The House Jan. 6 committee concluded that the FBI and other federal security agencies could have prevented a violent mob from overrunning the Capitol had they acted on the large volume of intelligence collected beforehand, the chief investigator told NBC News in an exclusive interview — a judgment the committee left out of its televised hearings and final report. …

Trump “was the proximate cause. But for his words, and deeds, it wouldn’t have happened,” said Heaphy, who led many of the key witness interviews conducted by the committee. “That said, what happened at the Capitol was also affected by law enforcement failures to operationalize the ample intelligence that was present before Jan. 6, about the threats of violence.”

He added, “Law enforcement had a very direct role in contributing to the security failures that led to the violence.”

[Why did the J6 committee leave this out? That would have diluted their main ambition, which was to focus all attention on Trump. They could have easily made the argument laid out here by the panel’s main investigative counsel, Tim Heaphy, which is that Trump bore the main fault but that accountability should also come for other failures. Whether or not one agrees with that conclusion, it would have at least been an honest recounting of the committee’s own work. By withholding that, it destroys what’s left of the committee’s credibility, as well as of the media that provided it breathless coverage, including live prime-time broadcasts. — Ed]