Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R., Ill.) went on CNN’s “The Situation Room” to declare he is very certain there is very likely “something going on at the Secret Service” … and it could “potentially [be] very criminal activity.” It is also very very late (as was the subpoena of former President Donald Trump) to be asking about the lack of preparation for Jan. 6th riot.

On CNN, Kinzinger told Blitzer that

“there is something going on at the Secret Service, either pure incompetence all the way on the scale to potentially very criminal activity or just having a preference for one side or the other.”

Kinzinger noted that inconsistency in the testimony of former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson who claimed that Secret Service assistant director Tony Ornato told her that Trump was “irate” in the limousine upon learning he couldn’t go to the Capitol. She also said that Trump lunged at his security detail in the car and toward the steering wheel. I previously wrote about this alleged incident. Ornato denied the allegation.

Kinzinger said “It’s not for me to say at this point whether they lied or not. There are some inconsistencies that we’re going to pursue. There are a lot of questions, things they said earlier that maybe witnesses have countered.”

Much like the very public move to force the wife of a sitting justice to testify, the question is why this is the question that Kinzinger would cite as a key focus for the Committee going forward. I do not fault the staff trying to confirm if anyone knowingly lied in these different accounts. However, this would not seem like the type of dispute be a priority for the Committee in answering what work needs to be done.

Moreover, different recollections of a conversation are generally not going to be good grounds for prosecution. The judge in the Danchenko trial just threw out a count based on the uncertainty of language.

Moreover, the Democrats in the final hearing hammered away at documents showing that the agency knew about violent threats in the days leading up to Jan. 6th. However, the Democrats have refused to pursue the lack of preparations on Capitol Hill as a focus of the hearing. On the day of the riot, many of us noted (before the breach of security) that there was a relatively light police presence around the Capitol despite the obvious risk of a riot. Once the crowd surged, they quickly were able to gain access to the building. Conservative media have featured a video showing an officer standing by as crowds poured into the building.

That obviously does not mean that there was not violence or that Capitol police did not bravely fight to protect the building. Most of us have denounced the riot as a desecration of our constitutional process.

Moreover, at some point, officers may have shifted to deescalating as crowds surged into the building. The question is why there were not more substantial barriers, like those used at the White House. Instead, some barriers were composed of a few officers using their bikes.

The available evidence indicates that the House was warned and that the need for National Guard deployments were discussed. There is a concern that, after criticizing such deployment and fencing around the White House in the earlier riots, the Democrats did not want to be seen following the same course.

An Inspector General report indicated that police were restricted by Congress in what they could use on that day. Previously, it was disclosed that offers of National Guard support were not accepted prior to the protests. The D.C. government under Mayor Muriel Bowser used only a small number of guardsmen in traffic positions.

That focus was rejected by the Committee members, including presumably Kinzinger. There have been no dissenting views voiced on the Committee as well as a virtual bar on opposing explanations or interpretations of evidence.

Yet, Kinzinger insisted “there’s a lot of answers we simply don’t have.” That may be due to a lot of questions that the Committee had not asked in the highly scripted, one-sided proceedings.

Whether there is “very criminal activity,” one thing is very clear: there has been very little interest in pursuing the question of who was responsible for the woefully inadequate security around the Capitol on Jan. 6th.