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Michigan school shooting: Ethan Crumbley’s parents charged with involuntary manslaughter
Charging decision for Jennifer and James Crumbley comes three days after their son allegedly killed four at Oxford High School

by Megan Sheets
Independent.co.uk
12/4/21

Michigan school shooting suspect Ethan Crumbley’s parents have been charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the deadly massacre earlier this week.

Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald’s office filed the charges against James and Jennifer Crumbley, the Associated Press reported on Friday, three days after their 15-year-old son allegedly opened fire in the halls of Oxford High School, killing four classmates and wounding seven others. The parents each face four counts of involuntary manslaughter.

Ms McDonald announced the charges at a press conference at noon and said she filed them because while Mr Crumbley is the one who pulled the trigger, “there are other individuals who contributed to this”. “It is my intention to hold them accountable,” she said.

The prosecutor noted that the involuntary manslaughter charge is the strongest allowed under the law, which states that the parents of a child who violates firearm-related statutes on school property or in a school vehicle can be held criminally liable if the parent knew the child’s intentions or furthered their actions.

The couple were scheduled to appear at an arraignment at 4pm Friday. However, as of 5pm a fugitive team was still searching for them to serve arrest warrants.

Mr Crumbley’s mother Jennifer texted him “Ethan, don’t do it” after she heard reports of an active shooter at his school, Ms McDonald said on Friday.

When he heard the reports, the suspect’s father James called 911 to report a gun was missing, officials said.


The gun Mr Crumbley allegedly used - a Sig Sauer 9mm model SP 2022 - had been stored in an unlocked drawer at the family’s home, according to Ms McDonald. The suspect went with his father to purchase the gun on Black Friday and then posted about trying out his “new Christmas present” on social media.

Ms McDonald also provided new details about the two incidents that prompted teachers to raise alarms about Mr Crumbley’s behaviour prior to the shooting.

On Monday, a teacher reportedly found Mr Crumbley searching for ammunition on his cellphone. His parents were alerted, and his mother Jennifer allegedly texted him: “LOL I’m not mad at you, you have to learn not to get caught.”

On Tuesday, a different teacher found on a note on Mr Crumbley’s desk which featured a drawing of a handgun a bullet with the words: “The thoughts won’t stop, help me” and “blood everywhere”.

Mr Crumbley’s parents were called in as a result of the note, but fought to have him return to class, Ms McDonald said.


Image
James and Jennifer Crumbley are pictured at their son Ethan’s arraignment on Wednesday
(Rochester Hills District Court)

The prosecutor went on to call the parents’ failure to prevent Tuesday’s shooting “criminal”.

“I have tremendous compassion and empathy for parents who have children who are struggling and at risk for whatever reason. And I am no means saying an active shooter situation should always result in a criminal prosecution against parents,” she said.

“But the facts of this case are so egregious, reading this document, looking at it, reading the words ‘help me, with a gun, blood everywhere,’ this doesn’t just have impact [on] me as a prosecutor and lawyer, it impacts me as a mother. The notion that a parent could read those words and also know their son had access to a deadly weapon, that they gave him, is unconscionable and I think it’s criminal. It is criminal.”

Ms McDonald said she brought the charges to send a message about the responsibility faced by gun owners.

“When they fail to uphold that responsibility, there are serious and criminal consequences,” she said. “As we work together to honour the lives lost and all of those impacted by the evil acts this week, justice for the victims and their families is at the forefront of today’s announcement.

“We need to do better in this country. We need to say enough is enough for our kids, our teachers, parents, for all of us in this community and the communities across this nation.”

Earlier this week, it was revealed Jennifer Crumbley had written an open letter to Donald Trump on her blog in 2016, praising the Republican’s position on gun rights.

“As a female and a Realtor, thank you for allowing my right to bear arms,” she wrote. “Allowing me to be protected if I show a home to someone with bad intentions. Thank you for respecting that Amendment.”


Ethan Crumbley is currently being held without bond at the Oakland County Jail on 24 charges, including one count of terrorism and four counts of first-degree murder.

Image
Ethan Crumbley, 15, is seen in his booking photo
(AP)

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Ethan Crumbley – latest: Sheriff says suspect was ‘looking forward’ to attack as parents appear in court
by Gino Spocchia, Megan Sheets, Stuti Mishra, Thomas Kingsley
12/5/21

[x]
Parents of Michigan school shooting suspect plead not guilty as mother sobs in court

Ethan Crumbley’s parents pleaded not guilty to charges of involuntary manslaughter in connection to their son’s alleged shooting rampage at Oxford High School that led to the death of four students on Tuesday.

James and Jennifer Crumbley appeared at an arraignment in front of judge Julie Nicholson this morning after being arrested by Detroit Police around 1.30am earlier today.

The arrest came after officers found a vehicle, believed to belong to the Crumbleys late on Friday, when they were searching for the couple. The vehicle was reported by the owner of the industrial building where the couple was located.

James and Jennifer Crumbley, parents of the 15-year-old accused, had gone missing after being charged with involuntary manslaughter on Friday.


Prosecutor Karen McDonald announced the charges against James and Jennifer Crumbley on Friday, three days after their son Ethan allegedly killed four classmates and wounded seven others.

On Tuesday morning, the parents attended a meeting with Mr Crumbley and administrators after another teacher found a note on his desk with a drawing of a handgun that read: “The thoughts won’t stop, help me.”

The parents allegedly insisted Mr Crumbley return to class, and three hours later he carried out the massacre. When she heard reports of an active shooter, Jennifer Crumbley allegedly texted: “Ethan, don’t do it.”

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Key moments of Oxford high school shooting case

The deadly shooting at Oxford High School on Tuesday has so far led to three people being charged — first accused 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley, who allegedly opened fire at students and school staff, and his parents James and Jennifer Crumbley, who face charges of involuntary manslaughter.

All three are in the custody of the police now. Ethan’s parents were caught in the east of side Detroit early on Saturday morning when they were allegedly trying to run away.

Investigators say they’ve uncovered a “mountain of evidence” that Ethan Crumbley plotted the shooting he is accused of perpetrating well in advance, outlining plans in a journal and sharing his intentions in two videos filmed before the shooting.

His behaviour in the hours before the shooting also had several warning signs including his his search of gun ammunition on the phone, violent drawings and suicidal thoughts that penned down.

Here’s everything that has happened so far in the case:

A prosecutor has charged the parents of a 15-year-old boy who is accused of fatally shooting four students and wounding six at a Michigan high school this week

GOP congressman poses with guns for Christmas photo

Republican congressman Thomas Massie has sparked outrage for posting a Christmas photo of his family posing with a trove of firearms, just days after four students were murdered in America’s deadliest school shooting since 2018.

The Kentucky congressman shared the family portrait on Twitter on Saturday, along with the caption: “Merry Christmas! ps. Santa, please bring ammo.”

Mr Massie is seen posing with his wife and members of their family in front of a Christmas tree in a holiday card-style image. All seven people in the photograph are holding weapons as they beam at the camera.

The Republican faced an instant backlash for his social media post, coming just four days after suspected teenage gunman Ethan Crumbley opened fire at his high school in Michigan.

Image
GOP Rep Thomas Massie poses with guns in Christmas family photo after school shooting

Third party to investigate events at Oxford High School

An outside investigation has been called to look into the events at Oxford High School that occurred before the deadly school shooting on Tuesday, the Michigan district’s superintendent said on Saturday.

The decision was taken because the parents have asked questions about “the school’s version of events leading up to the shooting,” Oxford community schools superintendent Tim Throne said in a statement.

“It’s critically important to the victims, our staff and our entire community that a full and transparent accounting be made,” Mr Throne said.

The decision comes after prosecutor Karen McDonald detailed the various warning signals in Ethan Crumbley’s behaviour, including search for gun ammunition, violent drawings and suicidal thoughts, that eventually led up to the fatal shooting that left four students dead and six other students and a teacher wounded.

- AP

Crumbleys may have been trying to flee to Canada, police say

The fugitive parents of Michigan high school shooting suspect Ethan Crumbley were found hiding out in a warehouse and may have been trying to flee to Canada to escape charges in connection to Tuesday’s mass shooting, according to authorities.

Jennifer and James Crumbley were arrested in the early hours of Saturday morning after authorities were tipped off about their location at a commercial building at 1111 Bellevue Street in Detroit – less than a mile from the Canadian border.

Oxford school shooting: ‘Distressed’ fugitive parents of Ethan Crumbley were found ‘hiding in warehouse’
Jennifer and James Crumbley found inside a commercial building in Detroit close to the Canadian border after skipping their arraignment

by Rachel Sharp
12/4/21

The fugitive parents of Michigan high school shooting suspect Ethan Crumbley were found hiding out in a warehouse and may have been trying to flee to Canada to escape charges in connection to Tuesday’s mass shooting, according to authorities.

Jennifer and James Crumbley were arrested in the early hours of Saturday morning after authorities were tipped off about their location at a commercial building at 1111 Bellevue Street in Detroit.


Detroit Police Chief James White announced in an early morning press briefing that the “distressed” couple were taken into custody unarmed and “without incident”.

Their arrest was the outcome of an hourslong manhunt on Friday after the couple failed to show for their 4pm arraignment to face four charges each of involuntary manslaughter.

Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald announced in a press conference on Friday afternoon that she was taking the somewhat unusual step of charging the parents for their alleged parts in the massacre that left four students dead and seven other people wounded.

The couple’s son is accused of opening fire on his fellow students in a hallway of Oxford High School on Tuesday with a firearm that his parents are said to have gifted him.

The Crumbleys missed their deadline to appear in court on Friday and couldn’t be located, prompting authorities to label them as fugitives and issue a $10,000 reward for information leading to their arrests.

The couple were last seen in public on Thursday when they appeared virtually for their son’s arraignment, where he pleaded not guilty to the 24 charges stacked against him.

They are said to have withdrawn $4,000 in cash from an ATM in Rochester Hills on Friday afternoon and switched off their mobile phones to prevent them being tracked.

Chief White announced that the couple had been located at the industrial building - which is used as an art studio - in Detroit in the early hours of Saturday.

The couple’s car - a black KIA SUV - was first found in the area in the parking lot of a local business with a witness reporting seeing a woman close to the vehicle before fleeing.

A search later uncovered the Crumbleys in the basement of the warehouse “very distressed”.

The couple were unarmed and gave themselves up to authorities, said Chief White.

The police chief said that the fugitives “appeared to be hiding in the building” and that the situation “isn’t indicative of turning themselves in, hiding in a warehouse”.

He said he believed it was “very likely” the Crumbleys were trying to flee the country after they were apprehended less than a mile from the US’s border with Canada.

Chief White said the couple did not break into the building but that “somebody let them in”.

It is not clear who the individual is or what connection they have to the suspects but the police chief said charges could be on the cards.


Attorneys for the Crumbleys have denied the couple went on the run, insisting in Saturday’s arraignment that they are not a flight risk and that they were “absolutely going to turn themselves in” and that it was “just a matter of logistics”.

On Monday, a teacher reportedly found Mr Crumbley searching for ammunition on his cellphone. His parents were alerted, and his mother Jennifer allegedly texted him: “LOL I’m not mad at you, you have to learn not to get caught.”

-- Michigan school shooting: Ethan Crumbley’s parents charged with involuntary manslaughter. Charging decision for Jennifer and James Crumbley comes three days after their son allegedly killed four at Oxford High School, by Megan Sheets


Image
The Crumbleys are seen in booking photos following their arrests
(EPA)

The prosecution dismissed this claim saying: “I can’t imagine why they were surprised. The whole country knew that these charges were coming.”

The judge set their bond at $500,000 each. The Crumbleys both pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Prosecutors said the Crumbleys bought the gun used in the massacre for their son and failed to take steps to prevent the shooting, after multiple red flags of potential violence were raised.

Four students died in the mass shooting – Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Juliana, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; and Justin Shilling, 17 – and one teacher and six students were injured.

Ethan Crumbley is being held without bond on 24 counts including four charges of first-degree murder and one count of terrorism. He is being charged as an adult.


Ethan Crumbley’s fugitive parents found ‘hiding in warehouse’

Jennifer and James Crumbley found inside a commercial building in Detroit close to the Canadian border after skipping their arraignment

Everything we know about shooting suspect Ethan Crumbley

Ethan Crumbley, 15, has been charged as an adult with one count of terrorism, four counts of first-degree murder, and several other charges.

Police say investigators are examining the teenager’s smartphone and social media posts for clues as to the reason for the attack, which is still unknown.

“We can’t get the motive from the suspect that we have in custody, but we think we’ve got a path to get a lot of supportive information as to how and why this occurred,” Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard has said.

Here’s everything we know about the suspect so far:

Ethan Crumbley: Everything we know about the Michigan school shooting suspect
Fifteen-year-old in custody after four killed and eight injured in Oxford but motive remains unclear

by Joe Sommerlad
12/4/21

A 15-year-old sophomore has been taken into custody after four students were killed and at least eight others injured in a mass shooting at a suburban high school in Michigan on Tuesday.

The suspected shooter, teenager Ethan Crumbley, was apprehended by police following the incident at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, a community of 22,000 people 30 miles north of Detroit, and a semi-automatic 9mm Sig Sauer handgun was seized.

Oakland County undersheriff Mike McCabe said the suspect had not offered any resistance when he was arrested, which he said took place within five minutes of the first 911 call being received, simply putting his hands on his head and surrendering.

A motive for the attack has not yet been established, according to the undersheriff, as the teen invoked his right to an attorney and declined to speak to officers, apparently on the instruction of his parents.

On Wednesday, Mr Crumbley appeared virtually in court to face the charges and plead not guilty. Asked by the judge if he understood the charges, he calmly said: “Yes, I do.”

The teenager was charged as an adult with one count of terrorism, four counts of first-degree murder, seven counts of assault with intent to murder, 12 counts of possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony.

Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald said the charges stemmed from “undeniable” evidence that the attack was premeditated.

Prosecutors told the judge that CCTV footage from the school showed Mr Crumbley “methodically and deliberately” firing on his fellow students.

The judge accepted prosecutors’ request to deny him bail and transfer him out of juvenile detention to the county jail because he could pose a threat to other minor prisoners.

Mr McCabe said investigators planned to examine Mr Crumbley’s smartphone and social media posts as they search for clues pointing to a possible motive and that they have already executed a search warrant on his house, retrieving several items, notably a cache of weapons including long guns.

It has also emerged that Mr Crumbley wrote on Instagram just hours before he started shooting: “Now I become death - destroyer of worlds - see you tomorrow Oxford.”

His journal also reportedly contains notes about his fantasies of doing violence to his contemporaries at school.

Speaking to CNN on Wednesday, Oakland County sheriff Michael Bouchard said: “It’s clear that he came out with the intent to kill people. He was shooting people at close range, oftentimes towards the head and chest... It’s just absolutely coldhearted murders.”


Mr Bouchard said investigators were examining further writings belonging to the shooter obtained in the middle of the night that contain “some of his thoughts”.

“We can’t get the motive from the suspect that we have in custody, but we think we’ve got a path to get a lot of supportive information as to how and why this occurred,” he said.

Sheriff Bouchard said at the time that he was unaware of any previous run-ins with law enforcement by the suspect, adding that investigators had so far seen nothing to suggest a history of disciplinary problems.

However, it has since been reported that the teen and his parents had a meeting with his teachers who were concerned about his behaviour and that Mr Crumbley had been part of another meeting without them a day earlier.

Sheriff Bouchard added that forensic technicians were still collecting evidence from the crime scene, while detectives were gathering video footage from security cameras mounted around the school and interviewing witnesses and those acquainted with the suspect.

The shooter is understood to have emerged from one of the school’s bathrooms at approximately 12.51pm bearing the pistol, which had been hidden in his backpack and was purchased by his father on Black Friday four days earlier.

Chilling footage subsequently emerging from the incident shows him firing off between 15 and 20 shots from multiple magazines as he stalks the school’s halls.

