Police stand guard Jan. 6, 2021, after holding off violent rioters who tried to break through a police barrier at the Capitol in Washington. AP Photo / Julio Cortez
Pelosi: Milley ‘Doesn’t Know the Full Picture’ of Jan. 6 Capitol Attack
House speaker says Trump administration delayed military assistance to lawmakers.
Gen. Mark Milley was wrong in his characterization of the military’s response to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday.
The California Democrat said she is certain the Trump administration delayed military assistance after lawmakers asked for additional troops to keep rioters from entering the building while Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
Pelosi appeared on MSNBC on Wednesday afternoon to talk about Biden’s address to Congress and the Jan. 6 incident in which supporters of former President Donald Trump broke into the Capitol.
She was asked to respond to a recorded clip of Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, saying that “there was to my knowledge…no specific attempt to delay the deployment of the National Guard. That’s just false.”
“That isn’t false. I was there,” Pelosi said. “He doesn’t know the full picture if he is presenting the characterization he just presented. The fact is, they could have been there very much sooner and there would have been much less destruction and the rest.”
Maj. Gen. William Walker, the commanding general of the D.C. National Guard, testified last month that it took more than three hours for the Trump administration to approve the request for troops to help control the violent crowd at the Capitol.
Pelosi also called for Congress to establish a “9/11-type commission” to investigate the January insurrection attempt, and the timeline for sending additional troops to the Capitol as rioters broke windows, looted the speaker’s office and broke into the Senate chamber.
“Let’s put it on the record under oath so we can get to the truth,” she said. “I can tell you from firsthand knowledge in the room that day that the secretary of the Army delayed even making the request to the acting secretary of defense and that caused much mayhem.”