July 27, 2022

On Tuesday, the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol released audio of an interview with former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller. Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he ordered tens of thousands of National Guard troops for the U.S. Capitol ahead of the January 6, 2021, attack. That has been fact-checked, but even so, Trump has repeated that claim.

"I was never given any direction or order or knew of any plans of that nature," Miller said in the audio/video.
Miller later said in the video definitively, "There was no direct, there was no order from the President. We obviously had plans for activating more folks, but that was not anything more than contingency planning.
There was no official message traffic or anything of that nature."

Via CNN:

Trump has previously said that he requested National Guard troops be ready for January 6. He released a statement on June 9 that he "suggested & offered" up to 20,000 National Guard troops be deployed to Washington, DC, ahead of January 6, claiming it was because he felt "that the crowd was going to be very large."

The committee released Miller's testimony after already revealing that Trump did not make calls to military personnel or law enforcement to intervene as the Capitol attack was unfolding. General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the committee that he never received a call from Trump as the attack was unfolding.

Trump also previously claimed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to carry out his order for eleventy bazillion troops, and experts have said that she doesn't have the authority to do so in the first place. Trump has apparently forgotten that his supporters were trying to hunt down Pelosi to execute her. I'm pretty sure that she would have liked to have seen extra security at the insurrection.

Fox News's Brett Baier said this week that we need more information on precisely what the former President said about mobilizing the National Guard ahead of the Capitol riot. If that did take place, Baier said, "it kind squelches or downplays the thought that he wanted this insurrection."

It sure looks like Trump wanted the insurrection.

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