At one point, he is seen banging on a door and claiming to be a police officer in a bid to dupe people into coming out into the corridor, ordering someone to: “Just open the door bro.”

His fellow students are meanwhile seen running for cover and barring classroom doors with chairs.


Robin Redding, a mother of one of the teenagers at the school, caused a stir in the aftermath of the incident when she told the Associated Press: “This couldn’t be just random. Kids just, like they’re just mad at each other at this school.”

Her remark inspired rumours that the suspect might have issued overt threats in advance of his rampage but this was denied by Sheriff Bouchard, who said: “There was no prior information shared with the Sheriff’s Office or the School Resource Officer before the incident.”

Mr Crumbley’s own mother, Jennifer Crumbley, once wrote an open letter to Donald Trump, it has since emerged, in which she expressed pro-gun sentiments and thanked him for safeguarding her right to own firearms.

“As a female and a Realtor, thank you for allowing my right to bear arms. Allowing me to be protected if I show a home to someone with bad intentions. Thank you for respecting that Amendment,” she posted on her blog in November 2016.


Everything we know about Michigan shooting suspect Ethan Crumbley

Ethan Crumbley: Who is Michigan school shooting suspect?

Cops crack down on ‘copycat threats’ and fake Ethan Crumbley social media accounts

Several social media accounts pretending to be suspect Ethan Crumbley have cropped up in the wake of Tuesday’s mass shooting in Michigan.

Mr Crumbley’s accounts were removed from public view shortly after his arrest at Oxford High School, only to be replaced by imposters posing as him in a bid to spread misinformation, police say.

It comes as dozens of high schools across Michigan have cancelled in-person classes this week due to “copycat threats” circulating online.

Michigan State Police Lt addressed the fake accounts on Thursday and acknowledged that the people behind them are not technically committing a crime.

“Unfortunately, poor taste is not against the law,” he told the Detroit Free Press.

Michigan school shooting: Cops crack down on fake accounts in Ethan Crumbley’s name

Crumbley’s real social media accounts were removed from public view shortly after his arrest at Oxford High School

Investigators list all the red flags around Ethan Crumbley

Investigators say they’ve uncovered a “mountain of evidence” that Ethan Crumbley plotted the shooting he is accused of perpetrating well in advance, outlining plans in a journal and sharing his intentions in two videos filmed before the shooting.

His social media accounts were allegedly studded with menacing posts, including a photo of the handgun he used in his rampage and an apparent countdown warning: “Now I become death – destroyer of worlds – see you tomorrow Oxford.”


A journal of plans to kill, warnings from teachers and a chilling ‘countdown’: The red flags around alleged Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley
Revelations about suspect Ethan Crumbley’s menacing social media posts, confessional videos and ‘disturbing’ classroom behaviour have sparked a debate over whether more could have been done to prevent the deadly shooting at Oxford High School.

by Megan Sheets
12/3/21

As the tight-knit community of Oxford Township, Michigan, struggles to pick up the pieces from a deadly high school shooting, revelations about multiple red flags from the days prior are fuelling an impossible question: why wasn’t something done to prevent this?

Suspect Ethan Crumbley is accused of shooting dead four classmates and wounding seven others at Oxford High School on Tuesday.

The 15-year-old sophomore is facing 24 charges including one count of terrorism and four counts of first-degree murder, which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Investigators reportedly uncovered a “mountain of evidence” showing Mr Crumbley allegedly plotted his attack well in advance, outlining plans in a journal and sharing his intentions in two videos filmed before the shooting.

His social media accounts were allegedly studded with menacing posts, including a photo of the handgun he used in his rampage and an apparent countdown warning: “Now I become death – destroyer of worlds – see you tomorrow Oxford.”

Teachers at Oxford High School raised concerns about the teen’s behaviour twice in the days leading up to the shooting, authorities say. The second time took place on the morning of the shooting, when Mr Crumbley’s parents met with him and administrators at the school.


Details about the behaviour that prompted those concerns remain unclear, but they were serious enough for Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald to question why Mr Crumbley was allowed to return to class after the meeting.

Students and parents described a sense of unease on the campus in the weeks prior, saying that threats of a violence had been circulating for some time. The school acknowledged the rumours in a letter to parents in mid-November.

When pieced together, these details paint a picture that casts doubt on claims by school administrators and law enforcement that they had no prior knowledge of what would come to take place on Tuesday.


‘Desire to kill’

Gunshots rang out in the halls of Oxford High School just before 1pm, sending students scrambling for cover as they’d been taught in routine active shooter drills.

Surveillance video purportedly showed Mr Crumbley emerging from a bathroom with a 9mm Sig Sauer SP2022 semi-automatic handgun. Prosecutors said he fired the gun “methodically” but appeared to be targeting people at random.

Officers from more than 60 law enforcement agencies in the area responded to the scene and took Mr Crumbley into custody within five minutes of the first shots.

In those five minutes, Mr Crumbley fired at least 30 rounds, police said. There were still 18 rounds in his gun when he surrendered.

Three students - Tate Myre, 16; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; and Hana St Juliana, 14 - were pronounced dead at the scene and a fourth, 17-year-old Justin Shilling, died in hospital the next day. A further six students and one teacher were injured.


The carnage which seemed unimaginable to students, parents and community members who watched it unfold was exactly what Mr Crumbley intended, according to prosecutors.

Details about his alleged plans for the attack emerged at his arraignment on Wednesday.

Lt Tim Willis of the Oakland County Sheriff’s office said investigators found two videos on Mr Crumbley’s cell phone in which he talked about shooting and killing students at the high school.

They also found a journal in his backpack which described his “desire to shoot up the school to include murdering students”, Mr Willis said.

Mr Crumbley’s Instagram page reportedly featured a photo of the handgun he used in the shooting, with the caption: “Just got my new beauty today.” His father, James Crumbley, reportedly purchased the gun on Black Friday.


Ms McDonald, the Oakland County prosecutor, highlighted another “disturbing” and “troubling” piece of evidence at a press conference on Wednesday, but said she could not yet disclose what it was.

She said investigators are still sifting through evidence but have thus far have zero doubt that the attack was premeditated. “I am absolutely sure after reviewing the evidence that it isn’t even a close call, it was absolutely premeditated,” she said.

Parents under scrutiny

Ms McDonald said investigators are working to determine whether Mr Crumbley’s parents, Jennifer and James Crumbley, knew of his plans for the attack. She said her office is still weighing the possibility of charges against the pair.

They were, however, aware of concerns about his behaviour in the days prior, according to Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard.

Mr Bouchard said two teachers separately reported concerning behaviour from Mr Crumbley, first on the day before the shooting and again on the day it happened.

The first came when "a teacher in the classroom where he was a student saw and heard something that she felt was disturbing”, Mr Bouchard told CNN.

“They had a counselling session about it with school officials, and a phone call was left with the parents,” he added.

The following day, a different teacher “saw behaviour they felt was concerning” and called Mr Crumbley into a meeting with school officials, which his parents also joined.

Mr Crumbley was allowed to return to class after the meeting. Just hours later, he opened fire.


After he was taken into custody, Mr Crumbley’s parents refused to give investigators permission to speak to him, authorities said. They appeared at his arraignment via video, but did not say anything.

A cache of weapons was seized from the family’s home after the shooting, including several long guns.

Jennifer Crumbley, a real estate broker in Oxford, shared enthusiasm for guns in an open letter to Donald Trump in November 2016 after he was elected president.

“As a female and a Realtor, thank you for allowing my right to bear arms,” the 43-year-old wrote. “Allowing me to be protected if I show a home to someone with bad intentions. Thank you for respecting that Amendment.”

James Crumbley, a 45-year-old tech salesman, shared the letter on social media and wrote: “My wife can be spot on.”


Ms McDonald did not say whether investigators believe the parents knew their son had taken the handgun on the day of the shooting, or if he did so without permission.

Under Michigan law, the parents of a child who violates firearm-related statutes on school property or in a school vehicle can be held criminally liable if the parent knew the child’s intentions or furthered their actions.

As for whether charges will be filed against the parents, Ms McDonald said: “We know that owning a gun means securing it properly and locking it and keeping the ammunition separate and not allowing access to other individuals, particularly minors. We know that and we have to hold individuals accountable who don’t do that.”

Trouble on campus

Administrators at the school have also faced scrutiny over their handling of concerns about Mr Crumbley’s behaviour, as well as their response to rumours of violence on campus.

Speaking to reporters soon after the shooting, Oxford Community Schools Superintendent Tim Throne insisted the school had no prior knowledge of the attack.

As panicked parents rushed to locate their children in the chaos after the shooting, one mother claimed that her son had expressed serious concern about trouble brewing on the campus hours earlier.

Robin Redding told the Associated Press her son Treshan Bryant, a 12th grader at the school, opted to stay home on Tuesday because he and his younger cousins had a “bad feeling” that violence could be coming.

Mr Bryant told the outlet he had heard vague threats about plans for a shooting “for a long time now”.


“You’re not supposed to play about that,” he said. “This is real life.”

While investigators have yet to determine a motive for the shooting, Ms Redding said: “This couldn’t be just random.”

Ms Redding didn’t offer details about what her son had heard but shared general concern with safety at the school.

“Kids just, like they’re just mad at each other at this school,” she said.

It later emerged that school officials had sent a vague letter to parents dismissing the existence of safety threats on campus three weeks earlier.

“We are aware of the numerous rumors that have been circulating throughout our building this week. We understand that has created some concern for students and parents,” the letter dated 12 November stated.

“Please know that we have reviewed every concern shared with us and investigated all information provided. Some rumors have evolved from an incident last week, while others do not appear to have any connection. Student interpretations of social media posts and false information have exacerbated the overall concern.

“We want our parents and students to know there has been no threat to our building nor our students.”

Following the shooting, critics have pointed to the letter as evidence that the school knew trouble was brewing and didn’t do enough to address it.


‘Fervent hope’ for gun reform

Shockwaves from Tuesday’s shooting rippled far beyond the campus itself, as gun control advocates nationwide pointed to Oxford in renewed calls for reform.

The shooting joins a list of 28 that have taken place in US schools so far this year, according to Everytown.org.

Ms McDonald stressed the importance of learning from Oxford’s heartache during Wednesday’s press conference.

“We have watched school shootings unfold in this country for far too long,” she said. “Sadly, the national spotlight is shining today on our community.

“It’s my fervent hope that this will be the last time that we experience an incident like this in Oakland County or anywhere.”


Ethan Crumbley: Red flags raised before Michigan school shooting spark scrutiny

Revelations about suspect Ethan Crumbley’s menacing social media posts, confessional videos and ‘disturbing’ classroom behaviour have sparked a debate over whether more could have been done to prevent the deadly shooting at Oxford High School. Megan Sheets writes

Watch the full police press conference on the Crumbleys' arrest

Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard explained at a press conference on Saturday how Oakland sheriff’s deputies, the Detroit Police Department, and other law enforcement agencies worked together to capture James and Jennifer Crumbley.

“Everybody pitched in,” Mr Bouchard said. “We were confident we’d be able to find them in short order, and because of that teamwork we did.”

Crumbleys’ lawyers insist they were going to turn themselves in

Attorneys for the parents of the Oxford school shooting suspect have insisted that the couple planned to turn themselves in to authorities – despite police finding them hiding in a warehouse close to the Canadian border after they skipped their arraignment on Friday.

On Monday, a teacher reportedly found Mr Crumbley searching for ammunition on his cellphone. His parents were alerted, and his mother Jennifer allegedly texted him: “LOL I’m not mad at you, you have to learn not to get caught.”

-- Michigan school shooting: Ethan Crumbley’s parents charged with involuntary manslaughter. Charging decision for Jennifer and James Crumbley comes three days after their son allegedly killed four at Oxford High School, by Megan Sheets


Shannon Smith, an attorney for James and Jennifer Crumbley, told the court at their arraignment on Saturday morning that they had not been on the run and that it was “just a matter of logistics” as to when and how they would surrender.

“Our clients were absolutely going to turn themselves in,” she claimed.

Ethan Crumbley’s parents’ lawyers insist they were going to turn themselves in

James and Jennifer Crumbley were arrested in the early hours of Saturday morning hiding in a warehouse close to the Canadian border, say officials

Ethan Crumbley’s parents must be held ‘accountable,’ prosecutor says

The parents of Michigan school shooting suspect Ethan Crumbley must be held “accountable” for the massacre that left four students dead and can’t be trusted not to go on the run again, according to prosecutors.

Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald told the court during James and Jennifer Crumbley’s arraignment on Saturday morning that the couple knew their son was “dangerous” and “could have stopped” him from carrying out Tuesday’s mass shooting at Oxford High School.

“This is a very serious, horrible, terrible murder and shooting, and it has affected the entire community, and these two individuals could have stopped it,” she said.

Ethan Crumbley’s parents must be held ‘accountable’, says prosecutor

James and Jennifer Crumbley knew their son was ‘dangerous’ and ‘could have stopped’ him from carrying out Tuesday’s mass shooting at Oxford High School, says prosecutor
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Mon Dec 06, 2021 9:51 pm

'Absolute liars': Ex-D.C. Guard official says generals lied to Congress about Jan. 6. In a 36-page memo to the Capitol riot committee, Col. Earl Matthews also slams the Pentagon's inspector general for what he calls an error-ridden report.
by Betsy Woodruff Swan and Meredith McGraw
Politico
12/06/2021 04:30 AM EST

A former D.C. National Guard official is accusing two senior Army leaders of lying to Congress and participating in a secret attempt to rewrite the history of the military's response to the Capitol riot.

In a 36-page memo, Col. Earl Matthews, who held high-level National Security Council and Pentagon roles during the Trump administration, slams the Pentagon's inspector general for what he calls an error-riddled report that protects a top Army official who argued against sending the National Guard to the Capitol on Jan. 6, delaying the insurrection response for hours.

Matthews' memo, sent to the Jan. 6 select committee this month and obtained by POLITICO, includes detailed recollections of the insurrection response as it calls two Army generals — Gen. Charles Flynn, who served as deputy chief of staff for operations on Jan. 6, and Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt, the director of Army staff — “absolute and unmitigated liars” for their characterization of the events of that day. Matthews has never publicly discussed the chaos of the Capitol siege.


On Jan. 6, Matthews was serving as the top attorney to Maj. Gen. William Walker, then commanding general of the D.C. National Guard. Matthews’ memo defends the Capitol attack response by Walker, who now serves as the House sergeant at arms, amplifying Walker's previous congressional testimony about the hourslong delay in the military’s order for the D.C. National Guard to deploy to the riot scene.

“Every leader in the D.C. Guard wanted to respond and knew they could respond to the riot at the seat of government” before they were given clearance to do so on Jan. 6, Matthews’ memo reads. Instead, he said, D.C. guard officials “set [sic] stunned watching in the Armory” during the first hours of the attack on Congress during its certification of the 2020 election results.

Matthews' memo levels major accusations: that Flynn and Piatt lied to Congress about their response to pleas for the D.C. Guard to quickly be deployed on Jan. 6; that the Pentagon inspector general’s November report on Army leadership’s response to the attack was “replete with factual inaccuracies”; and that the Army has created its own closely held revisionist document about the Capitol riot that’s “worthy of the best Stalinist or North Korea propagandist.”

The memo follows Walker’s own public call for the inspector general to retract its detailed report on the events of Jan. 6, as first reported by The Washington Post. Walker told the Post he objected to specific allegations by the Pentagon watchdog that Matthews’ memo also criticizes, calling the inspector general’s report “inaccurate” and “sloppy work.”


Reached for comment on Matthews’ memo, Walker, the former head of the D.C. Guard, said the report speaks for itself and that he had nothing further to add. A Jan. 6 committee spokesperson declined to comment.

The new memo from Matthews, who now serves in the Army reserves, emerges as officials involved in the response that day try to explain their decision-making to investigators. The House select committee has probed the attack for months, and earlier this year top officials testified before the House oversight panel.

