Much of what led to the attack at the Capitol still remains a mystery. Former President Trump said he expressed his concern over the size of the crowd days before the event on January 6 and personally requested 10,000 National Guard troops to be sent to the Capitol in response.
During “The Next Revolution With Steve Hilton” Trump said he alerted the Department of Defense ahead of time that crowds were expected to be larger than anticipated and 10,000 national guardsmen should be ready for action. Trump claims that the warning was passed to leaders at the Capitol where it was rejected because these leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, did not like the idea of having 10,000 troops at the Capitol.
“So, you know, that was a big mistake,” he said.
Last week, former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund told a bipartisan Senate panel that he didn’t know then that his officers had received a report from the FBI’s field office in Norfolk, Virginia, that forecast, in detail, the chances that extremists could bring “war” to Washington the following day.
The head of the FBI’s office in Washington has said that once he received the Jan. 5 warning, the information was quickly shared with other law enforcement agencies through a joint terrorism task force.
Sund and House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving also could not agree on when National Guard assistance was requested.
Sund said he submitted the request at 1:09 p.m. on Jan. 6. But Irving insisted he did not receive the request for National Guard support until after 2 p.m. while in former Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger’s office. When pressed, Irving said he took a call from Sund before while on the Congress floor.
Sund and Irving disagreed on when the National Guard was called and on requests for the guard beforehand. Sund said he spoke to both Stenger and Irving about requesting the National Guard in the days before the riot, and that Irving said he was concerned about the “optics” of having them present. Irving denied that, saying Sund’s account was “categorically false.”
Republicans have signaled that evidence could show that Democrat leaders were aware of the threat and did little to prevent the Jan. 6 attack.
Pelosi said the commission will “investigate and report on the facts and causes relating to the January 6, 2021, domestic terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol Complex … and relating to the interference with the peaceful transfer of power.”
Trump said that contrary to reports, he was not watching the riot in real-time and only became aware of the events later on when he heard about the chaos.
He said he hated to see the attack but compared it to unrest that occurred in cities like Portland and Seattle last year.
“I hate to see any of that, but it is a double standard,” Trump said.