation’s capital briefly disrupted the certification of Biden's presidential win and sent terrified lawmakers running for their lives.

The mob marched to the Capitol and broke through police barricades and overwhelmed officers, violently shoving their way into the building to chants of "Hang Mike Pence" and "Stop the Steal." Some rioters came prepared with pepper spray, baseball bats and other weapons.

Related video — Pence: I'll likely never see eye to eye with Trump

Members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers make up just a small fraction of the more than 400 people charged so far. Prosecutors have narrowed in on the two extremist groups as they try to determine how much planning went into the attack, but authorities have said they're intent on arresting anyone involved in the riot.

More than two dozen Proud Boys leaders, members or associates are among those arrested. The group of self-described "Western chauvinists" emerged from far-right fringes during the Trump administration to mainstream GOP circles, with allies like longtime Trump backer Roger Stone. The group claims it has more than 30,000 members nationwide.

In the sustained protests last summer over police brutality, their counter demonstrations often devolved into violence. Law enforcement stepped in during a protest in Michigan. Members were accused of vandalizing property in Washington, D.C. Then, during a presidential debate with Biden, the group gained greater notoriety after Trump refused to condemn white supremacist groups and told the Proud Boys directly to "stand back and stand by."

Chairman Henry "Enrique" Tarrio hasn't been charged in the riot. He wasn't there on Jan. 6. He'd been arrested in an unrelated vandalism case as he arrived in Washington two days before the insurrection and was ordered out of the area by a judge. Law enforcement later said Tarrio was picked up in part to help quell potential violence.

Tarrio insists the criminal charges haven’t weakened or divided the group. He says he has met with leaders of chapters that declared their independence and patched up their differences.

"We’ve been through the wringer," Tarrio said in an interview. "Any other group after January 6th would fall apart."

But leaders of several local Proud Boys chapters, including in Seattle, Las Vegas, Indiana and Alabama, said after Jan. 6 that their members were cutting ties with the organization’s national leadership. Four leaders, including national Elders Council member Ethan Nordean, have been charged by federal officials with planning and leading an attack on the Capitol. One of Nordean’s attorneys said he wasn’t responsible for any crimes committed by other people.

The Las Vegas chapter’s statement on the instant messaging platform Telegram in February didn’t mention Jan. 6 directly, but it claimed the "overall direction of the organization" was endangering its members.

The Alabama group expressed concern about reports that Tarrio had previously been a federal informant. It was revealed in court records recently that Tarrio had worked undercover and cooperated with investigators after he was accused of fraud in 2012.

"We reject and disavow the proven federal informant, Enrique Tarrio, and any and all chapters that choose to associate with him," the Alabama group posted online in February.

Tarrio said he suspended national Proud Boy rallies shortly after Jan. 6 in part to focus on helping members facing criminal charges. Tarrio described Jan. 6 as "horrible" but said authorities overcharged his jailed lieutenants and are politically persecuting them.

Meanwhile, 16 members and associates of the Oath Keepers — a militia group founded in 2009 that recruits current and former military, police and first responders — have been charged with conspiring to block the certification of the vote. The group's founder and leader, Stewart Rhodes, has said there were as many as 40,000 Oath Keepers at its peak, but one extremism expert estimates the group's membership stands around 3,000 nationally.

Rhodes has not been charged, and it’s unclear if he will be. But he has repeatedly come up in court documents as "Person One," suggesting he’s a central focus of investigators.

Days after the election, Rhodes instructed his followers during a GoToMeeting call to go to Washington to let Trump know "that the people are behind him," and he expressed hope that Trump would call up the militia to help the president stay in power, authorities say. Rhodes warned they could be headed for a "bloody, bloody civil war, and a bloody — you can call it an insurrection or you can call it a war or fight," according to court documents.

On Jan. 6, several Oath Keepers, wearing helmets and reinforced vests, were seen on camera shouldering their way up the Capitol steps in a military-style stack formation. Rhodes was communicating that day with some Oath Keepers who entered the Capitol and was seen standing with several of the defendants outside the building after the riot, prosecutors say.

Rhodes has sought to distance himself from those who've been arrested, insisting the members went rogue and there was never a plan to enter the Capitol. But he has continued in interviews with right-wing hosts since Jan. 6 to push the lie that the election was stolen, while the Oath Keepers website remains active with posts painting the group as the victim of political persecution.

Messages left at numbers listed for Rhodes weren't immediately returned.

Court documents show discord among the group as early as the night of the attack. Someone identified in the records only as "Person Eleven" blasted the Oath Keepers in a Signal chat with Rhodes and others as "a huge f—n joke" and called Rhodes "the dumbass I heard you were," court documents say.