Reached for comment, Matthews said the memo he wrote is entirely accurate. “Our Army has never failed us and did not do so on January 6, 2021,” he said. “However, occasionally some of our Army leaders have failed us and they did so on January 6th. Then they lied about it and tried to cover it up. They tried to smear a good man and to erase history.”

Flynn, now the commanding general of the U.S. Army Pacific, and Piatt didn't respond to messages. Army spokesperson Mike Brady said in a statement that the service's "actions on January 6th have been well-documented and reported on, and Gen. Flynn and Lt. Gen. Piatt have been open, honest and thorough in their sworn testimony with Congress and DOD investigators."

“As the Inspector General concluded, actions taken ‘were appropriate, supported by requirements, consistent with the DOD’s roles and responsibilities for DSCA, and compliant with laws, regulations, and other applicable guidance," Brady added. “We stand by all testimony and facts provided to date, and vigorously reject any allegations to the contrary. However, with the January 6th Commission’s investigation still ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment further.”

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Former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund testifies before a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs & Senate Rules and Administration joint hearing on Capitol Hill, Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021, to examine the January 6th attack on the Capitol. (Erin Scott/The New York Times via AP, Pool) | Erin Scott/The New York Times via AP

A 2:30 phone call

Matthews’ memo begins by focusing on a 2:30 p.m. conference call on Jan. 6 that included senior military and law enforcement officials, himself and Walker among them. Then-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund “pleaded” on the call for the immediate deployment of the National Guard to the Capitol, Matthews recalled, saying that rioters had breached the building’s perimeter. Walker has also told Congress that Sund made that plea then. According to Matthews, Flynn and Piatt both opposed the move.

At the time, Piatt was the director of Army staff, one of the top generals in the Pentagon, and Flynn was the Army’s director of operations. The two men were the highest-ranking Army officials who spoke on the 2:30 call, according to Matthews.

“LTG Piatt stated that it would not be his best military advice to recommend to the Secretary of the Army that the D.C. National Guard be allowed to deploy to the Capitol at that time,” Matthews wrote, adding: “LTGs Piatt and Flynn stated that the optics of having uniformed military personnel deployed to the U.S. Capitol would not be good."

Piatt and Flynn suggested instead that Guardsmen take over D.C. police officers’ traffic duties so those officers could head to the Capitol, Matthews continues. [!!!]


In addition to Matthews’ memo, POLITICO also obtained a document produced by a D.C. Guard official and dated Jan. 7 that lays out a timeline of Jan. 6. The D.C. Guard timeline, a separate document whose author took notes during the call, also said that Piatt and Flynn at 2:37 p.m. “recommended for DC Guard to standby,” rather than immediately deploying to the Capitol during the riot.

Four minutes later, according to that Guard timeline, Flynn again “advised D.C. National Guard to standby until the request has been routed” to then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and then-acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller.

Everyone on the call was “astounded” except Piatt and Flynn, Matthews wrote.

Both men, however, later denied to Congress that they had said the Guard shouldn’t deploy to the Capitol.


In response to a written question from House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) in June about whether Piatt advised anyone in the Guard’s chain of command not to deploy directly to the Capitol, Piatt wrote, “At no point on January 6 did I tell anyone that the D.C. National Guard should not deploy directly to the Capitol.”

That statement, Matthews says in his memo, is “false and misleading.”

Walker also testified to Congress in March that Piatt and Flynn expressed concerns about “optics.”

Further, Flynn told Maloney that he “never expressed a concern about the visuals, image, or public perception of" sending Guardsmen to the Capitol.

That answer, Matthews says in his memo, is “outright perjury.”

Matthews wrote that he and Walker “heard Flynn identify himself and unmistakably heard him say that optics of a National Guard presence on Capitol Hill was an issue for him. That it would not look good. Either Piatt or Flynn mentioned ‘peaceful protestors.’”

Flynn’s brother, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, promulgated a host of conspiracy theories in the lead-up to Jan. 6 and called for former President Donald Trump to impose martial law. Matthews’ memo does not insinuate that Gen. Charles Flynn’s actions on Jan. 6 were shaped by his brother, who has been subpoenaed by the select committee, and does not mention Michael Flynn.

The two generals told the House oversight committee that the Guard wasn’t ready to respond to the chaos that day, and Flynn testified to the House Oversight Committee in June that a “team of over 40 officers and non-commissioned officers immediately worked to recall the 154 D.C. National Guard personnel from their current missions, reorganize them, re-equip them, and begin to redeploy them to the Capitol.”

Matthews says that assertion “constituted the willful deception of Congress.”

“If it does not constitute the willful and deliberate misleading of Congress, then nothing does,” Matthews wrote of Flynn’s statement. “Flynn was referring to 154 D.C. Guardsmen who were already on duty, were trained in civil disturbance response, already had area familiarization with Washington, DC, were properly kitted and were delayed only because of inaction and inertia at the Pentagon.”


In other words, Matthews indicates, the idea that it took 40 officers to get 154 National Guard personnel ready to go to the Capitol beggars belief.

Every D.C. Guard leader was desperate to get to the Capitol to help, Matthews writes — then stunned by the delay in deployment. Responding to civil unrest in Washington is “a foundational mission, a statutory mission of the D.C. National Guard,” his memo notes.

“Their attitude was ‘This is What We Do.’ ‘Send Me,’” the memo continues.

It adds that the previous summer, when civil unrest unfolded in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd, the D.C. Guard was deployed numerous times to protect federal buildings. Its belated mobilization on Jan. 6, Matthews continues, was a jarring break from the norm.

Importantly, Matthews’ memo alone paints an incomplete picture of how the Army’s top leadership responded to Jan. 6. Matthews indicates he did not have firsthand knowledge of what the Army Secretary was doing for much of the afternoon — and, in fact, says D.C. National Guard leaders at times had trouble finding him.

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Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, left, speaks during a briefing at the Pentagon on Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo

Where was Ryan McCarthy?

While taking issue with the Pentagon watchdog’s timeline regarding the actions and involvement of key figures in the response, Matthews' memo seeks to illustrate errors in the Pentagon inspector general report released last month.

That report states that McCarthy had to call Walker twice on Jan. 6 to order him to deploy the D.C. Guard. Matthews’ memo calls this “an outrageous assertion … as insulting as it is false,” and says McCarthy himself was “incommunicado or unreachable for most of the afternoon.”

The inspector general’s report says McCarthy arrived at the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department at 4:05 p.m., and that “witnesses told us that not having heard from MG Walker regarding any specific plan." McCarthy and others present, including D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee, themselves drafted a comprehensive plan for the Guard's deployment, according to the Pentagon watchdog.

The report further says that soon afterward, Miller and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reviewed that plan over the phone. Miller authorized the deployment of the D.C. Guard and McCarthy informed Walker of it during a call at 4:35 p.m; McCarthy then held a press conference with the D.C. mayor and called Walker again to reissue the order that he deploy the Guard, according to the Pentagon inspector general.

Matthews challenges that Jan. 6 timetable in his memo. He writes that D.C. Guard leaders “still have not seen this so-called plan developed by McCarthy and allegedly approved by Acting Secretary Miller at 4:32PM.” He adds that the idea that the Army secretary would give Guard personnel support for tactical planning and coordination is “patently absurd.”

Walker, meanwhile, has said no call happened between him and McCarthy at 4:35 p.m.
The D.C. Guard’s Jan. 6 timeline — produced while Walker helmed the D.C. National Guard — does not document any phone call between McCarthy and Walker at 4:35.

Both McCarthy and Miller declined to comment.

Megan Reed, a spokesperson for the Pentagon inspector general, said their office stands by its report.

'Stalinist Propaganda'

Matthews' memo also homes in on a document that Army officials have referenced but never fully revealed, titled “Report of the Army’s Operations on January 6 2021." In Matthews' view, it lays out a fabricated timeline in a bid to burnish the Army's reputation.

According to Matthews, Piatt helped produce the document after a series of bruising congressional hearings and news reports that damaged the reputations of Army senior leadership
— among them, a Washington Post report that the Army falsely denied Flynn’s participation in the 2:30 p.m. phone call.

“In March 2021, MG Walker was told by a friend that LTG Piatt was so upset with MG Walker that he directed the development of an Army ‘White Paper’ to retell events of 6 January in a light more favorable to LTGs Flynn, Piatt, Secretary McCarthy and the Army Staff,” Matthews writes.

The Army Staff ultimately sought “to create an alternate history which would be the Army’s official recollection of events,” Matthews continues, adding: “The end product, a revisionist tract worthy of the best Stalinist or North Korea propagandist, was close hold," kept secret from the public.


But members of Congress have seen the document. Piatt referenced it during a House Oversight Committee hearing in June when asked about conflicting recollections of the afternoon of Jan. 6.

“I would refer to the U.S. Army Report of Operations on January 6 that we submitted to this committee,” Piatt told lawmakers. “What the D.C. National Guard did in those short hours was extraordinary. Now when people’s lives are on the line, two minutes is too long. But we were not positioned to respond to that urgent request. We had to re-prepare so we would send them in prepared for ... this new mission.”
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Tue Dec 07, 2021 4:34 am

Part 1 of 2

The Harder Right: An Analysis of a Recent DoD Inspector General Investigation and Other Matters
by Colonel Earl G. Matthews, U.S. Army
December 1, 2021

May we ever choose the harder right, instead of the easier wrong.

-- Thomas Monson


The purpose of this memorandum is to outline and detail the myriad inaccuracies, false or misleading statements, or examples of faulty analysis contained in a recent publicly released Department of Defense Inspector General (DoDIG) report of its investigation into the Department of Defense’s actions leading up to and in response to the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol which occurred on 6 January 2021. This memorandum will also detail a series of false and/or misleading statements or documents deliberately made or submitted to the DoDIG and/or to the House Oversight and Reform Committee by senior officers of the United States Army1. This memorandum will conclusively show that at least two general officers of the Army engaged in repeated violations of 18 U.S.C. §§ 907, 1001, 1621. One of these general officers now leads an Army Service Component Command.2 The other will soon be nominated to lead an Army Command.3

Although written in the third person, the recollections expressed are those of Major General (Retired) William J. Walker, U.S. Army, who served as Commanding General of the District of Columbia National Guard on the date in question, and Colonel Earl G. Matthews, U.S. Army, who then served as his Staff Judge Advocate. This memorandum was drafted primarily by Colonel Matthews with the assistance of current and former D.C. National Guard officers who were continuously with MG Walker during the afternoon and evening of 6 January 2021, or who otherwise supported our response to the attack on the Capitol. This memorandum is drawn from the contemporaneous notes and emails of these soldiers and airmen and from their individual and collective memories.

Inspector General investigations are usually and appropriately accorded great deference because they are normally unbiased, independent, contain careful analysis of facts and circumstances, and because they make determinations as to the credibility, veracity and biases of particular witnesses, based on the preponderance of the evidence. Unfortunately, the DoDIG report on its investigation into DoD actions leading up to and during the 6 January attack was marked by few of these characteristics.

The DoDIG report relied heavily on close associates of LTG Walter Piatt and other Army Staff principals and the DoDIG failed to interview numerous District of Columbia National Guard personnel with highly relevant information. The DoDIG Report eventually adopted a narrative formed and developed by LTG Piatt, and his close associates, and is fundamentally flawed as a result.

The DoDIG report is replete with factual inaccuracies, discrepancies and faulty analysis. It relies on demonstrably false testimony or statements. The focus of this memorandum is on the discrepancies and falsehoods that DoDIG relied on to produce its report. The danger is that if this report, with its glaring errors and wholesale adoption of the Army company line, is accorded the deference typically afforded inspector general investigations, the report will become part of the historical record and a false narrative will have been as adopted fact. Discerning what happened on 6 January is too important to get wrong. If we do not fully comprehend and analyze what occurred on 6 January, the danger is that history will repeat itself. Our collective goal as a government and an American people should be to ensure that what occurred on 6 January does not happen again.

MG Walker’s view is that words matter, accuracy matters and precision matters. All too often the DoDIG Report lacked accuracy and precision.

A plausible argument can be made that the imprecision and inaccuracy begins with the title of the DoDIG report itself. The report is titled “ Review of the DoD’s Role, Responsibilities, and Actions to Prepare For the Protest and Its Aftermath at the U.S. Capitol Campus on January 6, 2021.”4 However, what occurred at the Capitol on 6 January was no mere “protest,” it was a riot and an assault on our democracy which occurred at the very seat of government. To not call it what it was is to minimize the importance and gravity of what occurred.

A Review of Key Events

Beginning at 1:49 p.m. on 6 January 2021, MG Walker began to receive a series of frantic telephone calls from the then Chief of the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP), Steven Sund informing MG Walker that the security perimeter at the U.S. Capitol had been breached by hostile rioters. Chief Sund, his voice cracking with emotion, indicated that there was a dire emergency on Capitol Hill and requested the immediate assistance of as many D.C. National Guard personnel as MG Walker could muster at the intersection of New Jersey and Louisiana Avenues, where law enforcement personnel from various local and federal law enforcement partners were assembling to assist and support U.S. Capitol Police efforts to restore order at the Capitol. MG Walker immediately made the Secretary of the Army aware of Chief Sund’s request and requested permission to assist USCP. At roughly 2:30PM on January 6, 2021, Dr. Christopher Rodriguez, Director of the District of Columbia Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (DCHSEMA) established a telephone bridge and invited MG Walker, Secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, MPD Chief Robert Contee, USCP Chief Steve Sund, D.C. Deputy Mayor Dr. Roger Mitchell and U.S. Secret Service Uniformed Division Chief Thomas Sullivan to join. Conference call participants were informed that Secretary McCarthy was not available for the conference call as he had gone to see the Acting Secretary of Defense. McCarthy did not participate in the call. However, Lieutenant General Walter Piatt, Director of the Army Staff and Lieutenant General Charles Flynn, the Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, were both on the call. As was Colonel John Lubas, Executive Officer to the Secretary of the Army. Additionally, Brigadier General Aaron Dean, the Adjutant General of the D.C. National Guard, Colonel Earl Matthews, Staff Judge Advocate of the D.C. National Guard, Command Sergeant Major Michael Brooks, the DCNG Senior Enlisted Advisor, and 1St Lieutenant Timothy Nick, MG Walker’s aide-de-camp, all joined MG Walker in his office at the D.C. Armory for this 2:30 p.m. conference call.

During the 2:30PM conference call, Chief Sund of the USCP pleaded for the immediate support of the D.C. National Guard at the U.S. Capitol as the security perimeter at the Capitol was being breached at that very moment. Chief Contee reinforced Chief Sund’s request. Chief Contee asked Chief Sund aloud if he was requesting immediate D.C. National Guard support at the Capitol. Chief Sund replied “Yes”. Chief Contee then asked LTG Piatt if the D.C. Guard would be sent to the Capitol. LTG Piatt stated that it would not be his best military advice to recommend to the Secretary of the Army that the D.C. National Guard be allowed to deploy to the Capitol at that time. LTG Piatt stated that the presence of uniformed military personnel could inflame the situation and that the police were best suited to handle the situation. Both LTGs Piatt and Flynn stated that the optics of having uniformed military personnel deployed to the U.S. Capitol would not be good.

Chief Contee then stated that he would inform the Mayor (D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser) that the Army was refusing to send the National Guard to the Capitol and that he would ask her to convene a press conference to make this refusal known. LTG Piatt then asked Chief Contee to please not do this. Piatt stated that the request for Guard presence was not being refused and he had no power to deny or approve the request, only that he would not recommend approval to his civilian leadership. Piatt and Flynn recommended that Contee identify locations away from the Capitol where D.C. National Guard personnel could relieve MPD personnel of traffic duties, allowing more MPD personnel to surge to the Capitol. LTG Flynn also stated that the best use of D.C. National Guard personnel would be to free up MPD personnel by performing non-law enforcement traffic duties away from the Capitol. LTGs Piatt and Flynn recommended the D.C. National Guard develop a plan to support MPD at locations other than the Capitol. The telephone call that began at 2:30PM ended at approximately 2:55PM. LTG Flynn then directed that a secure video conference bridge be established between the Army Staff and the D.C. National Guard Leadership.

