Controversial assistant chief embroiled in 2010 fraud scandal named acting Capitol Police chief

Sean P. Gallagher, the assistant U.S. Capitol Police chief who became embroiled in a time-card fraud scheme in 2010 and was blamed by a top department commander for disastrous inaction in the USCP Command Center on Jan. 6, has been named acting chief of the department.

The U.S. Capitol Police Board made the appointment as the search begins for a permanent replacement for just-retired Chief J. Thomas Manger. The three-member board includes the House and Senate sergeants at arms and the architect of the Capitol. The police chief serves as a non-voting member.

'Supervisors are held to a lower standard, even when the conduct is criminal.'

Gallagher’s appointment as acting chief will most likely not lead to him being offered the permanent job, according to Capitol Hill sources who spoke with Blaze News on the condition of anonymity. Still, his appointment was described by several police sources as a morale-killer among the rank and file.

Gallagher has drawn fire throughout his nearly 25 years with U.S. Capitol Police, including a felony-level time-cardfraud case that involved him forging the signature of a USCP inspector in order to file bogus overtime claims, internal documents show.

Gallagher was one of the subjects of a scathing Jan. 6 whistleblower letter that alleged that he and the then-chief "simply watched, mostly with their hands in their laps" while officers fought for their lives across Capitol grounds after tens of thousands of protesters surrounded the building.

“It’s the white shirts that are so corrupt,” one source told Blaze News on June 2. “They’re the ones who almost got us killed on January 6.”

Acting Capitol Police Chief Sean Gallagher joined the department in 2001. His tenure has been marred by controversy.Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images

The move to place Gallagher in the top spot was most likely intended as a resume pad to help him move on to another law enforcement department or agency, sources said.

Manger, who joined as chief in July 2021 and retired May 30, oversaw massive budget growth in the wake of Jan. 6. He submitted a budget request to the current Congress for nearly $1 billion.

Manger’s final six months in office were marred by high-profile security failures. In January 2025, a man was admitted through the Capitol Visitors Center checkpoint armed with a 9mm handgun hidden in his waistband. The man was later detained after he exited the Library of Congress.

On March 4, a congressional staff member who attempted to bring a loaded handgun through a security checkpoint told Capitol Police that he successfully brought the weapon through security the day before.

Manger blamed the security lapses on “the hardest kind of failure to address: human failure.”

Former Capitol Police Lt. Tarik K. Johnson, who was suspended for nearly 18 months after Jan. 6 by former acting Chief Yogananda Pittman and the Office of Professional Responsibility, said if Gallagher is named permanent chief, the truth about Jan. 6 will never come out.

“If he gets the position permanently, January 6th will go down in history as an insurrection caused by President Trump,” Johnson wrote on X, “as Gallagher will ensure nothing comes out that would disturb the insurrection narrative.”

Johnson was one of the first officials to call out the Jan. 6 inaction of Gallagher and Pittman that he said endangered House and Senate members as the Capitol was overrun. The leadership vacuum in the Command Center delayed evacuations and set up the conditions leading to the fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt just outside the Speaker’s Lobby, Johnson has said.

Capitol Police radio transmissions show that Johnson pleaded for permission to evacuate the U.S. Senate just before 1:30 p.m. that day, but was greeted by complete silence from the Command Center. Johnson eventually acted on his own, rushing senators and staff to safety just as an angry crowd moved toward the main Senate entrance.

Johnson’s suspension was officially because he wore a red Make America Great Again ball cap as he moved in and out of the crowds on Jan. 6. Johnson counters that the real reason for his discipline and demotion was that his decisions exposed the failures of senior leaders assigned as area commanders for the Capitol that day.

Gallagher’s appointment is a head-scratcher, sources said, given a checkered history that includes sustained charges of felony-level time-card fraud in 2010 that cost taxpayers at least $10,000.

Overtime fraud discovered

Documents obtained by Blaze News in 2024 showed that Gallagher was recommended for termination for a time-card fraud scheme involving himself and two lieutenants under his command.

According to Rhoda Henderson, a retired USCP sergeant and whistleblower, the other participants in the fraud scheme included Deputy Chief John Erickson and former Lt. Wendy Colmore, who left the department in 2015 for a post in the U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms office.

According to Office of Professional Responsibility disciplinary records obtained by Blaze News, Gallagher forged his supervisor’s signature on overtime pay submissions, using a different color pen for the forged signature from the one he used for his own. The fraud scheme was discovered in 2010 and sparked a long investigation.

