January 6 – Trump reluctant and in fact did not act timely –
report details here from The AP (via Market Watch) with
this headline:
“Detailed new Pentagon accounting of
Capitol riot reflects pleas for assistance and order, Trump reluctance to act”
Sub Title: “Clear the Capitol,” instructed VP Pence.
“We need help,” pleaded Sen. Schumer.
Order would not be restored for hours.
A rather long post - but the info is newly-released to the public. I boxed off
parts that I consider the most important.
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a secure room in the Capitol on January
6, as rioters pummeled police and vandalized the building these happenings:
VP Mike Pence tried to assert control. In an urgent phone call to the acting defense secretary, he issued a simple and startling demand: “Clear the Capitol” while he was elsewhere in the building.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi were making a similarly dire appeal to military leaders, asking the Army
to deploy the National Guard with Schumer saying in desperation more than an
hour after the Senate chamber had been breached: “We need help.”
At the Pentagon, officials were discussing media reports that the mayhem was not confined to Washington and that other state capitals were facing similar violence in what had the makings of a national insurrection with Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the JCS saying to Pentagon leaders in a phone call: “We must establish order.”
But order would not be restored for hours.
These new details about the deadly riot are in a previously undisclosed document prepared by the Pentagon for internal use only.
It was obtained by the AP and vetted by current and
former government officials. The timeline in this report adds another layer of
understanding about the state of fear and panic while the insurrection played
out, and it lays bare the inaction by then-President Trump and how that
contributed to the void and slowed response by the military and law
enforcement.
It shows that the
intelligence missteps, tactical errors, and bureaucratic delays were eclipsed
by the government’s failure to comprehend the scale and intensity of a violent
uprising by its own citizens.
With Trump not engaged, it fell to Pentagon officials, a
handful of senior White House aides, the leaders of Congress and the vice
president holed up in a secure bunker to manage the chaos.
While the timeline helps to crystalize the frantic character
of the crisis, the document, along with hours of sworn testimony, provides only
an incomplete picture about how the insurrection could have advanced with such
swift and lethal force, interrupting the congressional certification of Joe
Biden as president and delaying the peaceful transfer of power, the hallmark of
American democracy.
Lawmakers, protected to this day by National Guard troops
despite some Republican calls to disband the assembled force, will hear from
the Capitol Police IG.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) Chair of the Senate Rules and
Administration Committee investigating said: “Any minute that we lost, I need
to know why.”
The following timeline fills in some gaps.
At 4:08 p.m. on January 6, as the rioters roamed the Capitol
and after they had menacingly called out for California Democrat Pelosi and
yelled for Pence to be hanged. Pence was in a secure location, phoning Acting
Defense Secretary Christopher Miller demanding answers.
There had been a highly
public rift between Trump and Pence, with Trump furious that his vice president
refused to halt the Electoral College certification.
Interfering with that
process was an act that Pence considered unconstitutional. The Constitution
makes clear that the vice president’s role in this joint session of Congress is
largely ceremonial.
Pence’s call to Miller
lasted only a minute. Pence said the Capitol was not secure and he asked
military leaders for a deadline for securing the building, according to the
document. By that point it had already been two hours since the mob overwhelmed
Capitol Police unprepared for an insurrection.
Rioters broke into the building, seized the Senate and paraded to the House.
In their path, they left
destruction and debris. Dozens of officers were wounded, some gravely.
Just three days earlier, government leaders had talked about
the use of the National Guard. On the afternoon of January 3, as lawmakers were
sworn in for the new session of Congress, Miller and Milley gathered with
Cabinet members to discuss January 6.
They also met with Trump at the White House where Trump approved the activation of the D.C. National Guard.
He told the acting defense secretary to take whatever action needed as events
unfolded (re: information obtained by the AP)
The next day, January 4, the defense officials spoke by
phone with Cabinet members, including the acting attorney general, and
finalized details of the Guard deployment.
The Guard’s role was limited to traffic intersections and
checkpoints around the city, based in part on strict restrictions mandated by
district officials.
Miller also authorized Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy to
deploy, if needed, the D.C. Guard’s emergency reaction force stationed at Joint
Base Andrews.
The Trump administration and the Pentagon were wary of a heavy military presence.
That was due in part because of
criticism officials faced for the seemingly heavy-handed National Guard and
law-enforcement efforts to counter civil unrest in the aftermath of the police
killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
In particular, the D.C. Guard’s use of helicopters to hover
over crowds in downtown Washington during those demonstrations drew widespread
criticism. That unauthorized move prompted the Pentagon to more closely control
the D.C. Guard.
On the eve of Trump’s rally January 6 near the White House,
the first 255 National Guard troops arrived in the district, and Mayor Muriel
Bowser confirmed in a letter to the administration that no other military
support was needed.
By the morning of January 6, crowds started gathering at the Ellipse before Trump’s speech.
According to the Pentagon’s plans, the acting defense secretary would only be
notified if the crowd swelled beyond 20,000. Before long it was clear that the
crowd was far more in control of events than the troops and law enforcement
there to maintain order.