At approximately 3:05PM, MG Walker joined from his office the secure videoconference hosted by LTG Charles Flynn. Present with MG Walker were BG Dean, COL Matthews, 1LT Nick and CSM Brooks. This secure video teleconference would be continuous until around 5:15PM. Personnel in this teleconference included LTG Piatt, LTG Flynn, later General James McConville, Chief of Staff of the Army, LTG Leslie Smith, Inspector General of the Army, BG Matthew D. Smith, Mr. Casey Wardynski, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, Wardynski’s deputy, Mr. Marshall Williams, and numerous others who joined and left the call as necessary. This teleconference was used to share information that was received from various sources by the D.C. National Guard or Army leadership. Army leaders on the call provided a situational update to GEN McConville. During this call, at 5:08PM, GEN McConville informed MG Walker and his leadership team that the Secretary of Defense had authorized the D.C. National Guard to deploy to the Capitol in support of the USCP.

Getting Facts Consistently Wrong on the 2:30PM Phone Conference

The DoDIG report consistently gets basic information incorrect as to events that transpired during the day on 6 January. The actual participants on the 2:30 p.m. conference call in which USCP Chief Sund and MPD Chief Contee, and others, pleaded for D.C. National Guard assistance is but one example. Although the call was arranged through the Secretary of the Army’s Executive Officer, COL John Lubas, MG Walker and the other non-Pentagon based participants in the call were told McCarthy was unavailable as he had gone to the Acting Secretary of Defense’s office.

The DoDIG report incorrectly indicates that McCarthy was an active participant on the call and that he spoke for roughly 5 minutes, before departing. During these 5 minutes, McCarthy was able, according to the DoDIG report, to “hear and acknowledge the urgent request from Mr. Sund and Mayor Bowser.” In reality, McCarthy could not have heard from Bowser during the 2:30 p.m. call because she did not participate in the call. Further, there was no indication that she was listening to the call silently. The DoDIG got this important point wrong. Active participants from the D.C. government during the call included Chief Contee, Dr. Rodriguez and Deputy Mayor Mitchell, but not Mayor Bowser. The only active participants in the call from Army headquarters were LTG Piatt, LTG Flynn and COL Lubas. COL Lubas only spoke to announce that McCarthy could not participate and to introduce Piatt and Flynn. The DoDIG report, however quotes several unnamed “Army witnesses” who consistently observed things that did not actually occur during the 2:30 p.m. call:

A supposed witness involved on the call is quoted as saying “Mayor Bowser and Chief Contee were frustrated that LTG Piatt told them that “Mr. McCarthy was getting the approval from Mr. Miller rather than saying, ‘Yes, we’re coming.’”

The DoDIG further notes “according to an Army witness on the call, Mayor Bowser made the statement about telling the media the Army denied the USCP request”

An unnamed witness to the 2:30 p.m. call stated “Mr. McCarthy asked MG Walker how quickly the QRF could respond MG Walker said that the QRF could move in 20 minutes.”

LTG Piatt incorrectly told the DoDIG that Secretary McCarthy directed MG Walker to move the QRF to the Armory during the 2:30PM conference call. This could not have occurred as McCarthy did not speak during the conference call and McCarthy was with the Acting Secretary of Defense at the time in question.

LTG Flynn is portrayed by the report as having listened to the 2:30PM conference call for “a couple of minutes,” not saying anything and then leaving to establish a video conference. The report states that “Army witnesses” confirmed that LTG Flynn’s participation was minimal. These may have been some of the same “Army witnesses” who, according to open press reporting, repeatedly and strenuously denied to the press for days that Flynn was even a participant on the 2:30PM conference call which occurred on 6 January. MG Walker conversely recalls that LTG Flynn was an active participant on the call who stayed to the end of the call and that Flynn commented on the negative optics that would ensue from the presence of uniformed military personnel at the Capitol. Flynn wanted the DCNG to develop a plan to have D.C. National Guard personnel relieve MPD elements at locations away from the Capitol in order to free up MPD resources to go to the Capitol.

According to the DoDIG report, “two Army witnesses” claimed that LTG Piatt asked questions during the 2:30 phone conference such as “what was happening at the Capitol, what tasks DCNG personnel would perform, whether they should be armed, who the QRF would align with, and where the QRF would assemble once they arrived at the Capitol”? An Army witness claimed that “no one on the conference call could answer LTG Piatt’s questions.” This allegation is false on its face and does not withstand basic parsing. Chief Sund, Chief Contee and Chief Sullivan, of the U.S. Secret Service Uniform Division, where relaying real-time reports of events at the Capitol from their respective police personnel arrayed there. The request for DCNG personnel at the Capitol came from Chief Sund, who was on the call. Sund knew exactly what mission he wanted the DCNG personnel to perform was. Sund wanted as many riot-equipped (helmets, body armor, shin guards, batons and shields) D.C. National Guard personnel as possible to report to the Capitol where they would assist USCP personnel in re-establishing the security perimeter which had been breached. Chief Sund had previously provided a link-up location where DCNG personnel should report to the USCP, the corner of New Jersey & Louisiana Avenues. There was never any contemplation or expectation by Chief Sund or Chief Contee that the requested DCNG would be equipped with firearms. The DCNG personnel would essentially perform the same roles they performed at Lafayette Square, along the National Mall, and other locations around Washington, DC during the civil unrest which followed the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. The DCNG was a seasoned forced when it came to civil disturbance response operations, having conducted these missions, or prepared to conduct such missions, extensively over the previous 6 months. As MG Walker stated to the DoDIG when interviewed, the DCNG operational plan was to get as many riot gear-equipped Guardsmen on buses and to the Capitol, as soon as possible, where they would form up and take direction from MPD and/or USCP.

A Question Raised By the McCarthy-Miller Meeting

The DoDIG report indeed raises more questions than it answers. According to the report, at 2:30PM on 6 January, at roughly the same time that the conference call was occurring between LTGs Piatt and Flynn, Chief Sund, Chief Contee, DCNG leaders and others, Secretary McCarthy was meeting with Acting Secretary of Defense Miller. According to the DoDIG report, during their 2:30PM meeting, “McCarthy told Miller that the DCNG needed to mobilize everything and move to the Capitol as quickly as possible, and Mr. Miller immediately agreed.” The report goes on to state that “Miller ordered McCarthy to mobilize all of the DCNG’s 1100 personnel at approximately 3:04 p.m.”. Miller told the DoDIG that his 3:04PM order “gave McCarthy the approval and guidance he needed to mobilize the DCNG to help the USCP and MPD, and that Walker would immediately employ the QRF.” When asked by the DoDIG whether Miller’s order to mobilize the entire DCNG included approval to deploy DCNG personnel immediately to the Capitol to support the MPD and the USCP, McCarthy replied, “It did.”

The DoDIG report glosses over this crucial point. Miller claims he gave McCarthy full discretion to employ the DCNG in force to the Capitol at 3:04PM. For some reason , however, McCarthy felt the need to go back to Miller to report a so-called plan of deployment. It is not clear, whether Miller directly asked McCarthy to come back with a plan, or whether McCarthy simply sought buy-in from Miller because he did not want to be responsible for making the decision to deploy DCNG personnel on his own. The DoDIG does not address whether it asked Acting Secretary Miller if McCarthy was required to submit a plan to address the ongoing emergency then extant at the Capitol, or whether McCarthy simply chose to bring back a plan for approval. Miller’s statement to the DoDIG and his testimony to Congress would indicate that Miller believed that his further concurrence or approval, after his 3:04 PM direction to McCarthy to mobilize the DCNG, was not necessary before the DCNG could deploy to the Capitol. On May 12, 2021, in his sworn testimony before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, in response to questioning by Representative Ocasio-Cortez, former Acting Secretary Miller stated that MG Walker had “full authority. . .in my mind at 3:04.” Later in the same hearing, in response to questioning by Representative Hank Johnson, former Acting Secretary Miller stated, that Walker had “all the approval and authorities he needed at 3:04 when the order went out.” Secretary McCarthy however, believed he did not have the authority and approval he needed at 3:04 PM. The DoDIG does not acknowledge or address this obvious disconnect.

McCarthy supposedly briefed his “plan” to deploy the DCNG to Miller at 4:30PM, nearly 90 minutes after Miller, according to Miller’s statement to the DoDIG and his sworn testimony to a congressional committee, gave McCarthy full authorization to deploy the DCNG to support the MPD and USCP at the Capitol.

Another Fictious Phone Call

The DoDIG report claims that:

Mr. McCarthy left Mr. Miller’s office and called MG Walker at approximately 3:05 p.m. Mr. McCarthy did not want to send the DCNG to the Capitol without a plan he could present to Mr. Miller. A witness told us Mr. McCarthy and MG Walker discussed how many personnel were already at the Armory and where the DCNG could replace or reinforce MPD officers, freeing the MPD to respond to events at the Capitol in greater numbers. Mr. McCarthy directed MG Walker to recall DCNG personnel to the Armory, including the QRF at JBA and those already supporting the MPD at Metro stations.5 He ordered all personnel be equipped with riot shields and batons, and for MG Walker to prepare a “hasty” plan to support law enforcement at the Capitol.


The above recitation of events, cited as fact by the DoDIG, does not withstand even light scrutiny. MG Walker had directed that the QRF move from Joint Base Andrews to the Armory on his initiative in advance of 3:05PM (DCNG records show 14:12). Further, all D.C. National Guard personnel preparing to go to the Capitol were already fully kitted out with riot gear.6

MG Walker categorically denies that Secretary McCarthy called him at 3:05PM on 6 January. MG Walker at that time was in the midst of a video teleconference with LTG Piatt, LTG Flynn and senior Army leaders, and DCNG key leaders, discussing events at the Capitol and potential DCNG responses thereto. MG Walker would have of course prioritized a call from the Secretary of the Army, his direct and immediate superior, if it had come, but it did not. The above passage, posited as a fact by the DoDIG, apparently does not rely on the firsthand statements of Secretary McCarthy or MG Walker, but the recollection of an anonymous witness. MG Walker maintains that this phone call did not occur. Further, the idea that the DCNG should plan to replace MPD personnel away from the Capitol to free up the MPD to respond to the Capitol was what LTGs Piatt and Flynn proposed during the 2:30 phone conference, however, it is contrary to the determination McCarthy told the DoDIG he made shortly after 2:30 and conveyed to Miller , “that the DCNG needed to mobilize everything and move to the Capitol as quickly as possible.” (see p. 54 of the report).

The Making of a False Narrative

The most glaring deficiencies and outright falsehoods in the DoDIG report relate to events which transpired after Secretary McCarthy traveled to MPD headquarters at 3:48PM to meet with Mayor Bowser and Chief Contee. The purpose of the meeting was ostensibly to reassure Mayor Bowser that DCNG support had not been previously refused and was imminent, and to initiate a plan for the DCNG’s eventual insertion into the Capitol.

The entire “planning narrative” created by BG LaNeve (and LTG Piatt) to justify the delay and inaction of Army civilian leadership between 3:04PM and 5:08PM strains credulity. The crux of this narrative is that, at 3:04PM, Acting Secretary Miller approved the mobilization of the DCNG (which Miller may have interpreted as granting McCarthy permission to send DCNG personnel immediately to the Capitol to support USCP), however McCarthy wanted to see a plan, and to brief it to Miller and have Miller approve the plan before sending DCNG personnel to the Capitol. Under this narrative, MG Walker was either unable or unwilling to develop a workable plan, so Secretary McCarthy took it upon himself to travel to MPD headquarters, to confer with Mayor Bowser and Chief Contee and to, with their help, personally develop a plan for the employment of the DCNG at the Capitol in support of USCP. The report alleges, based on the statements of anonymous witnesses, “Secretary McCarthy, Mayor Bowser, Chief Contee and others present drafted a detailed plan that identified where DCNG personnel would go, the route they would take, whom they would support, who was in charge, and who the key leaders were.” This detailed plan was developed between the time that McCarthy arrived at MPD HQ at 4:05PM (or 4:10PM according to the DoD publicly released timeline) and the time McCarthy briefed the plan to Miller and CJCS Milley at 4:30PM. This plan for the deployment of DCNG personnel to the Capitol was developed without any input or participation from DCNG leaders. LaNeve claims the detailed plan took 20 minutes to construct, according to the DoDIG report. Miller approved the detailed plan in 2 minutes, at 4:32PM, during his call with McCarthy and Chairman Mark Milley. McCarthy then called MG Walker at 4:35PM to provide the detailed plan to Walker and to direct Walker to deploy all available forces to the Capitol immediately. During the 4:35 call between McCarthy and MG Walker, McCarthy delivered his detailed plan including a link-up point and the names of federal contacts that DCNG personnel should engage at the Capitol. The call between McCarthy and Walker evidently lasted less than 5 minutes because McCarthy then jumped on a 4:40PM telephone call with Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland. It is unclear how long McCarthy’s call with Governor Hogan lasted. One glaring omission from the DoDIG report is that between 4:30 and 5:00 p.m., before DCNG personnel had deployed to the Capitol, McCarthy spent nearly 20 minutes in a live nationally televised press conference with Mayor Bowser and Chief Contee7. At 5:00PM, presumably after the conclusion of the televised press engagement, McCarthy then called MG Walker, according to the LaNeve narrative, and had to re-issue his order to deploy to the Capitol because MG Walker and his forces had inexplicably failed to move as directed by McCarthy at 4:35PM.

It is unclear why McCarthy needed to participate in this live press event with the Capitol not yet secured and with DCNG forces not yet deployed there. It is also unclear how this press availability jives with the planning narrative and timeline constructed by BG LaNeve and LTG Piatt. The press conference with McCarthy was at least 17 minutes in length (likely longer) and there is actual video footage of the event. The press conference either began at 4:30PM or at 4:45PM (Mayor Bowser’s website indicates that the press conference began at 4:30PM while a transcript indicates the event began at 4:45PM). If the live news conference began at 4:30PM, than McCarthy could not possibly have briefed Miller and gained his concurrence between 4:30PM and 4:32PM and then called MG Walker to give him an elaborate run down at 4:35PM and then called Governor Hogan at 4:40PM. If the live press conference began at 4:45PM, than McCarthy could not possibly called MG Walker to “re-issue” the deployment that Walker failed to execute.

In certain respects, the DoDIG report serves as little more than a vehicle for anonymous Army officials to take unsubstantiated and uncorroborated pot shots at MG Walker in retaliation for his March 2021 testimony before a joint hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee (HSGAC) and the Senate Rules Committee, and for statements he had previously made to the House Appropriations Committee during its review of 6 January, because those statements and testimony, are viewed as having portrayed Secretary McCarthy and LTG Piatt in a less than flattering light. These anonymous officials took the opportunity to attempt to discredit MG Walker by impugning his competence, integrity and leadership via an official DoDIG report, their statements are not unbiased and must be weighed in context.

Because MG Walker, quite unfairly, was not provided the opportunity to review and comment on these criticisms, much of them innuendo and conjecture published by the DoDIG without verification or analysis, MG Walker he will do so now.

The DoDIG report contains a claim that at 4:25PM (according to anonymous witnesses) then BG Christotpher LaNeve called MG Walker and told him to have his DCNG relief element ready deploy to the Capitol. MG Walker denies that LaNeve called him at 4:25PM, or that he spoke to LaNeve at anytime between the phone call from Chief Sund at 1:49PM and the eventual DCNG deployment to the Capitol at 5:08PM. Furthermore, MG Walker and the DCNG had been posturing to respond to the situation on the Hill since at least 1:49PM when Chief Steven Sund initially called requesting urgent and immediate assistance. It is preposterous to assume that MG Walker needed to be notified to prepare to respond at 4:25PM when the Capitol had been breached for over 2 hours.