Two months later, Rhodes lamented in a message to another Oath Keeper that the national team had gotten "too lax" and "too complacent." He pledged to "tighten up the command and control" in the group — "even if it means losing some people," according to court documents.

After the riot, the North Carolina Oath Keepers branch said it was splitting from Rhodes' group. Its president, who didn't return messages from the AP, told The News Reporter newspaper it wouldn't be "a part of anything that terrorizes anybody or goes against law enforcement."

A leader of an Arizona chapter also slammed Rhodes and those facing charges, saying on CBS' "60 Minutes" that the attack "goes against everything we’ve ever taught, everything we believe in."

The Oath Keepers’ leader has also suggested the group may be facing financial pressures. In an interview posted on the Oath Keepers’ website, Rhodes said it has been difficult for the group to raise money as it's been kicked off certain websites.

The group also lost the ability to process credit card payments online after the company demanded that Rhodes disavow the arrested members and he refused, Rhodes said in a March interview for far-right website Gateway Pundit. The Oath Keepers website now says it cannot accept new memberships online because of "malicious leftist attacks" and instructs people to mail in applications and dues.

A member of the Oath Keepers was the first defendant to plead guilty in the riot. Jon Ryan Schaffer has also agreed to cooperate with the government's investigation. The Justice Department has promised to consider putting him in the witness security program, suggesting it sees him as a valuable cooperator in the Jan. 6 probe.

The Justice Department is dismissing a case against a New York man charged in connection to the Jan. 6 deadly attack on the Capitol.

It's the first time the agency is dropping a charge related to the January 6 riot.

The man was charged after the FBI says it received an anonymous tip showing the man at the Capitol. It's unclear why prosecutors moved to drop the case.

In the motion seeking dismissal, prosecutors wrote "the government and defense counsel have discussed the merits of the case, and upon reflection of the facts currently known to the government, the government believes that dismissal without prejudice at this time serves the interests of justice.”

More than 400 people have been charged so far in connection with the violent attack at the U.S. Capitol Building.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is ruling out a presidential commission to review what happened on Jan. 6.

Instead, she laid out other options for investigating the attack, including having the House look into it.

Remember, last week Senate Republicans blocked an independent commission that would review the attack.

Simon Kaufman and Alex Livingston on Newsy.com contributed to this report.

Nearly five months after being deployed to the U.S. Capitol to help quell the Jan. 6 insurrection, National Guard troops were set to leave and turn over security of the area to Capitol Police.

Guard troops, their mission ending Sunday, were expected to be leaving on Monday, a person familiar with the plan told The Associated Press. The person was not authorized to discuss the plan by name and requested anonymity.

The Pentagon announced earlier in the week that an extension of the Guard presence — 2,149 troops — had not been requested.

The planned departure came as Democrats and Republicans sparred over how to fund fortifications of the Capitol and whether to form an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the attack that sought to overturn former President Donald Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Related video: McCarthy pressed on fight over Jan. 6 commission

Some Republican lawmakers have begun downplaying the event despite the handful of deaths, injuries to scores of police officers, hundreds of arrests, damages to the building and shouted threats against lawmakers from many of those who stormed the building. Much of the violence was caught on camera.

Retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who oversaw a security review in the wake of the rioting, told CBS on Sunday that the Capitol itself will be secured by Capitol Police but that the complex will remain closed to the general public because of the strain on the police force.

“God bless the National Guard,” Honore said. “They've done significant work.”

The House on Thursday approved — by a single vote largely along party lines — a $1.9 billion measure to fortify the Capitol. The next day the House approved with 35 Republican votes the formation of an investigative commission. Both measures face an uncertain future in the evenly divided Senate.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said he opposes the commission proposal, which would need significant Republican support to advance under Senate rules. Republican opponents say the commission would become a political tool as midterms elections approach, though the proposal requires its work to be concluded by the end of this year.

Republican Representative Liz Cheney faces opposition from within her own party Wednesday, as party leaders are lining up behind her possible replacement on House leadership.

Former President Donald Trump was the latest to show support for New York Representative Elise Stefanik, posting on his website his "complete and total endorsement" of her.

Cheney is third-ranking in the Republican leadership in the House. Second-ranking House GOP leader Steve Scalise also backed Stefanik earlier in the day.

Calls for Cheney's removal have grown after her criticism of former President Trump. She blamed him for the Capitol riots and voted to impeach him.

On Wednesday, Cheney wrote an Op-Ed for the Washington Post, in which she said that the Republican Party is "at a turning point" and they must choose if they want "truth and fidelity to the Constitution."

She also asked that her fellow Republicans support the ongoing investigation by the Justice Department into the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, as well as a separate, bipartisan congressional commission into the event.

News of the op-ed comes as a secret ballot vote among House Republicans to replace Cheney could come as early as next week.