What the January 6 Committee Doesn’t Want You to Know

By Congressman Troy E. Nehls

For well over a year I’ve been investigating every aspect of what happened on January 6, 2021, and I’ve got a book coming out soon with the results (The Big Fraud: What Democrats Don’t Want You to Know about January 6, the 2020 Election, and a Whole Lot Else, Post Hill Press). Unfortunately, even though I was selected by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to be part of the January 6 Committee, Nancy Pelosi wouldn’t allow it.

Why? There’s a lot that Democrats don’t want you to know about January 6, and that’s why Pelosi formed a bogus, entirely partisan committee, so the Democrats could push their anti-Trump narrative and hide the truth of what really happened.

I wasn’t sure exactly what strategy Democrats in the sham committee would choose for the first televised hearing. I was amazed to find out that their main plan seems to be blaming former president Trump for the delay in deployment of the National Guard—as if he purposely held back the Guard so rioters would have time to breach the Capitol and run riot inside. Part of this plan (pushed by General Mark Milley in the hearing) is to claim that, unlike Trump, former vice president Pence “issued very explicit, very direct, unambiguous orders” to Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, “to get the military down there, get the Guard down there” to the Capitol immediately.

If Milley isn’t lying, he (and the Democrat strategists) are disingenuously trying to shift the blame from where it really belongs: the Department of Defense. It was the DoD that delayed the deployment of the National Guard—obviously not something that General Milley, the nation’s highest ranking military officer, wants known.

Here are the facts. The Capitol perimeter was first breached at 12:48 p.m., but the District of Columbia National Guard didn’t arrive at the Capitol Complex until “5:20 p.m.—nearly three hours after DOD received USCP’s [U.S. Capitol Police’s] request for assistance and more than four hours after the barriers at the Capitol were first breached.”

That quote comes from the Senate own report, “Examining the U.S. Capitol Attack: A Review of the Security, Planning, and Response Failures on January 6,” which (interestingly enough) says nothing about the delay being caused by Trump, or Mike Pence issuing orders “to get the Guard down there” to the Capitol. Instead, the Senate report places the blame where it belongs: on the ill-prepared Capitol Police, the DoD, and the tangled chain of commands connecting them both to the D.C. National Guard.

The DoD issued its own report which attempted to shift the blame for the delay elsewhere, claiming its response was entirely appropriate as defined by “restrictions…set forth in statutes and…DoD directives,” that “mandate what support DoD can provide to civilian authorities” within “strict limits.”

Setting aside that claim for a moment, it’s important to note that nowhere does the DoD report mention that help was withheld because Trump refused to deploy the D.C. National Guard. In fact, we have confirmation in the report itself of Trump’s concern beforehand that things remain peaceful. On page 16, a DoD timeline reports the following on January 3, 2021 “Mr. [Christopher] Miller and GEN Milley attend a White House meeting. At the end of the meeting, the President asks about election protest preparations and Mr. Miller tells him, ‘We’ve got a plan, and we’ve got it covered.’”

Two things here. First, if Trump’s plan was to whip the crowd into a frenzy so they would storm the Capitol on January 6th, then why would he want to ensure that Secretary of Defense Miller and General Milley had taken adequate precautions for the protest on January 3rd? That’s nonsense!  Instead, the DoD’s own report of the meeting corroborates Trump’s claim that he had alerted the DoD beforehand that the crowds were going to be larger than anticipated, and that it should have 10,000 national guardsmen ready to deploy.

Second, we have an obvious admission by the DoD in its own report about who was responsible for keeping the peace on January 6. Secretary of Defense Miller was here correctly representing the fact that the DoD had full authority, full responsibility, for what happened that day, and that included the authority and responsibility to deploy the DC National Guard immediately if necessary.

Despite Secretary Miller’s assurance to Trump that “We’ve got a plan,” things did not turn out very well, as we’re now all aware. But in its hindsight report, the DoD attempted to shift the blame to the D.C. National Guard, not Trump.

Blaming the D.C. National Guard did not go over very well with Major General William Walker, Commanding General of theDistrict of Columbia National Guard at the time. Walker issued a scathing reply (written by his Staff Judge Advocate, Colonel Earl Matthews), “The Harder Right: An Analysis of a Recent DoD Inspector General Investigation and Other Matters.”

Nowhere in Walker’s report does it ever mention that the D.C. National Guard was held up by Trump or that Pence was feverishly issuing orders for them to deploy. Instead, he reports in excruciating detail how the DoD did everything it could to stall the National Guard’s deployment.

Under normal circumstances, Major General Walker would have full authority to deploy the D.C. National Guard immediately, but for some strange reason, a “restriction withholding QRF [Quick Reaction Force] employment authority from MG Walker…was inserted [in a letter] by Army Staff officers late on the evening of 4 January,” even though it was not mentioned at a meeting Walker had with the Army that very day.

The original correspondence from Ryan McCarthy, the Secretary of the Army, affirmed MG Walker’s authority to employ the National Guard according to his judgment. The second version substitutes, “I withhold authority to approve employment of the DCNG Quick Reaction Force…” for the original, “You may employ the DCNG Quick Reaction Force….”

That removal of authority allowed the DoD to stall deployment until after 5:00pm that day. It was not President Trump, but (in Walker’s words) “Inaction and inertia at the Pentagon.”

On January 13, 2022, I attended a meeting organized by the Republican Conference, the purpose of which was to allow Republican members to ask questions of Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger and General William Walker (now House Sergeant-at-Arms). I then asked General Walker, “If the DC National Guard would have been deployed to the Capitol Building on January 4th, as intelligence suggested, do you feel our Capitol would not have been breached?” He replied, “Yes.”