An OPR memo dated Dec. 18, 2013, recommended Gallagher’s termination “for having defrauded the government of more than $10,000.”

U.S. Capitol Police Assistant Chief Sean Gallagher testifies during the House Committee on Administration Subcommittee on Oversight hearing on March 12, 2024.Photo by Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images

“The offense is egregious and, absent any mitigating factors, warrants nothing less than termination,” the memo read. “This offense was willful and frequent, occurring on eight occasions. Captain Gallagher misrepresented his times, forged his supervisor’s signature on overtime authorization forms, falsified pay certification sheets, and forged his supervisor’s signature on pay certification sheets to defraud the government for significant personal gain.”

Despite the fraud alleged, Gallagher kept his job. A Capitol Police source told Blaze News that then-Capitol Police Chief Kim C. Dine intervened in Gallagher’s case. Dine assigned the discipline investigation to Inspector Daniel Malloy, the supervisor whose signature Gallagher was accused of forging. Chief Dine left the job in 2015.

The OPR investigation recommended that Gallagher be demoted from captain to lieutenant, but Gallagher escaped with only a 10-day unpaid suspension.

Jim Konczos, chairman of the Capitol Police Labor Committee’s executive board at the time of the overtime fraud investigation, described a department culture in which “supervisors are held to a lower standard, even when the conduct is criminal.”

Gallagher was promoted to assistant chief in October 2023 from his previous title of deputy chief and head of the Protective Services Bureau. He was named inspector in June 2018 and became commander of the Dignitary Protection Division. He became deputy chief in 2019. From 2010 to 2018 he was assistant commander of the Dignitary Protection Division and the Capitol Division. From 2008 to 2010, Gallagher was assistant commander of the Investigations Division.

The USCP Public Information Office did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

‘Two bumps on a log’

A 16-page whistleblower letter sent to Congress in September 2021 faulted Deputy Chief Gallagher and acting Chief Pittman for inaction that led directly to injury of officers and put lawmakers in danger.

“In the Command Center, they simply watched, mostly with their hands in their laps,” wrote former Deputy Chief Jeffrey J. Pickett. “They did not try to help or assist as officers and officials were literally fighting for each other, their lives, and the Congress.”

The signature on the whistleblower letter was redacted, but Pickett later acknowledged writing the document.

“What I observed was them mostly sitting there, blankly looking at the TV screens showing real-time footage of officers and officials fighting for the Congress and their lives,” Pickett wrote. “This observation of their inaction was reported and corroborated by other officials and non-USCP entities.”

Pickett said he believed the inaction was intentional.

“It is my allegation that these two, with intent and malice, opted to not try and assist the officers and officials, blame others for the failures, and chose to try and use this event for their own personal promotions,” Pickett wrote.

“These two instead, while officers were being injured, elected to do nothing, lie and attempt to profit professionally,” Pickett wrote. “They chose to watch, as one non-USCP witness stated, ‘like two bumps on a log,’ make calls, and start to blame everyone for their failures.”

Former acting U.S. Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman testifies before a U.S. Senate committee on April 21, 2021.Photograph by Greg Nash/The Hill/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Pittman, who was named acting chief for the six months prior to Manger being named chief, in February 2023 became chief of police at the University of California at Berkeley. Although she did not yet qualify for Capitol Police retirement pension, Manger granted her five months of leave without pay until she reached the retirement threshold.

The department has been mired in other scandals since January 6. Former Officer Harry Dunn and Special Agent David Lazarus gave conflicting and apparently false testimony in the trial of four Oath Keepers and one associate in 2022.

Lazarus testified that he witnessed a confrontation between members of the Oath Keepers and Dunn in the Small House Rotunda, but at the time he cited, he was not even in the Capitol. The Oath Keepers had left the building prior to Lazarus meeting up with Dunn, according to a multi-part Blaze News video series by Steve Baker.

Lieutenant Michael L. Byrd, who shot and killed Babbitt at 2:44 p.m. outside the Speaker’s Lobby, was shielded from public view for seven months, hidden in a luxury hotel room at the Joint Base Andrews military facility in Maryland.

Capitol Police paid for $21,000 in security upgrades to Byrd’s Maryland home, awarded Byrd nearly $40,000 in unrestricted retention funds, and helped him establish a GoFundMe campaign that netted more than $164,000, according to a November 2024 letter from U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.).

Byrd had been accused of abandoning his post in the Speaker’s Office for a nearby cloakroom card game in 2001, then lying about it to internal affairs investigators.

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