Former D.C guard leaders testify that Trump could have stopped Jan. 6 — and chose not to
According to two former leaders of the D.C. guard who recently gave closed-door testimony to Congress, Donald Trump could have quelled the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and coordinated a timely arrival of National Guard troops during the violence if he'd called Pentagon leaders that day.
The testimony came from Michael Brooks, the senior enlisted leader of the D.C. guard on Jan. 6, and Brigadier Gen. Aaron Dean, the adjutant general of the D.C. guard during that same time. The pair told the House Administration Committee that if Trump reached out to the Pentagon that day, he could have cleared up confusion that was borne from the chaos, according to transcripts obtained by Politico.
“Could the president have picked up the phone, called the secretary of defense, and said, you know, ‘What’s going on here?’ Our law enforcement is getting overrun, make this happen!’” a committee staffer asked Brooks.
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“I assume he could expedite an approval through the secretary of defense, through the secretary of the army,” Brooks replied.
Trump administration officials testifying before the Jan. 6 committee revealed that Trump never called military leaders on Jan. 6, a claim that led that committee to conclude in its final report that Trump was responsible for the riot that was carried out by his supporters. According to Politico's review of the transcripts, Brooks confirmed that claim in his testimony.
Dean agreed, saying that if Trump had reached out, things would have been very different.
“I think if the Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of Defense, or the president had said, ‘Go,’ … or a combination thereof had said ‘Go,’ then we would’ve gone and we would’ve been there much faster,” Dean said in his March 26 testimony.
As Politico points out, Brooks and Dean are among four witnesses scheduled to testify Wednesday over the security failures that led to the Capitol riot.