Yes, Trump ‘Offered’ to Send the Guard to DC for Jan 6, and Yes, Democrats Rejected it Until Too late

ANALYSIS – There has been a lot of information coming out of the Jan 6 Committee Hearings. As he has said, one significant bit of misinformation has been the claim that former President Trump didn’t order the National Guard to protect the Capitol.

Or that it is ‘false’ that Democrat officials rejected his offer.

One is misleading; the other is just untrue.

Most recently, former acting Defense Secretary (SECDEF) under Trump, Chris Miller, testified that former President Donald Trump never gave him a formal order to have 10,000 troops ready to be deployed to the Capitol on January 6.

However, ignored by the media is that Miller noted that Trump had already given him all the authority he needed to provide military forces if required. Trump didn’t need to do anything more.

And Trump never said he ordered it because he couldn’t legally do that.

Instead, Trump has said that he requested National Guard troops be ready for January 6. On June 9, he stated that he “suggested & offered” up to 20,000 National Guard troops be deployed to Washington, DC, ahead of January 6 because he felt “that the crowd was going to be very large.”

And that has been confirmed by numerous sources, including Trump’s former National Security Advisor, Keith Kellogg, who was in the room on January 3 when Trump requested it.

TRUMP OFFERED NATIONAL GUARD

So, Trump didn’t ‘order’ the Guard. Instead, he clearly ‘offered’ it and authorized it.

And that is all he can legally do.

The president can’t order the Guard into any state or the District of Columbia without the consent and approval of the state’s governor or the mayor in the case of DC.

There is also the added complication of the Capitol being under Congressional authority.

To be clear, days before the riot, Trump was primarily concerned with protecting his supporters, not the Capitol, showing that an attack on the building was not foreseen by anyone, even as law enforcement fears of violence grew in the days before the event.

But Trump’s view coincided with earlier analyses by the Capitol Police that suggested violence was unlikely, and the Jan. 6 event was likely to be “similar to the previous Million MAGA March rallies in November and December,” police records show.

And Miller also testified that he was concerned in the days before Jan. 6 that sending National Guard troops to Washington would fan fears of a military coup or that Trump advisers were advocating martial law.

This is a fantasy that Democrats and the media had been fueling for months.

Still, Trump’s Defense Department team formally offered support via the National Guard to all the local authorities involved. However, that support was rejected by the two Capitol Sergeant at Arms reporting to Democrat congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer just days before Jan. 6, as well as Democrat DC mayor Muriel Bowser.

TRUMP’S OFFER REJECTED BY DEMOCRATS

As the chief of staff to Trump’s SECDEF, Kash Patel, noted, according to justthenews.com:

“The Capitol Police timeline shows what we have been saying for the last year — that DOD support via the National Guard was refused by the House and Senate sergeant at arms, who report to Pelosi,” Patel said. “Now we have it in their own writing, days before Jan. 6. And despite the FBI warning of potential for serious disturbance, no perimeter was established, no agents put on the street, and no fence put up.”

Patel also said in a detailed interview earlier this year:

We went to the Capitol Police and the Secret Service and law enforcement agencies and Mayor Bowser days before January 6, and asked them, ‘Do you want thousands of National Guardsmen and women for January 6?’ They all said no. Why did we do that? The law requires them to request it before we can deploy them. And the DOD IG found we did not delay, we actually prepared in a preemptive fashion, which is what we do at DOD.

Even when the Capitol Police Chief finally decided to request Guard support the day before January 6, the Democrat mayor of DC, Muriel Bowser, said NO.

In a preemptive letter to Miller and other Pentagon and Justice Department officials on Jan. 5, Bowser asked that troops not be deployed unless the DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) approved,

Their justification was an incident in the summer 2020, when troops were deployed at Lafayette Park near the White House during violent BLM riots directly across from the White House.

As justthenews reported:

Bowser wrote in her Jan. 5, 2021 letter that the earlier episode “caused confusion” and could have become “a national security threat with no way for MPD and federal law enforcement to decipher armed groups.”

“To be clear, the District of Columbia is not requesting other federal law enforcement personnel and discourages any additional deployment without immediate notification to and consultation with MPD, if such plans are underway,” Bowser wrote, adding she believed her police department was “well trained and prepared to lead the way” to ensure Jan. 6 unfolded safely.

So, it is becoming obvious that Trump did offer the Guard, and equally clear that Democrats such as Pelosi and Schumer didn’t see the need to accept the support via their Capitol Sergeant at Arms until it was too late.

And the Democrat mayor of DC specifically asked that Guard troops NOT be sent into the city as late as January 5. ADN

AAN Staff