The DoDIG timeline states that at 4:35 PM Secretary McCarthy called MG Walker to inform him that Acting Secretary of Defense Miller had approved the DCNG request to re-mission the DCNG to support the U.S. Capitol Police at the Capitol. MG Walker denies that Secretary McCarthy called him at 4:35PM or that any such discussion took place at that time. As he stated in sworn testimony, MG Walker became aware of the approval to deploy DCNG personnel during a video teleconference with senior Army officials at 5:08 PM. The decision of civilian leadership was conveyed by the CSA, General James McConville.

The DoDIG timeline also states the McCarthy had to “reissue” his direction for the DCNG to move to the Capitol at 5PM. This is an outrageous assertion given that Walker would have began deploying DCNG to the Capitol when he first received USCP Chief Steve Sund’s urgent requests if he had been given authority to do so. The notion that MG Walker had to be told twice to deploy forces to the Capitol is as insulting as it is false. MG Walker believes that if the foregoing narrative was true, and he really did fail to move after being directed to do so at 4:35PM, by the Secretary of the Army, then he should have been fired immediately by Secretary McCarthy. MG Walker, however, and key DCNG personnel who were constantly with him, all contend that this “planning narrative” is an absolute falsehood.

A Plan that If It Existed, Was Never Used

If Secretary McCarthy did develop a plan to deploy DCNG, with Mayor Bowser, Chief Contee or others, it was created independent of any DCNG involvement, and was not shared with DCNG leadership prior to the deployment of 154 DC Guardsmen to the Capitol at 5:08PM or afterwards. DCNG leaders still have not seen this so-called plan developed by McCarthy and allegedly approved by Acting Secretary Miller at 4:32PM.8 When the DCNG did deploy personnel to the Capitol beginning at 5:08PM, it did not do so pursuant to any plan developed by Secretary McCarthy or BG LaNeve, who again had not spoken to MG Walker or anyone else in the DCNG leadership in the immediate few hours before their deployment.

In actuality, the assertion that the DCNG required the Secretary of the Army to provide tactical level planning and coordination support to DCNG personnel preparing to deploy to the Capitol is patently absurd. DCNG maintained a Joint Task Force, led by BG Robert K. Ryan, at the D.C. Armory to plan and conduct domestic operations in the city. LTC Craig Hunter was the senior DCNG officer located at the U.S. Capitol during most of the day on January 6, 2021, serving as the Task Force Guardian Commander. At 2:32PM, LTC Hunter departed his command location in a vehicle and headed towards the Capitol to link up with the MPD and USCP Incident Command Post. Hunter arrived at the Capitol at 2:55PM. At 3:00PM, Hunter made contact with MPD Assistant Chief Jeffrey Carroll, the senior MPD officer then at the Capitol, and a police official with a long history of working with the DCNG. Carroll requested that Hunter accompany him to USCP headquarters. Hunter rode with Chief Carroll in a marked MPD scout car, arriving at USCP headquarters at 3:10PM. Hunter at USCP HQ, and co-located with Chief Carroll and other MPD personnel, was the primary on the ground DCNG interlocutor with both USCP and MPD responding to the unrest at the Capitol.

LTC Hunter was in constant contact with the DCNG Joint Operations Center (JOC), with Joint Task Force DC Commander, BG Robert K. Ryan, BG Dean and/or MG Walker, his superiors in the chain of command, as needed. When asked by the DoDIG whether the DCNG for the flow of DCNG to the Capitol:

“He responded that he was not sure if Mr. McCarthy was aware that he (the TF Guardian Commander) was with USCP helping to bring in forces. He told us that they had a plan for the troops to assemble at a rally point, organize, and don riot gear, and that he had already made contact with USCP and MPD.”


Indeed, when DCNG forces began to arrive at the Capitol after 5:08PM, they did so after the coordination with MPD and USCP provided by the LTC Hunter, the senior DCNG officer on the scene, not through the intervention of the Secretary of the Army or BG LaNeve. Hunter was not in contact with McCarthy or LaNeve at any time before the arrival of DCNG personnel after 5:00PM.

Obvious Unaddressed Inconsistencies

The DoDIG report alleged that Secretary McCarthy called MG Walker at approximately 4:35PM and told him to immediately move all available DCNG personnel from the Armory to Lot 16 at the corner of 1st and D Street and to meet with the MPD Assistant Chief to perform perimeter and clearance operations. The DoDIG report states that after McCarthy gave MG Walker the deployment order, he handed the telephone to BG LaNeve, who informed MG Walker of the plan’s details. (DoDIG Report p. 60). In the very next paragraph however, LaNeve is recorded as stating that at the time that Miller approved the re-mission plan (at 4:32PM according to the DoD timeline and Miller’s congressional testimony), “there was still no meeting point established.” LaNeve states that approximately 20 to 30 minutes later, at around 5:00PM, and at that time provided a link-up location. If LaNeve’s recollection is true, than McCarthy could not have directed Walker to deploy forces to the Capitol at 4:35PM (to Lot 16 at 1st and D Street), as that location had not been established as the link up point. The DoDIG does not address this glaring inconsistency. The DoDIG claims it reviewed contemporary handwritten notes which indicated that at 4:36PM., “LaNeve and a witness coordinated with MG Walker, advised him to mobilize 150 DCNG personnel, and move, under police escort, to 1st Street and D Street. The DCNG personnel would meet FBI personnel there and move into position to establish an inner cordon.” MG Walker doubts the credibility of these notes as they reflect an event that did not occur. Again, LaNeve’s own statements to the DoDIG that Walker received the link-up point at around 5:00PM contravene the allegedly contemporaneous notes of Secretary McCarthy’s aide.

In addition to LaNeve, another witness who was accompanying McCarthy (likely COL John Lubas) at MPD Headquarters told the DoDIG that Walker:

“did not get ‘approval to do the specific actions’ until close to or just after 5:00 p.m. This witness confirmed to us that no one conveyed to MG Walker the specific meeting point and other details until after 5:00 p.m.”


This unnamed military officer who was present with Secretary McCarthy at MPD Headquarters was apparently in a position to know what information Walker received and when he received it. This unnamed officer at least corroborates that MG Walker did not receive direction to deploy until after 5:00 p.m. It is unclear why the DoDIG would disregard or not credit the statements of both LaNeve and this unnamed Army officer. Instead, the DoDIG report states as accepted and uncontroverted fact that McCarthy had to re-issue an order to Walker to deploy DCNG forces to the Capitol at 5:00 p.m. when McCarthy could not have issued an order to deploy at 4:35PM because the details had not been worked out (and McCarthy may have been in a nationally televised press conference, or preparing for a nationally televised press conference at 4:35PM).

Given the foregoing, the below passage seems to be included merely to discredit MG Walker:

“According to an unnamed witness, Mr. McCarthy had to reissue the deployment order to MG Walker 30 minutes after he conveyed it to MG Walker, which the witness believed contradicts MG Walker’s March 3, 2021 testimony to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and Senate Rules and Administration Committees. The witness told us that MG Walker’s assertion to those committees that the DCNG could have responded to the Capitol in 20 minutes was not true. The witness said, “It took 27 minutes for [MG Walker] to get the order from Mr. McCarthy] around [4:35] to actually get his wheels moving on the bus.” In addition, the witness said “mischaracterization” was the word the witness would use to describe MG Walker’s response to questions from congressional committees.” (p. 61)


The alleged witness who provided the foregoing statement essentially accused MG Walker of willfully misleading two congressional committees during sworn testimony. The DoDIG allowed this conjecture to stand, without providing MG Walker opportunity to respond to or rebut the assertion, even though the DoDIG had in its possession evidence (namely the statements of LaNeve and the other unnamed Army with Secretary McCarthy) that the underlying assertion is likely false. Even LaNeve, most of whose assertions are in direct contradiction with Walker, concedes that at 4:35PM there was still no meeting point established (p. 60). BG LaNeve stated to the DoDIG that MG Walker did not receive direction on where to have his forces report until around 5:00PM. Importantly, the additional unnamed witness who accompanied McCarthy at MPD headquarters told the DoDIG that “no one conveyed to MG Walker the specific meeting point and other details until after 5:00 p.m.”

When McCarthy visited MPD Headquarters at 4:05PM (or 4:10PM) he was accompanied by his Executive Officer, COL John Lubas, his aide-de-camp, MAJ Matt Scot, his public affairs officer, LTC Audricia Harris and his congressional liaison LTC Scott Mras. BG LaNeve arrived at MPD Headquarters shortly after McCarthy. LaNeve, when he traveled in a separate vehicle, typically traveled with his own executive officer, an Army major. It should be noted that these individuals are not unbiased, disinterested parties. They in most instances were personally close to McCarthy, traveled with McCarthy and have some degree of personal loyalty to and affection for him, or in the case of LaNeve’s XO, for LaNeve. These individuals, who were with McCarthy and LaNeve may be some of the anonymous Army witnesses that have impugned MG Walker’s integrity. One of these officers is likely the person who was with McCarthy and who was able to “confirm” to the DoDIG that MG Walker was not made aware of the deployment authorization until after 5:00 p.m. MG Walker does not question the integrity and honesty of any of these officers, except to the extent that they say that they have personal knowledge that Secretary McCarthy called MG Walker at 16:35 on 6 January and directed him to immediately deploy the D.C. National Guard to the Capitol. No such call took place, if an individual alleges such a call took place, than they are lying.

Failure to Interview Key DCNG Personnel

MG Walker was never alone during the hours in question. He was constantly in the presence of, among others, the Adjutant General of the DCNG, the senior enlisted leader DCNG, his own aide-de-camp who was taking contemporaneous notes throughout the afternoon and evening, and his staff judge advocate. These individuals participated in the 2:30PM conference call between senior Army leaders, D.C. government officials, the Chief of the U.S. Capitol Police and the Chief of the Secret Service Uniform Division. They also participated in the follow-on secure video conference with senior Army leaders from the Pentagon. These DCNG leaders were present when MG Walker received the approval of civilian leadership to deploy to the Capitol at 5:08PM. This approval was conveyed on the call by the Chief of Staff of the Army, the message passed to him by an unknown person in the room. The DoDIG apparently interviewed most, if not all of Secretary McCarthy’s entourage, but did not interview any key personnel who were with MG Walker when events unfolded on 6 January, to include his aide-de-camp 1LT Timothy Nick, a sworn federal law enforcement officer, and the Staff Judge Advocate, COL Earl Matthews, who were constantly by MG Walker’s side during the events in question, nor the Command Sergeant Major of the D.C. National Guard, CSM Michael Brooks who was also with MG Walker throughout the day.

The DoDIG decision not to interview COL Matthews stands out for several reasons. Matthews was integrally involved in the planning leading up to DCNG support to MPD on 5-6 January and he was an expert on D.C. National Guard authorities. The DoDIG investigative report quotes a witness from the Army Staff who states “The discussion of the QRF implementation beforehand was very clear and General Walker understood it and he knew exactly what needed to happen if the QRF needed to be employed and he had no questions or concerns at that time.” If COL Matthews had been interviewed he would have characterized the Army Staff witness’s comment as an absolute lie. The addition of the restriction withholding QRF employment authority from MG Walker was not discussed with the general during the meeting with Secretary McCarthy and the Army Staff which occurred during the afternoon of 4 January. The specific withholding QRF approval authority to Secretary McCarthy’s level was inserted by Army Staff officers late on the evening of 4 January. Matthews, if interviewed, would have stated that neither McCarthy, Walker nor Matthews knew about the restriction before it was added. McCarthy had typically trusted Walker to deploy the QRF at his discretion. McCarthy didn’t ask for the specific change to Matthews’ knowledge. The restriction, or at least the more stringent language was added at the request of the Judge Advocate General of the Army. If the restriction was not there, Walker would likely have interpreted the riot on Capitol Hill as a ‘last resort’ situation and employed the QRF on his own initiative in support of MPD at the Capitol. Additionally, Matthews had raised his own concerns about certain restrictions on MG Walker with both the Army Staff at 3:48 AM on 5 January, leading the Army Staff to make a late change.

At 4:00AM on 5 January, Matthews sent an e-mail to a senior official in the Office of the Secretary of Defense who was involved in the drafting of the OSD restrictions on DCNG employment on 5-6 January. The subject line was “Employment Guidance.” In the e-mail Matthews noted, “As written now, SECDEF would need to personally approve before our personnel in the city wear helmets for personal protection. I do not believe this restriction meets the Acting SecDef's intent. Flagging for your situational awareness.” Matthews did not believe the Acting Secretary of Defense wanted to intentionally restrict the ability of soldiers or airmen to protect themselves by donning their helmets in an in extremis situation, but that was the literal interpretation of the memorandum that was issued.

On January 6, 2021, at 2:19PM, MG Walker sent an email to Secretary McCarthy, LTG Piatt and BG Christopher LaNeve. He copied COL Matthews on the cc line. The subject line was FLASH UPDATE. The e-mail stated:

Mr. Secretary:

Chief Steve Sund advised that the US Capital (sic) has been breached and they need immediate assistance at least 200 Guardsmen. Chief Sund advised that a formal letter requesting support is forthcoming.

V/R

MG Walker


At 2:21PM, COL Matthews forwarded the above e-mail to the unlisted personal DoD e-mail address of the Acting Secretary of Defense, Christopher Miller. Matthews’ e-mail to the Acting Secretary stated:

Sir:

Army has DCNG on stand down despite request for support.


A former senior DoD official, Matthews was a personal friend and former work colleague of both Acting Secretary Miller and Secretary of the Army McCarthy, he just happened to be the DCNG’s top lawyer as a part-time job. His name and role were well known in particular to the official within DoDIG, Marguerite Garrison, who had responsibility for that office’s investigation into 6 January. That COL Matthews was not interviewed by the DoDIG was in retrospect stunning to both MG Walker and COL Matthews. MG Walker was himself an experienced former federal criminal investigator and knew that DoDIG had likely accessed the contemporaneous emails of the DCNG, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Army Staff and Army Secretariat from 6 January as part of its investigation. That a serving DCNG officer had sent a direct e-mail to the Acting Secretary of Defense’s unlisted work email address during the midst of the breach of the Capitol, and had not been asked about it was not reassuring. It was perhaps a reflection of the thoroughness of the DoDIG investigation.

It’s unclear from the DoDIG Report whether Secretary McCarthy is asserting that he told Walker the things that Piatt, Flynn, LaNeve and others associated with McCarthy are now falsely asserting, or whether Piatt and LaNeve (and McCarthy’s former retinue are merely stating these lies because they believed it will help McCarthy). McCarthy and Matthews are friends. They were among the first Trump political appointees at the Pentagon together. They had each others personal cell phones, they called each other on weekends. McCarthy never referred to Matthews as “COL Matthews,” but as “Earl”. The DoDIG report even mentions Matthews calling McCarthy on January 6, while redacting his title and stating an incorrect time for when the call actually occurred. However, the lies being told by Piatt and Flynn would pit Matthews against McCarthy. Matthews would be forced to say under oath that he was on the 2:30PM call, that he knew Piatt and Flynn quite well, and that both were absolute and unmitigated liars. Matthews had actually helped to revive Flynn’s career a few years ago when no less than Marguerite Garrison, the same DoDIG official that had inexplicably allowed the flawed report about MG Walker to be issued, had once had her sites on Flynn. Garrison had previously launched a DoDIG investigation against Matthews as well, when he was Principal Deputy General Counsel of the Army, that went nowhere. Matthews could prove that without Matthews’ personal actions a few years ago, Flynn would not even have been eligible for promotion to his 3-star rank. Flynn did not know this. He does not know Matthews. Piatt does. Though undoubtedly close to MG Walker, Matthews had no reason to lie about Flynn or Piatt on behalf of Walker.

