In the months leading up to Wednesday's
deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the Trump administration gutted a key federal agency responsible for funneling intelligence and threat assessments to law enforcement partners across the country, two federal officials with direct knowledge told ABC News.
As a result, officials said, the information vacuum left behind may have deprived law enforcement in Washington, D.C., of a key avenue for actionable warnings that could have helped officers prepare for the inbound threat posed by right-wing extremists who gathered on the National Mall on Wednesday.
"Prior to Jan. 6, there were mountains of pre-existing intelligence that should have been collected, analyzed and disseminated to the federal, state and local authorities," one of the officials told ABC News.
One of the officials said that by Monday night, for example, Department of Homeland Security intelligence leaders had received field reports detailing that people known to law enforcement were heading to the Capitol, and that they were heading there in many cases with weapons and ropes.