Trump, just before noon, was giving his speech and he told
supporters to march to the Capitol. The crowd at the rally was at least 10,000.
By 1:15 p.m., the
procession was well on its way there. As protesters reached the Capitol
grounds, some immediately became violent, busting through weak police barriers
in front of the building and beating up officers who stood in their way.
At 1:49 p.m., as the
violence escalated, then–Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund called Maj. Gen.
William Walker, commanding general of the D.C. National Guard, to request
assistance. Sund’s voice was “cracking with emotion,” Walker later told a
Senate committee. Walker immediately called Army leaders to inform them of the
request.
Around 2:10 p.m., the
first rioters were beginning to break through the doors and windows of the
Senate.
They then started a march through the marbled halls in
search of the lawmakers who were counting the electoral votes.
Alarms inside the building announced a lockdown.
Capitol Police Chief Sund
frantically called Gen. Walker again and asked for at least 200 guard members
“and to send more if they are available.” Even with the advance cabinet-level
preparation, no help was immediately on the way.
Over the next 20 minutes, as senators ran to safety and the
rioters broke into the chamber and rifled through their desks, Army Secretary
McCarthy spoke with the mayor and Pentagon leaders about Sund’s request.
On the Pentagon’s third floor E Ring, senior Army leaders
were huddled around the phone for what they described as a “panicked” call from
the D.C. Guard.
As the gravity of the situation became clear, McCarthy
bolted from the meeting, sprinting down the hall to Miller’s office and
breaking into a meeting.
As minutes ticked by, rioters breached additional entrances
in the Capitol and made their way to the House. They broke glass in doors that
led to the chamber and tried to gain entry as a group of lawmakers was still
trapped inside.
At 2:25 p.m., McCarthy told his staff to prepare to move the
emergency reaction force to the Capitol. The force could be ready to move in 20
minutes.
At 2:44 p.m., Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot
by a Capitol Police officer as she tried to climb through a window that led to
the House floor.
Shortly after 3 p.m., McCarthy provided “verbal approval” of
the activation of 1,100 National Guard troops to support the D.C. police and
the development of a plan for the troops’ deployment duties, locations and unit
sizes. Minutes later the Guard’s emergency reaction force left Joint Base
Andrews for the D.C. Armory. There, they would prepare to head to the Capitol
once Miller, the acting defense secretary, gave final approval.
The Joint Staff set up a video teleconference
call that stayed open until about 10 p.m. that night, allowing staff to
communicate any updates quickly to military leaders.
At 3:19 p.m., Pelosi and Schumer were calling the Pentagon for help and were told the National Guard had been approved.
But military and law-enforcement leaders struggled over the next 90 minutes to execute the plan as the Army and Guard called all troops in from their checkpoints, issued them new gear, laid out a new plan for their mission and briefed them on their duties.
The Guard troops had been prepared only for
traffic duties. Army leaders argued that sending them into a volatile combat
situation required additional instruction to keep both them and the public
safe.
By 3:37 p.m., the Pentagon sent its own security forces to
guard the homes of defense leaders. No troops had yet reached the Capitol.
By 3:44 p.m., the congressional leaders escalated their pleas. “Tell POTUS to tweet everyone should leave,” Schumer implored the officials (using the acronym for the President of the United States).
House Majority
Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) asked about calling up active-duty
military.
At 3:48 p.m., frustrated that the D.C. Guard hadn’t fully
developed a plan to link up with police, the Army secretary dashed from the
Pentagon to D.C. police headquarters to help coordinate with law enforcement.
Trump broke his silence at
4:17 p.m., tweeting to his followers to “go home and go in peace.”
By about 4:30 p.m., the military plan was finalized and Walker had approval to send the Guard to the Capitol.
The reports of state capitals breached in other places turned out to
be bogus.
At 4:40 p.m. Pelosi and Schumer were again on the phone with
Gen. Milley asking Miller to secure the perimeter. But the acrimony was
becoming obvious.
The congressional leadership on the call “accuses the
National Security apparatus of knowing that protestors planned to conduct an
assault on the Capitol,” the timeline said.
The call lasts 30 minutes. Pelosi’s spokesman acknowledges
there was a brief discussion of the obvious intelligence failures that led to
the insurrection.
At 5:20 p.m. the first contingent of 155 Guard members arrived
at the Capitol, and they started moving out the rioters, but there were few, if
any, arrests.
At 8 p.m. the Capitol was declared secure.
My 2 cents: All the evidence thus far and common sense clearly lays the blame at Trump’s feet – for one reason as the rioters screamed: “Stop the steal.”
That is: Stop the Elector
College final vote certification on the House floor in a joint session of
congress overseen by Vice President Mike Pence and thus enable Trump to be declared
winner and remain in office without the official final step conclusion – just that
simple.
Trump must be held accountable
regardless of this lying nonsense otherwise. He lost the election, fair and square, period, and now justice must
prevail against Trump and growing number of criminals who stormed the Nation’s Capitol
on the horrible day.
Thanks for stopping by.
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