Matthews also found the story about Chris Miller requiring a back brief before DCNG could be launched to Capitol Hill to be strangely odd. Miller was the most informal government official that Matthews had ever known. He was a laid back Iowa farm boy, turned DC Guardsmen (while attending GWU), turned Green Beret Colonel/secret warrior for a special mission unit. He was a guy who believed in cutting through bureaucracy and getting stuff done. Requiring McCarthy to come back to Miller when the Capitol was under siege sounded strange. As an Army officer, Chris had trusted and empowered subordinate leaders to make life or death decisions. Requiring a formal backbrief in the midst of a national emergency didn’t sound right. Not for a Tier 1 operator like Chris Miller. Matthews knew Piatt and Flynn didn’t respect Miller or Walker.

The DCNG Timeline

DCNG officers who had been present with MG Walker throughout 6 January also created a timeline of events that transpired that day, based on contemporaneous notes and their collective memories. The timeline was digitally signed by the DCNG Secretary of the General Staff.9 MG Walker provided a copy of the timeline to members of the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate HSGAC and Rules Committees. In the hindsight of March 2021, the DCNG timeline did not paint LTG Flynn nor LTG Piatt in a favorable light. One paragraph read:

1437: LTG (P) Flynn and LTG Piatt recommended that the D.C. National Guard standby and start drafting a plan for courses of action (COA). Recommended plan that the D.C. National Guard can take over more points and help Law Enforcement Officers (LEOs) to go to the U.S. Capitol to assist USCP.


Another paragraph of the DCNG timeline reflects:

1620: LTG Piatt advising MG Walker to plan and prepare to transition from TCPs and be placed around other federal building (sic) and monuments. Also, to create an outer perimeter around other federal places. (SVTC)


Both of the above paragraphs were taken from the contemporaneous notes of MG Walker’s aide-de-camp, who was the designated notetaker in MG Walker’s office during the conference call and SVTC and other meetings during the day. Both of the above entries from the DCNG timeline reflect the mindset of Piatt as expressed during the 2:30PM call and the SVTC as recorded contemporaneously by the DCNG notetaker. With respect to the 2:30PM call, LTG Piatt himself caused an official press statement to be issued by the Army Office of the Chief of Public Affairs10, Piatt stated:

“I told the assembled group on the call that we need to work together to develop a plan on how to use National Guard Soldiers if their participation was approved. This included options of relieving law enforcement throughput the city so those assets could assist with law enforcement actions at the Capitol, or using the National Guard to set a perimeter at the Capitol”


What Piatt’s statement did not concede was that he said his best military advice to the Secretary would be that the DCNG not be deployed to the Capitol at the moment. Regardless, it should be noted that at around 2:30PM on January 6, 2021, when Congress was under an unprecedented siege, the Director of the Army Staff, by his own admission, was contemplating at least one course of action to present to the Secretary of the Army wherein the D.C. National Guard would not be used at the Capitol, but elsewhere away from the locus of the emergency. This key point has been obfuscated by Piatt’s subsequent self-serving statements and by the less the accurate timeline he helped engineer. Piatt’s suggestion astounded MG Walker, Chiefs Sund and Contee and all the speaking participants on the call, except Piatt and Flynn. The DCNG had a great deal of experience handling civil unrest in Washington in support of local and federal law enforcement. It had a 40-member Quick Reaction Force and MG Walker could pull troops off of the traffic control points or could direct other trained and experienced personnel present at the Armory to immediately don riot gear and respond to support USCP and MPD at once. To everyone else on the conference call, immediately re-establishing or reinforcing the security perimeter at the U.S. Capitol was the only acceptable course of action to consider.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Tue Dec 07, 2021 4:35 am

Part 2 of 2

The Army Timeline and The Purposeful Distortion of Fact

By March 2021, both Chief Contee and Chief Sund had testified in congressional hearings about Army leaders, Piatt and Flynn, displaying an overconcern about the optics of military personnel at the Capitol, about their lack of urgency during the 2:30PM conference call, about their indicating that they would not recommend that the Secretary of the Army authorize troops at the Capitol based on the information they had at the time, and about their desire that the DCNG plan to deploy troops away from the Capitol in the midst of the riot to free up police to move to the Capitol11. MG Walker testified about the same issues, and about what he felt were unusual restrictions placed on his command authority and freedom of maneuver in the run up to 6th January. Walker’s testimony also highlighted the 3 hours and 19 minutes that elapsed between Chief Sund’s emergency pleas for assistance at 1:49PM and when MG Walker received notice to deploy to the Capitol at 5:08 PM, and the lack of personal communication between Secretary McCarthy and MG Walker during the afternoon and early evening of 6 January.

The cumulative impact of the Contee, Sund and Walker testimonies, and the attendant negative news stories, coupled with the revelation that Army leaders had for a time falsely denied that LTG Flynn was even on the 2:30PM call worked to create a narrative which made Army Senior Leadership look bad. In March 2021, MG Walker was told by a friend that LTG Piatt was so upset with MG Walker that he directed the development of an Army “White Paper” to retell events of 6 January in a light more favorable to LTGs Flynn, Piatt, Secretary McCarthy and the Army Staff. The initial version of the “White Paper” was so incendiary that other Army Senior Leaders convinced LTG Piatt not to release the paper shortly after MG Walker’s testimony in March 2021. When he became aware of the document, MG Walker asked a senior Army officer (a 3-star general) for a copy and was told by the officer that the report “wasn’t mine to share.”

At the direction and under the supervision of LTG Piatt, however, with the assistance of BG Chris LaNeve, the “White Paper” morphed into the Army’s Report (Report of the United States Army Operations on January 6, 2021). The judgment of history is depends on who writes it. With respect to the Army on January 6, Piatt was determined to be that author. The Army Staff sought to change that narrative and to create an alternate history which would be the Army’s official recollection of events. Piatt and LaNeve literally changed facts and recollections overnight. The end product, a revisionist tract worthy of the best Stalinist or North Korea propagandist, was close hold.

Where MG Walker indicated in his Senate testimony that he did not talk directly to Secretary McCarthy between 1:49PM and roughly 6:00PM on January 6, 2021, Walker was now directly tasked by Secretary McCarthy at 2:30PM, 3:05PM, 4:35PM and again at 5:00PM. Where Walker had once directed on his own that the QRF be moved to the Armory from Joint Base Andrews, now McCarthy made that decision. Where Walker was told about the deployment authorization via SVTC from the Chief of Staff of the Army 5:08PM, he now found out directly from the Secretary at 4:35PM. Under the new fabricated timeline supervised by LaNeve and Piatt, McCarthy was an active participant in the 2:30PM phone conference. Mayor Bowser was now in meetings she did not actually attend, making statements she did not actually utter. McCarthy had to call Walker twice because, presumably due to his bumbling incompetence, he had inexplicably not followed Secretary McCarthy’s order to deploy forces to the Capitol campus. The Army Staff and not Joint Task Force-DC under BG Robert K. Ryan was now primarily responsible for the movement of DCNG forces to the Capitol on 6 January. The buses left at 17:02, not at 17:08 as Walker swore under oath. Piatt had to know these insertions into the timeline and official narrative were incorrect. Still he presented this timeline to a congressional committee as fact as developed from an official unbiased Army product, the Army Report, which he directed be written.

The DoDIG then adopted Piatt and LaNeve’s narrative wholesale, in some places verbatim, subsequently releasing it as if it was the authoritative word of God, and creating the impression that Walker was deceitful during his congressional testimony. The official Army narrative also found Army leadership was blameless in the delay in National Guard reaching the Capitol.

Piatt, Flynn and LaNeve engineered a multitude of demonstrable falsehoods and misstatements about Army activities leading up to and on 6 January, especially on the afternoon of 6 January, and then submitted this report to select members of Congress in an effort to absolve Army leadership (especially Piatt who was slated to be nominated for promotion) of any missteps on 6 January. The document is an effort to mislead the Congress and to retroactively change history. The very existence of the document calls into question the honesty and integrity of LaNeve, Piatt and Flynn. The Army Staff most significantly has avoided releasing this document to the public, but we know it contains a few things from Piatt and Flynn’s perjured testimony before Congress. The report states, quite falsely that McCarthy contacted Walker at around 3:05PM and at 4:35PM gave him a go order to deploy to Capitol Hill. At 4:35PM the link up location and the name of the name of the lead law enforcement officer were provided to MG Walker (according to Piatt’s testimony)

McCarthy apparently had to call back at 5:00PM (although Piatt and Flynn’s testimonies don’t state this, it’s likely in the Army Report). We also know from their testimonies that the first DCNG buses departed the DCNG Armory at 17:02. That is what the Army Report states. DCNG’s Joint Task Force-DC records indicate that the buses actually departed at 17:08, after Walker received authorization from McConville. It’s unclear how the Army Staff could have a more accurate recollection of when the buses left than the DCNG Joint Task Force which actually controlled the buses. There were no Army Staff representatives or embedded liaison officers at the D.C. Armory when the buses left. However, having the buses depart from the Armory at 17:02 allows for the narrative that it took MG Walker 27 minutes to get the first buses off after McCarthy first directed him at 4:35PM.

When Congressmen Lynch and Raskin, during June 2021 hearing, questioned Piatt and Flynn about the timeline discrepancies, Piatt and Flynn referred to their more accurate Army Report (a fabricated distortion) and made sure to laud the DCNG for doing the best it could under the circumstances. The questioning by Lynch and Raskin is revealing.

The Army Report indicates that MG Walker was notified to deploy at 16:35 by the Secretary of the Army. LTG Piatt knows this assertion to be incorrect, because Piatt was on a secure video conference with MG Walker and other Army and DCNG leaders at 16:35. He repeated the false assertion in his testimony before a congressional committee anyway. To support this assertion he relied on the official Army timeline contained in the Army Report, the document he directed be drafted and which he influenced heavily. This is the definition of a self-serving document. It is preposterous to assert that MG Walker would have received authorization to deploy personnel from the Armory at 16:35 and then stayed on video conference without directing at least some of the personnel awaiting at the Armory to head to the Capitol. As MG Walker has publicly stated, minutes mattered.

How was McCarthy able to brief Walker with all the details of the link up and the name of the officer and still call Governor Hogan at 16:40 while participating in a live nationally televised press conference at 16:30 or 16:45?

Whether Walker was told to deploy at 16:35 or 17:08 is a small point, what matters is the lie being crafted by senior officials who know better. This lie seems aimed and discrediting Walker for his testimony. Also, the lie is easily revealed because the Army timeline doesn’t withstand simple scrutiny.

Lying Under Oath

An analysis of the facts demonstrates that Piatt, Flynn and their confederates repeatedly and deliberately made false statements under oath or false official statements to the DoDIG and/or a congressional committee in order to support their contrived narrative, to discredit MG Walker, to absolve Army Senior Leaders of any responsibility in the delays on 6 January, and to burnish the promotion chances of Walter Piatt.

Piatt repeated a narrative that he knew to be untrue to both the DoDIG and to the House Oversight Committee. Piatt claims that on the conference call, “the SecArmy asked MG Walker how quickly the 40-member QRF could respond; MG Walker stated the QRF could be ready to move in 20 minutes. The SecArmy directed MG Walker to prepare to move the QRF to the Capitol Building and support the USCP, but to remain at the Armory until he confirmed approval from the Acting SecDef.” That sentence is drawn from whole cloth and did not occur. In later testimony Piatt and Flynn would state that the QRF was ill-equipped and ill-suited to respond to Capitol Hill, but here Piatt states as early as 2:30PM, before meeting with Miller, McCarthy had already saliently determined and directed Walker to posture the QRF to move to the Hill.

In sworn testimony, under penalty of perjury, Piatt and his confederates, falsely claim that an elected official, Muriel Bowser, the Mayor of the Nation’s capital, is present on a conference call that she very obviously was not present on. They have her making comments that she did not utter, and then they falsely imply that false stories spread by her caused a delay in the federal response to a riot at the Capitol because McCarthy had to deal with media inquiries generated by her rather than the urgent crisis underway12. They do this in a DoDIG report that is supposed to accorded great deference and to form part of the historical record for our grandchildren, long after we are gone. Secretary McCarthy was not on the 2:30PM call, certainly did not task MG Walker to prepare to move the QRF to the Capitol at 2:30PM and certainly did not talk to the Mayor during that call as Piatt and others associated with him suggested in sworn testimony and in official statements to the DoDIG and the House Oversight committee. According to Piatt’s official January press statement, “As soon as Secretary McCarthy received the specific request for assistance from the Capitol Police on the phone call at 2:22 p.m., he ran to the Acting Secretary of Defense’s office to request approval.”13 Piatt’s story changed in June to where McCarthy now stays until 2:30 on the conference call, hears Mayor Bowser and Chief Sund’s pleas and questions and tasks MG Walker. None of which occurred. Further Piatt’s statement conflict’s with LTG Flynn’s statement from the same hearing.

Flynn states: “At 1421, my Executive Officer interrupted the meeting stating that the Capitol was under attack and the Secretary of the Army’s office had called for me to come up to his office. I paused the meeting, gave guidance for my directors to remain in my office, and left. . .for Secretary McCarthy’s office, he was walking out and giving instructions to staff members who were already in the room.” Secretary McCarthy’s office is one flight up from LTG Flynn’s office in the Pentagon. Assuming it took 5 minutes for Flynn to reach the Secretary’s office (which it would not), Flynn still has McCarthy headed to Acting Secretary Miller’s office. Piatt’s story has McCarthy staying. According to Piatt, at roughly 2:25PM, McCarthy was sitting next to Piatt in McCarthy’s office. Surely Flynn would not have seen him leaving the office when he did.

Piatt in his sworn testimony, repeatedly made false or misleading or statements to inflate and exaggerate the insignificant role played the Army Staff in support of DCNG operations on the afternoon of 6 January:

“General Flynn's immediate interpretation of the urgency of the situation allowed the Army Staff to begin identifying the many critical actions and considerations we needed to address and adjust rapidly. We needed to redeploy the D.C. National Guard from 37 locations throughout the district, alert and recall soldiers from their civilian workplace, organize into unit configurations, equip the force, prepare deployment plan to include communications, specific routes, link up locations, casualty evacuation, the rules for the use of force, determine if the D.C. Guard would be armed or not armed, with or without riot control gear, and how and where the D.C. National Guard would be deputized to support federal law enforcement.


Piatt is falsely asserting that the Army Staff is performing the delineated actions on behalf of the DCNG, which it was not. The DCNG Joint Task Force under BG Robert K. Ryan had a very capable staff on 6 January that was not in contact with the Army Staff. None of the tasks Piatt lists in the preceding paragraph were performed by the Army Staff to support DCNG. Piatt implies that the Army Staff was planning for the “re-mission” and “re-equipping” of DCNG personnel employment of the DCNG and that this was a source of delay in getting SecArmy or SecDef’s approval to deploy to the Capitol. This is false. The Army Staff had no involvement in the movement or consolidation of DCNG personnel from the 30 traffic control points or 6 metro stations (indeed Guardsmen at the TCPs were never recalled to the Armory from the TCPs as Piatt implies).

Further, the Army Staff had no involvement in the recall of DCNG personnel from their civilian workplaces or in unit sizing as Piatt implies. Piatt states “we” needed to determine if the D.C. Guard would be armed or unarmed—in reality there was absolutely no discussion or request to arm the DCNG on 6 January. MG Walker did not request this, nor did the Chiefs Sund or Flynn on the 2:30PM call. DCNG personnel performing civil disturbance response duties are typically unarmed as there is enhanced risked that a demonstrator could go for a soldier’s firearm, when the soldier is kitted out with shield, baton and firearm. Keep in mind that Piatt and Flynn wanted DCNG personnel to perform duties for the police away from the Capitol, they certainly didn’t want those personnel armed. Piatt states that “we” needed to determine whether they would be with or without riot control gear. This is similarly an absurdity and altogether implausible. MG Walker had been adamant about his troops having helmets and body armor when the traffic control mission was being planned on January 4, 2021.

