By Mike Huckabee
May 6, 2024
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We all know that if 10,000-plus National Guard troops had been stationed at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as President Trump had authorized --- this has been confirmed by then-acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller --- the ensuing riot wouldn’t have been possible. As we’ve said from the beginning, the J6 riot fit the left’s ongoing political strategy so perfectly that if it hadn’t happened on its own, they would’ve had to “help” it to happen. And now, thanks to another whistleblower, we’re getting a clearer picture of what form that “help” took.
Other members of the Guard have said they were ready to go in, by orders of DC National Guard Commander Maj. Gen. William Walker, but waited in vans for hours while the riot continued. And a couple of weeks ago, the House subcommittee looking into the so-called “investigation” performed by then-Speaker Pelosi’s “Select” Kommittee (it was select, all right) took testimony from yet another whistleblower, Col. Earl Matthews, that helps explain the interminable wait.
Col. Matthews was the Staff Judge Advocate for the DC Guard and so was on “the” phone call that afternoon with then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, and others including U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, whom we already knew was pleading to no avail for the Guard’s assistance.
Col. Matthews has now spoken with the U.K. DAILY MAIL to elaborate on the details. And it does not look good for our military top brass.
According to the DAILY MAIL, Col. Matthews “claims that Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, and [McCarthy] were plotting to disobey any orders handed down by Trump because they ‘unreasonably’ assumed the then-President was going to break the law and try to use the DC National Guard (DCNG) to stop certification of the 2020 presidential election results.” He claims that “senior military leadership was solely focused on getting the heat off of them and putting it back onto Trump.”
What the media have described as “a breakdown in military and administration communication” was something else, according to Col. Matthews. He says senior military essentially “stripped the President of his authority as Commander-In-Chief by preemptively planning to go against orders because they didn’t like the optics of uniformed soldiers at the Capitol.” (Note: the concern reportedly voiced by some about “optics” strikes us as a pretext for disobeying Trump.)
Hearing this, one might justifiably wonder who, in fact, was trying to instigate a coup? Hint: it wasn’t Trump.
This is yet another example of people justifying their own actions with false assumptions about Trump. Last week, James O’Keefe released undercover video of an alleged CIA contractor bragging that the intel community routinely withheld sensitive details from President Trump because they ASSUMED he was working with Russia and would just call his buddy Vlad on the phone and share them. No evidence, just that assumption.
Likewise, there was only an assumption by these military leaders that Trump would interfere with the certification. Did he? NO. In fact, the big takeaway here is that it was THEIR OWN disobedience of his call to deploy the Guard that led to the disruption that did occur.
Col. Matthews said, “I think a very plausible argument can be made that through no fault of his own, President Trump’s command authority over both the DC National Guard and the U.S. Army itself had been surreptitiously curtailed by the senior leadership of the Army on January 6, 2021. Army leadership had unreasonably anticipated an ‘unlawful order’ from the President, an order that the President had no plans to issue, and were preemptively seeking to curtail his discretion to issue such an order.”
The “Select” Kommittee, predictably, tried to whitewash the delay and use Trump as an excuse. From their final report: “Former President Trump's eagerness to engage the U.S. military to play a visible role in addressing domestic unrest during the late spring and summer of 2020 does appear to have prompted senior military leadership to take precautions, in preparing for the joint session against the possibility that the DC Guard might be ordered to deploy for an improper use.”
See? They were just “taking precautions.”
Trump had wanted to deploy the Guard, all right, but for a PROPER USE. Arguably a necessary use. Court martial is too good for these military leaders who tried to grab the reins away from the President of the United States.
RELATED: Over 20,000 hours of additional security cam video from January 6 have been released by Rep. Barry Loudermilk’s subcommittee, and a premium report from THE EPOCH TIMES has details. We’ll summarize and comment:
ET’s description of rescuers giving aid to Ashli Babbitt and getting her to an ambulance doesn’t add much to our knowledge of that tragedy. And the shooting itself was not captured by security cameras, just on cellphones. (Sadly, we’ve all seen that.) But Babbitt, 35, is seen on the landing prior to the shooting, calling to three Capitol Hill cops for help and punching a rioter, Zachary Alam, who had smashed the glass in the door to the Speaker’s Lobby. For her trouble, she ended up being shot dead.
The J6 Committee paid no attention to the killing of Ashli Babbitt at all.
Lt. Michael Byrd made an inaccurate police radio report after killing her, saying he was “under fire and preparing to return fire.” (Byrd’s gun was the only one fired.) This escalated the situation, as police swarmed the Capitol in response, thinking they might be risking a bullet themselves. When police streamed into the House Gallery with guns drawn, peaceful protesters were shocked.
One jarring video segment shows a contentious confrontation between Capitol police and non-peaceful protester Daniel Dean Egtvedt, who ended up being heaved out the South Door and smack into the outer doors, after being recorded scuffling with cops and being verbally abusive. Egtvedt was later found guilty on seven charges, but this is the sort of behavior that SHOULD have been prosecuted.
There were other examples of rough behavior. As the ET reports, “While some have argued that protesters who entered the Capitol were all peaceful, security video shows that wasn’t the case.” We’ve always said there was no excuse for violence that day. So why hasn’t the DOJ focused on these relatively few violent cases instead of going after every peaceful Trump-supporter who unwittingly stood in the wrong spot?
In case you do subscribe to THE EPOCH TIMES, here’s the link. But I think we’ve summarized everything that’s new.
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