People at the highest levels of government reportedly bypassed a direct, lawful command from President Trump because they were concerned about “optics.”
Kash Patel, former chief of staff at the Department of Defense under President Donald Trump, insists recent closed-door congressional testimony demonstrates people at the highest levels of government willfully ignored an authorization by the former president to deploy troops to the Capitol on January 6th.
A New York Times article published last week outlines interviews and a public hearing with the House Administration Committee by multiple members of the Guard. The revelations can potentially dismantle the prevailing insurrection narrative in the media and shed light on political manipulations at the highest levels of government.
Ryan D. McCarthy, the Secretary of the Army at the time of the Capitol protest, according to the testimony, failed to deploy the National Guard to help Capitol Police restore order and instead “made a series of phone calls to lawmakers and members of the media.”
McCarthy was reportedly phoned three times with a request to deploy members by Gen. William J. Walker, then the commander of the D.C. Guard.
“I was standing right there on several occasions when he tried to call, and it went directly to voice mail,” Brig. Gen. Aaron R. Dean II, then the Guard’s adjutant general, testified.
Dean added, “He (McCarthy) was in the building but he wasn’t available.”
Breach in the Chain of Command
The latest testimony puts McCarthy alongside General Mark Milley as having seemingly contravened authorization from then-President Trump regarding the deployment of the National Guard on January 6.
The pair allegedly, prior to and on that date, pushed back on calls to deploy the Guard due to political optics, affecting the national response to the Capitol breach.
“On top of that, the military had adopted a particularly cautious approach to deploying the Guard, with several top commanders openly worried about the ‘optics’ of such a mobilization in part because of concerns that President Donald J. Trump could misuse the Guard, and they approached the situation as akin to sending troops into an overseas war zone,” the Times writes.
Deliberately disobeying a request by the Commander-in-Chief authorizing troops abroad or at home seems like a significant breach in the chain of command.
Patel concurs.
“The critical issue here is that the Secretary of the Army and General Milley bypassed a direct, lawful command from President Trump, opting instead to delay the deployment of the National Guard on Jan. 6 for the sake of political optics, and in doing so violate the chain of command,” he tells RedState.
Initial Delays
Patel, widely expected to be tapped for a national security role in a prospective second term for President Trump, suggests the testimony, combined with already public information regarding delays in utilizing the National Guard, needs to be examined further.
Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg stated that Trump did authorize National Guard troops to be deployed in Washington D.C. before the breach of the U.S. Capitol.
The assertion that the former president authorized such action has been disputed by Democrats and the media.
Kellogg, however, a one-time national security adviser in the Trump administration, has said he “was in the room” when the request was made.
Great OpEd. Reinforces my earlier comment on 6 Jan Cmte. Has quote from DOD IG Report regarding 3 Jan 2021 meeting with Actg Def Secy Miller/CJCS Milley in the Oval on the 6 Jan NG request by POTUS on troops needed. I was in the room. https://t.co/uLelPzwBET
— Keith Kellogg (@generalkellogg) July 29, 2022
Patel, in a statement given to RedState, claims former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Muriel Bowser, mayor of the District of Columbia, had a role in the initial refusal to deploy troops.
“This deliberate slow-rolling portrays a clear intent to gut the president’s preemptive authorization of the National Guard days prior, which had then been declined by Speaker Pelosi and Mayor Bowser,” he said.
“It also shows why further delays orchestrated on the day of January 6 by Secretary McCarthy and General Milley land squarely at the feet of these cowards.”
Milley had claimed the National Guard was deployed to the Capitol at “sprint speed.”
The Times, though, points out that there was a “more than four-hour delay” in doing so, and multiple calls from Gen. Walker went unanswered.
The delay continued even after Walker received a call from Steven Sund, the chief of the Capitol Police at the time of the January 6th incident, describing “shots fired.”
“‘There’s shots fired; I need your help right now,’” Gen. Dean said he heard Sund say. “And you could hear it in his voice. His voice was shaking. You could hear it in his voice. And so he would have sent them right then.”
Instead, senior military officials remained less concerned about safety in a volatile situation and remained stubbornly guarded against providing bad optics to the media.
“I’m not sure why we’re concerned about optics when it comes to, you know, saving lives and preventing damage and loss of property, but OK,” Dean reportedly said.
Delays Helped Foment False Narrative of Insurrection
Sund, in a previous interview with former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, has alleged that the Capitol Police were “denied” backup from the National Guard.
“Like I said, I’m not a conspiracy theorist,” Sund told Carlson in August.
“But when you look at the information and intelligence they had, the military had, it’s all watered down. I’m not getting intelligence, I’m denied any support from National Guard in advance,” he said. “I’m denied National Guard while we’re under attack, for 71 minutes…”
There is no reason they shouldn’t have been on standby from the onset. Aside from officials from the Trump administration insisting the president had made a preemptive authorization for the Guard to be on standby, Sund also says he personally made similar requests.
In his book “Courage Under Fire,” Sund claimed that he had asked the National Guard to be placed on standby days before the Capitol protest.
He was allegedly rejected by the House Sergeants at Arms who reported to Pelosi (D-CA) and the Senate Sergeant at Arms who reported to Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
NPR disclosed just five days after the chaos at the Capitol that Sund had “requested assistance six times ahead of and during the attack.”
“Could there possibly be actually… they kind of wanted something to happen?” Sund wondered out loud in his subsequent discussion with Carlson. “It’s not a far stretch to begin to think that.”
🚨Holy Smokes 👀
— MJTruthUltra (@MJTruthUltra) August 2, 2023
Fox News Deleted Scene from Tucker Carlson’s Interview with the Capitol Police Chief “Leaks”, Saying, “It was a Cover Up!”
Why would Fox News delete this scene?
“If people were reporting to intelligence correctly. If I was allowed to do my job as the chief, we… pic.twitter.com/rBvbozzCJ1
Patel further insinuates that Milley and McCarthy, by failing to take prompt action and follow the lawful chain of command, helped the left craft a narrative of insurrection.
Insurrection, though never committed on January 6th, has been used as a backdrop to charge protesters anywhere in the vicinity of the Capitol on that day with specious criminal violations.
“Had these senior military leaders disclosed the full extent of their illegal actions earlier, the prevailing false narrative of an insurrection would have been defeated,” Patel tells RedState.
“Their failure to act pursuant to the constitutional chain of command helped craft a disinformation campaign that influenced the public perception to knee-cap any future presidential campaign by Donald Trump.”
Patel adds that the latest congressional testimony doesn’t simply outline an obvious “breach of military protocol” but “destroys the insurrection narrative and exposes deeper layers of political corruption at the highest levels of the Department of Defense.”
Protesters have been held accountable for breaching the Capitol by an overzealous DOJ since that fateful day.
When will those who helped stoke the fires by failing to heed warnings and preparing the Guard to help quell the crowd receive the same treatment?
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