The troops at the TCPs had riot control gear in their vehicles (although admittedly they weren’t suppose to have this equipment, they did have it). The QRF had riot control gear on their persons. The DCNG had over 500 individual riot control kits stored at the Armory, left over from summer 2020 civil disturbance operations. There is no way MG Walker would have brooked a discussion about his troops not having riot control gear in the midst of a riot. Concerns about optics would be the only reason DCNG personnel would not have been in riot gear, and Piatt and Flynn claim optics were not an issue. Piatt implies that the Army Staff was involved in equipping the DCNG on 6 January which is an absolutely false insinuation. Piatt evoked issues of deputization and rules for the use of force, legal issues handled on the 6th by DCNG judge advocates outside the purview of the Army Staff.

Piatt mentions communications, specific routes, link up locations, CASEVAC routes.14 These were all tactical issues handled internally by the DCNG Joint Task Force on January 6th without any Army Staff involvement. These issues were certainly not addressed or handled by the 3 and 4-star generals, and civilian political appointees on the secure teleconference started by Charlie Flynn. These issues were the purview of BG Robert K. Ryan, COL Jon Ebbert and LTC Craig Hunter, LTC Sekou Richardson, and other DCNG officers on 6 January. Ultimately the issues belonged to MG Walker. These matters were not an Army Staff responsibility. In short, the Army Staff was not involved in the planning of any of the matters on January 6, that Piatt references before the House Overnight Committee during his opening statement . If the Army Staff developed a plan for the deployment of the DCNG on 6t January, it was done without DCNG input and outside of our purview. DCNG is still waiting to see this purported plan. The entirety of the referenced paragraph in Piatt’s opening statement is deceptive and misleading, designed to continue a false narrative. The main communications link and interface between the Army Staff and the DCNG on 6 January was the secure video conference bridge established by LTG Flynn.

In his sworn statement, LTG Piatt states:

“No personnel, including the QRF, were armed with lethal weapons, and none of the TCP or Metro station personnel had any equipment beyond their helmets and ballistic vests stored in their vehicles.”


That assertion is not a reflection of reality as events unfolded on the afternoon of 6 January. The mention of lethal weapons is a deflection. DCNG civil disturbance response personnel would typically not have lethal weapons and this of course avoids the potential of a Kent State scenario. Neither Sund nor Contee requested Guardsmen have lethal weapons. Through fortuitous oversight, each of the TCP and Metro station teams had full riot gear in their GSA vehicles15.

Piatt states:

“As a soldier who has commanded numerous times in combat, I knew we needed a plan to safely and properly redeploy forces from the traffic control mission, equip, arm, remission, and then deploy our Guardsmen to the Capitol from over 37 dispersed locations”


Piatt’s statement is misleading. MG Walker, the DCNG CG, BG Dean, the DCNG TAG, BG Ryan, the JTF-DC CDR and LTC Craig Hunter the TF Guardian CDR, were all experienced combat veterans. With the exception of LTC Hunter, they were all also experienced in riot control operations in the District of Columbia. They all wanted to send as many DCNG personnel to the as they could as Capitol as soon as possible. They had a plan to do that if allowed to exercise it. Piatt was implying that he cared more about the safety and well-being of DCNG personnel than did their own commanders. Additionally, the traffic control element was never redeployed, despite having full riot kits with them.

At the start of his testimony, Piatt notes:

The Army's role on 6 January began as unarmed support by the D.C. National Guard to metropolitan police. By midday, the mission had changed drastically to respond to the attack on the Capitol. That change of mission was unforeseen, and we were not positioned to respond with immediate supports.


While the attack on the Capitol was not anticipated, LTG Piatt is misleading the committee when he implies that the DCNG could not have been able to respond immediately to the riot on Capitol Hill. Indeed, MG Walker, BG Dean, BG Ryan and LTC Hunter all wanted to respond immediately. They could have directed their 40 person QRF to move immediately from Joint Base Andrews to link up with USCP near the Capitol. DCNG could also have diverted personnel supporting the traffic control mission to the Capitol. These soldiers and airmen possessed the requisite riot gear in their vehicles.16 DCNG estimates 131 riot gear-equipped troops could have been mustered immediately and an additional 200 Guardsmen within the following 2 hours.

In his sworn statement, LTG Piatt falsely asserts the following:

“In the meantime, the Army Staff was planning with the DCNG to recall forces and redeploy the forces committed to traffic control posts and Metro station control. We assisted in directing the staging of the DCNG forces in order to be as ready, as quickly as possible, once a plan for commitment was approved.”


The above statement is untrue in its entirety. The Army Staff conducted no planning with the DCNG to recall forces and redeploy the forces committed to traffic control posts and Metro station control. Indeed the dayshift at the TCPs were never recalled. The night shift was converted into a civil disturbance response posture at roughly 2:14PM at the direction of the DC Adjutant General. The Army Staff played no role in this decision. The Army Staff did not assist in directing the staging of the DCNG forces in order to be ready, as quickly as possible, once a plan for commitment was approved.

In his sworn testimony, Flynn claims, a team under his direction of “40 officers and noncommissioned officers, immediately worked to recall the 154 D.C. National Guard personnel from their current missions, reorganize them, reacquaint them, and begin to redeploy them to the Capitol.” Flynn’s sworn statement is so astounding on its face that it defies reason. If it does not constitute the willful and deliberate misleading of Congress, than nothing does. Flynn was referring to 154 D.C. Guardsmen who were already on duty, were trained in civil disturbance response, already had area familiarization with Washington, DC, were properly kitted and were delayed only because of inaction and inertia at the Pentagon. Why would the DCNG need the assistance of “40 officers and noncommisioned officers” from the Army Staff to “organize and acquaint” these Guardsmen?

GEN Flynn states: “Members of my G-3/5/7 staff supported the SecArmy and LTG Piatt by coordinating planning and decisions for the recall of the 350 DCNG personnel from their current mission, so the DCNG could re-deploy, re-organize, re-equip and re-mission their force to be federalized and employed by the Lead Federal Agency.” Flynn’s statement is willfully inaccurate and designed to mislead Congress and re-write history. The Army Staff was not in contact or coordination with the DCNG Joint Task Force, under BG Robert K. Ryan. Ryan, not anyone working for Flynn was responsible organizing, and directing the soldiers referenced. Ryan was a member and the leader of the referenced 350 DCNG personnel. The very able LTC Sekou Richardson, a Master Logistician, was responsible for equipping the 350 soldiers. Richardson ensured Ryan’s people had all the kit they needed. Neither Ryan nor Richardson was in coordination with anyone who worked for Charlie Flynn on the afternoon of 6 January. Flynn implies there was an intent to federalize the D.C. National Guard. His inclusion of this notion proves that he had no clue about the history, purpose and structure of the DCNG on 6 January or when he testified in June. The D.C. National Guard was created by an Act of Congress to respond to rioting and other civil disturbances in the Nation’s Capitol. DCNG already worked for the President, through SecArmy and SecDef. There was no need to federalize it.

Piatt and Flynn consistently and repeatedly misrepresented, understated, or misled the House Oversight Committee and the DoDIG regarding the capability, readiness and motivation of the DCNG to respond on the afternoon of 6 January. They falsely claimed that the DCNG did not have, the training and resources to move quickly, to pivot from traffic control to civil disturbance operations. This was untrue. Flynn falsely stated that the Army Staff (which is supposed to be running the global operations of the U.S. Army) had to devote 30 to 40 officers and non-commissioned officers to get 154 ill-prepared DC Guardsmen to Capitol Hill. This assertion constituted the willful deception of Congress. It is not just imprecision, it is lying. Senior Army officers lied about little stuff. Their lies contributed to the deficiencies in the DoDIG’s findings because the DoDIG allowed the Army Staff to define the DCNG and to set the narrative, allowed LTG Piatt (and Flynn and LaNeve) to define the story. DoDIG also didn’t talk to anyone from the DCNG who could challenge the false Army Staff narrative. What’s most stunning is that they almost got away with it. If they hadn’t gratuitously attacked MG Walker’s character and integrity and then publicized the DoDIG report, they would have gotten away with it.

The D.C. National Guard in Piatt and LaNeve’s narrative was poorly led, poorly motivated, under resourced, and lacked equipment and training to respond immediately to the Capitol. This notion is an outright lie and is not borne out by a review of what really was happening on the afternoon of the 6tth What was occurring between the Army Staff and the DCNG on the afternoon of 6 January, after the breach and before receiving permission to deploy to the Capitol, can in no way be characterized as military planning. Piatt and Flynn knew this when they falsely testified to the House Oversight and Reform Committee on June 15, 2021.

It is important to note that neither Piatt nor Flynn were in the Chain-of-Command of the DCNG. The Commanding General, MG Walker, worked for Secretary McCarthy who was incommunicado or unreachable for most of the afternoon. The Army Staff was not providing any independent direction or guidance to MG Walker. They were only sharing information. The only orders Walker received that afternoon, through secure video, were the decision to mobilize the DCNG after 3:04PM and the 5:08PM authorization to deploy forces to the Capitol.

The main channel of communication between the DCNG and the Army Staff on the afternoon of 6 January was the secure video bridge established by LTG Flynn. This communication was occurring mostly at the general officer level. MG Walker was in his office with his Deputy, BG Dean, his Senior Enlisted Leader, CSM Brooks, his aide-de-camp (who was taking thorough notes) and his staff judge advocate, COL Matthews. On the other end were mostly 3-star Army Staff principals, or their deputies, and 2 to 3 senior civilian officials. These individuals were mostly in their personal offices in the Pentagon. The open channel was essentially a “general officer chat line” to relay information back in forth. With the exception of MG Walker’s aide-de-camp, COL Matthews was probably the lowest ranking officer on the teleconference.

The Army Staff was not in communication with Joint Task Force-DC, under BG Robert K. Ryan, which was running on the ground operations. DCNG required none of the technical, administrative or logistical assistance or support from Army Headquarters that Piatt and Flynn falsely implied during their congressional testimony. DCNG had all the equipment it needed. On the afternoon of January 6, 2021, the DCNG likely had more civil disturbance or riot gear on a per capita basis than any state National Guard in the country.17 Enough to equip roughly 500 Guardsmen if necessary. These were left over from the summer of 2020 and were in good condition. Flynn and Piatt either didn’t know this when they testified, which they should have, or they willfully deceived Congress. Further, DCNG personnel at the traffic control points and Metro stations had full riot kits with them in their vehicles at the TCPs and Metro stations. This fact was in direct contravention of the SecArmy and SecDef guidance on 4 January. The word had not passed to the DCNG supply officers who equipped the TCP personnel with the gear anticipating they might need it.

By the time of the breach, the Joint Task Force leadership knew their troops at the TCPs and Metro stations had the necessary riot gear and could be directed to designated rally points for formation and movement to the Capitol. That was LTC Hunter’s plan if the DCNG had been given permission to move. The TCP based troops would not have required the assistance and coordination from the Army Staff that Piatt and Flynn falsely stated they required in their sworn testimony. To a person, every leader in the DCNG wanted to get to Capitol Hill with deliberate speed when the Capitol security perimeter was breached. Their attitude was “This is What We Do.” “Send Me.” In fact, responding to civil unrest within the confines of the District of Columbia was a foundational mission, a statutory mission of the D.C. National Guard, given it by the Congress. It is part of the reason the moniker of the D.C. National Guard is “Capital Guardians.” The Dome of the U.S. Capitol is literally on the uniform of every D.C. Guardsman. DCNG has responded to civil unrest in the District in 1968 after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it did so again during the 1971 anti-Vietnam War May Day riots, the 2000 IMF riots and the recent riots in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.

BG Robert K. Ryan had commanded 5,530 joint service members from 12 states and the District during the unrest in the city following the Floyd murder. He was a retired career ATF special agent. He took some unfair hits because of a helicopter incident in the city, but no one doubted Ryan’s competence or dedication to the mission or his people. Ryan enjoyed the full confidence of the DCNG command team. He would lead 25,711 joint service members from 50 states, three territories, and the District in the immediate aftermath of the 6 January unpleasantness. In their perjured testimony before the House Oversight Committee, Piatt and Flynn were saying, by implication, that this Joint Task Force Commander, his headquarters and staff did not exist.

Piatt and Flynn were similarly trying to airbrush the work of Craig Hunter. Hunter, was a unicorn, an African-American originally from Florida, who started his career as an enlisted sailor, but became an Army Apache pilot and CIA operations officer, before becoming a medavac pilot in the D.C. Guard. He had extensive special operations experience, served on the Joint Staff, and was a resident NDU grad. Many people considered him the future of the D.C. Guard. MG Walker had referenced his initiative in immediately rushing to the Capitol and linking up with USCP and MPD once the Capitol was breached, during his March 2021 Senate testimony. The testimony Piatt and Flynn were trying to discredit with their fake timelines and statements. Hunter and Sergeant Major Barrick, his senior enlisted leader, were on the Hill scouting rally points and coordinating with MPD and USCP early after the breach. Incidentally, the Chief of Staff of the Joint Task Force on the afternoon was a Colonel, like Hunter a resident NDU grad and a combat-experienced aviator, and unlike Hunter, he was a still-serving CIA officer. Piatt and Flynn’s testimony airbrushed these men (and women) and many others from history and falsely replaced them with the Army Staff, who according to them, was doing all the heavy lifting [“40 officers and noncommissioned officers” who never left the Pentagon]. This was wrong.

In his testimony, Piatt states:

During a January 4, 2021 back brief from MG Walker to the SecArmy, MG Walker briefed the commitment criteria for employment of the QRF and expressed no concerns with the guidance for the use of the QRF.


The above statement is misleading and disingenuous. On the morning of 4 January 2021, at 11:31AM, Colonel Jon Ebbert, J-3, Director of Operations for the DCNG sent an e-mail to MG Walker, copying Colonel Matthews. Subject was, “Triggers for QRF Deployment,” the e-mail read:

The QRF will be on standby but won't be used unless required. The CG will deploy the QRF based on a MPD Chief of Police request.

Indicators that the QRF may deploy include the following events: Flash crowd that is not manageable by assembled Law Enforcement; Civil unrest not manageable by assembled Law Enforcement Civil Disturbance Units; Large scale vandalism and looting (ie City Center area); Vandalism or damage to National Monuments or Museums; Attempts to breach Federal or District government buildings; Acts of arson.

Very respectfully,

COL Jonathan S. Ebbert


During the afternoon meeting that Piatt references in his statement, with the Secretary, the Chief of Staff of the Army and the Army Staff presents, the discussion of what might happen in an emergency came up. MG Walker listed the triggers for QRF employment contained in COL Ebbert’s e-mail to the Secretary and no one objected. However, at 9:12PM, on the evening of 4 January, an Army Staff action officer changed the draft document that MG Walker had reviewed with the Secretary earlier in the afternoon. The draft delegation to MG Walker had initially read:

You may employ the DCNG Quick Reaction Force (QRF) only as a last resort, in response to a request from an appropriate civil authority. If the QRF is employed, DCNG personnel will be clearly marked and/or distinguished from civilian law enforcement. You will notify me immediately upon your authorization.


The changed delegation memo read:

I withhold authority to approve employment of the DCNG Quick Reaction Force (QRF) and will do so only as a last resort, in response to a request from an appropriate civil authority. I will require a concept of operation prior to authorizing employment of the QRF. If the QRF is employed, DCNG personnel will be clearly marked and/or distinguished from civilian law enforcement personnel. You will notify me immediately of any requests for QFR employment.


The change effectively limited the discretion of Walker to deploy the QRF when the very trigger scenarios that COL Ebbert had identified 2 days prior actually occurred on 6 January. The Chief of MPD made an urgent request for DCNG to assist with a: “flash crowd that is not manageable by assembled law enforcement,”; with “civil unrest not manageable by assembled law enforcement civil disturbance units”; with “large scale vandalism and looting” and with “attempts to breach federal or district government buildings.” Now Piatt and Flynn were deceitfully testifying that the QRF was never at all contemplated to be employed in those scenarios.

In a Question for the Record submitted by Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney, LTG Piatt is asked when he became aware of Acting Secretary Miller’s determination that “all available forces of the D.C. National Guard [were] required to support the MPD and USCP” at the Capitol? Piatt answers:

“I learned that Acting Secretary of Defense’s approval of the full mobilization of the District of Columbia National Guard at a time after 3:04 p.m. To the best of my recollection, I learned of the approval during the Army planning meeting on a secure teleconference that began before 3:00 p.m.”


The above statement is one of the few times Piatt answered a question somewhat truthfully. His statement tells us a few things. Piatt did not learn of Miller’s decision from McCarthy. He also did not see McCarthy tell Walker of the decision. Walker was on the same Army “planning meeting.” That such a momentous determination by the Acting SecDef was not conveyed by Secretary McCarthy to his principal staff officer speaks volumes as to McCarthy’s priorities on the afternoon of 6 January. The answer also shows that Piatt perjured himself when he says McCarthy personally tasked Walker at 3:05PM. The one untruthful part of the answer was that the video conference on the afternoon of the 6th was an actual Army planning meeting.

Piatt stated:

“The Secretary [McCarthy] surveyed the Capitol to establish where the best anchor point would be.”


If true, that assertion was a new revelation and is not mentioned in the public DoD timeline. Why the Secretary of the Army is conducting tactical reconnaissance is unknown. This statement is likely untrue, designed to mislead a congressional committee. The DoDIG report says McCarthy’s aide-de-camp carried a map with him to the Mayor’s office, not the Capitol. If McCarthy surveyed the Capitol, why didn’t he stop by and see Steve Sund, Chief Carroll or LTC Hunter? If the statement is true, it begs the question, of how it was safe for a civilian Army Secretary to reach the Capitol, but too dangerous to employ the DCNG?

In a Question for the Record, Chairwoman Malone noted that the D.C. National Guard timeline shows that at 4:20PM, more than an hour after Acting Secretary Miller’s 3:00PM authorization—Piatt advised Walker to “plan and prepare to transition from [traffic control points] and be placed around other federal buildings and monuments.” Piatt was asked if it was accurate that you recommended that the DCNG conduct a mission other than helping secure the Capitol? Piatt’s reply is easily parsed as a lie. He states:

I do not believe the D.C. National Guard timeline accurately describes my conversation with MG Walker. I believe the Army’s Report (Report of the United States Army Operations on January 6, 2021) more accurately describes the relevant details. I believe the description at page of the Army’s Report to be more accurate where it states that, at 3:04 p.m., “Immediately upon Acting SecDef’s approval, SecArmy directed MG Walker to recall all personnel and to initiate movement to posture forces to support the [Metropolitan Police Department]; SecArmy directed MG Walker to create a hasty plan to employ DCNG personnel and to ensure the Guardsmen were properly equipped for the mission.” It is important to note that, as a staff officer whose role it is to carry out the Secretary of the Army’s orders, I would not recommend to the D.C. National Guard’s Commander that he carry out preparations that would be inconsistent with the Secretary of the Army’s intent.


Piatt’s comment that the DCNG consider missions away from the Capitol was not just heard by Walker but a room full of other DCNG personnel. His sentiments were recorded contemporaneously by a 1st Lieutenant with no reason to lie. An officer who in his civilian capacity is a member of the Uniformed Division of the U.S. Secret Service. Piatt relies on the Army Report to refute the DCNG timeline because he knows the Army Report is a work of historical fiction that he himself wrote and controls. Further, by his own admission, at 3:04PM, Piatt had not spoken with McCarthy and may not have spoken with him by 4:20PM. Piatt likely didn’t know what McCarthy’s intent was. McCarthy was at MPD Headquarters with Mayor Bowser preparing for a nationally televised press conference, or alternatively, “drafting a plan.” According to the DoD public timeline, McCarthy would have been on a call with Miller, Milley and the Chief of the National Guard Bureau at 4:20PM.

When asked in a Question For the Record to explain the discrepancies between the DCNG and official Army Timelines, Piatt replies:

“Unfortunately, I cannot explain why that timeline differs from my recollection and the Department of the Army’s timeline. After the Capitol was breached on January 6, 2021, it was a chaotic day. It is possible that some of the reports that were used to put together the D.C. National Guard’s timeline came from individuals who misperceived or misremembered the events of that day. For example, many of the participants were distressed and talking over one another.”


Piatt’s reply meets the definition of chutzpah. He is claiming the DCNG personnel who heard his remarks misunderstood, misremembered or misstated them. Piatt knew exactly why the D.C. National Guard and Army timelines differed. He directed and supervised the creation of the Army timeline (which has not been publicly released or otherwise subjected to public scrutiny) which he knew to be false. Piatt shielded the Army Report from public disclosure and selectively released it when it inured to his benefit. The DCNG timeline portrayed him in a negative light, while he held the pen on the Army timeline, it was guaranteed to comport with his faulty memory. He provided the Army Report, or portions thereof, to congressional committees in order to discredit MG Walker.

Piatt is next asked if at any other time between 3:00PM and 4:32PM on January 6, he advised anyone in the D.C. National Guard’s chain of command that Guard personnel should not deploy directly to the Capitol. Piatt dishonestly replies:

At no point on January 6 did I tell anyone that the D.C. National Guard should not deploy directly to the Capitol. My role that day was to make recommendations and to help guide the Army’s planning efforts that ultimately led to the re-taking and re-securing of the Capitol. Between 3:00 p.m. and 4:32 p.m., the Army Staff, which included myself, was assisting with coordinating numerous tasks, including assisting the D.C. National Guard to prepare to conduct their new mission once it was approved by the Acting Secretary of Defense.


Piatt’s above answer is again false and misleading. First, Piatt did not limit himself from 3:00PM to 4:32PM, he replied that at no time during January 6 did I tell anyone that the D.C. National Guard should not deploy directly to the Capitol. Although not in the chain of command, or a decisionmaker, Piatt did tell the 2:30PM conference call participants that it was his best military advice that the DCNG not be deployed to the Capitol. The Secretary of the Army was incommunicado. Walker was communicating through Piatt. Walker sought permission to at a minimum to deploy the QRF. Presumably, Piatt conveyed MG Walker’s request to deploy to the Capitol to Secretary McCarthy, and then recommended that the Secretary reject Walker’s request. Lastly, Piatt repeats the falsity that the Army Staff was assisting the DCNG with preparations to conduct its new mission when approved. The Army Staff provided no technical, administrative, logistical, medical or legal support to the DCNG Joint Task Force—directly or indirectly—between the time of the breach and the 5:08PM movement of 154 D.C. Guardsmen to the Capitol.

Chairwoman Maloney last asked Piatt to clarify whether at any point on January 6, he expressed a concern about the visuals, image, or public perception of the sending the D.C. National Guard to the Capital even if you did not specifically use the term “optics”? She asked what specifically Piatt had stated.

I do not recall using the term optics, visuals, image, public perception or any similar term during the 2:30 p.m. phone call, or in any other conversation on January 6, 2021. I respect and understand that others may recall things differently, but ultimately, on that day, my chief concern was developing a plan to effectively assist D.C. and Federal authorities in regaining control of the U.S. Capitol. This is what I was ordered to do during the 2:30 p.m. phone call by the Secretary of the Army, as he ran to get approval for the use of the D.C. National Guard from the Acting Secretary of Defense.

During the 2:30 p.m. call, in gathering necessary information to help develop and coordinate a plan, I recall asking those on the call to identify specific tasks that were needed to be performed by the D.C. National Guard. I asked questions to help determine the mission requirements and the best ways to employ the National Guard Soldiers. I asked if there were other buildings or monuments that needed protection to seek ways to free up law enforcement officers so they could immediately respond to the U.S. Capitol. I also asked if there were any additional armed law enforcement personnel conducting missions from which the National Guard Soldiers could relieve them. I knew that the forces that the Army had available were not postured, prepared, or equipped to conduct this type of law enforcement operation.


Piatt’s response is again troubling. Piatt told the DoDIG that optics were a concern as the Army prepared to deploy Soldiers into downtown D.C. in response to the D.C. RFA, but he could not remember making that statement during the telephone call specifically about Chief Sund’s request for immediate assistance during the 2:30PM. Chief Contee, Chief Sund, and MG Walker each recounted Piatt expressing concerns about optics during their sworn testimony before various Congressional committees.

Four other DCNG soldiers heard Piatt say optics were an important consideration. Two Army witnesses on the conference called [based at the Pentagon] told the DoDIG that LTG Piatt questioned the impression that the or “optic” of uniformed Soldiers rushing into the Capitol would make with the public. In a January 2021 media interview, Chief Steven Sund recalled that, after he pleaded for immediate and urgent National Guard assistance during the 2:30PM conference call, Piatt said “I don’t like the visual of the National Guard standing a police line with the Capitol in the background.” Piatt at first publicly denied making the comment, then later “backtracked” according to a media report stating that although he didn’t recall saying anything about optics but Army note-takers in the room told him he “may” have said something similar to what Sund recalled.18 However, by March 2021, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Robert Salesses appeared in the same joint Senate HSGAC and Senate Rules Committee meeting where MG Walker was appearing. Salesses stated in his sworn testimony, that in preparing for the hearing, he had spoken directly with Piatt on the issue and Piatt denied saying anything about optics during the meeting.

Piatt evidently forgot about the Army notetaker present in McCarthy’s office with him who heard and recorded his statements. Notetakers on two different sides of the river heard Piatt say the optics matter. At least 9 people then who were in the meeting heard Piatt mention optics. Only Piatt and Flynn are adamant that he did not. Lastly and very importantly, Piatt asserts that the forces the “Army______ had available were not postured, prepared, or equipped to conduct this type of [civil disturbance] law enforcement operation.” Piatt’s last sentence is true only if you place the word “Staff” between “Army” and “had” and you forget that we are talking about a civil disturbance response mission, a core mission of the D.C. National Guard. There is a reason the United States Government gave all of those CD or riot kits to the D.C. National Guard. Hint/Hint, it wasn’t to plan. It was to respond to civil disturbances in Washington, D.C. Every leader in the D.C. Guard wanted to respond and knew they could respond to the riot at the seat of government. They set stunned watching in the Armory while for the first time in its 219 year history, the D.C. National Guard was not allowed to respond to a riot in the city.

In a Question For the Record from Chairwoman Maloney, GEN Flynn is asked if at any point he observed LTG Piatt express a concern about visuals, image, or public perception of sending the D.C. National Guard to the Capitol even if he did not specifically use the term “optics”? What specifically did he state and when? GEN Flynn replies:

No, I did not observe LTG Piatt express concern about the visuals, image, or public perception of sending the D.C. National Guard to the U.S. Capitol at any point on January 6, 2021 or in the following days. In the few minutes that I listened to the 2:30 p.m. phone call, LTG Piatt’s demeanor was calm, that of a combat-experienced leader reacting to a violent, unpredictable event. It was in clear contrast to others on the call.

MG Walker, BG Dean, COL Matthews and CSM Brooks have a combined 130 years of service to our Army. They had served multiple tours to Iraq and Afghanistan among them. Each is a recipient of at least 1 Bronze Star Medal for meritorious service during combat operations. Walker is a 32 veteran of federal agent and intelligence officer He has been shot at and he has shot people. Sullivan, Sund and Contee have over 90 combined years of police service in some of the toughest streets of our country. None of the men on the call (and they were all men) were strangers to violence.


Flynn’s comment suggests that Piatt’s calm demeanor was a reflection of his combat experience. Others would say it reflected his indifference and tone deafness. Flynn’s comment was aimed at denigrating these soldiers and public servants because they expressed an urgent desire to re-establish security at the Capitol and to protect the Congress of the United States. That is the noticeable contrast that Flynn observed.

Chairwoman Maloney also asked Flynn, “At any point during this call, or during an other communication on January 6, did you personally express a concern about the visuals, image, or public perception of sending the D.C. National Guard to the Capitol even if you did not specifically use the term “optics”? What specifically did you state and when? Flynn replied:

No. I never expressed a concern about the visuals, image, or public perception of sending the D.C. National Guard to the U.S. Capitol. When the Army received the request for D.C. National Guard support, my focus was to facilitate the planning and execution of Secretary McCarthy’s decisions and guidance regarding Army support on January 6, 2021.


In the above answer Flynn again engaged in outright perjury. MG Walker and COL Matthews, and others on the call were very familiar with whom Flynn was, knew his voice, and had spoken to him in different contexts. Both Walker and Matthews heard Flynn identify himself and unmistakably heard him say that optics of a National Guard presence on Capitol Hill was an issue for him. That it would not look good. Either Piatt or Flynn mentioned “peaceful protestors.”19 Flynn likely did very little if any planning to facilitate the immediate and urgent movement of D.C. National Guard soldiers and airmen to the U.S. Capitol. Flynn’s only personal contact with the DCNG on 6 January would be via the 2:30PM call and the secure VTC he set up. The Army Staff action officers who worked for him had no direct contact with Joint Task Force-DC under BG Robert K. Ryan.

In response to a Question For the Record from Ranking Member Comer, LTG Piatt replies:

As established by the 18 U.S.C. 1385 (the Posse Comitatus Act), the Army does not conduct law enforcement operations against American citizens, subject to a few limited exceptions.


Piatt is intentionally seeking to obfuscate issues. Posse Comitatus did not apply to the DCNG, sitting in its Armory on 6 January, while the Capitol was being overrun. He is well aware that the Posse Comitatus Act is not applicable to the D.C. National Guard, or any National Guard, in a militia status. Piatt was involved in the uplift of over 5,000 out-of-state National Guardsmen into the District of Columbia, ironically under the command of BG Robert K. Ryan, during the first week of June 2020. Posse Comitatus was inapplicable to those forces. Even if the Act applied to National Guard in a militia status, the Act would not apply to the D.C. National Guard because the D.C. National Guard was created by a specific act of Congress. The D.C. Code is such an act, an in pertinent part states:

§ 49–103. Suppression of riots.

When there is in the District of Columbia a tumult, riot, mob, or a body of men acting together by force with attempt to commit a felony or to offer violence to persons or property, or by force or violence to break and resist the laws, or when such tumult, riot, or mob is threatened, it shall be lawful for the Mayor of the District of Columbia, or for the United States Marshal for the District of Columbia, or for the National Capital Service Director, to call on the Commander-in-Chief to aid them in suppressing such violence and enforcing the laws; the Commander-in-Chief shall thereupon order out so much and such portion of the militia as he may deem necessary to suppress the same, and no member thereof who shall be thus ordered out by proper authority for any such duty shall be liable to civil or criminal prosecution for any act done in the discharge of his military duty.


Conclusion

Given the glaring deficiencies with respect to the DoD IG investigation, and given that his name was unfairly besmirched, MG Walker requests an independent review of the investigative findings of the DoDIG report and most importantly, the Army Report that was created at LTG Piatt’s direction should be publicly released, independently reviewed and substantiated. The timeline the Army produced should be carefully scrubbed for accuracy. Evidence of the actually planning activities of the Army Staff, and especially of the G3/5/7/ under BG LaNeve and LTG Flynn should be reviewed. What planning and coordination did these individuals actually conduct? How did this planning enable DCNG to support the U.S. Capitol Police on 6 June after the Capitol had been breached? What evidence is there of the planning and support the Army Staff provided to DCNG after the Capitol’s breach and before DCNG deployed to the Capitol after 5PM on January 6, 2021.

Unanswered Questions

Did Miller believe that he had authorized the actual deployment of the DCNG to the Capitol so that McCarthy’s decision to seek his concurrence of a deployment plan was not required?

Where was Ryan McCarthy on the afternoon of 6 January, what is his personal timeline?

Where did Secretary McCarthy call MG Walker from at 3:05PM, 4:35PM and 5:00PM?

What phones were used to call Acting Secretary Miller and MG Walker?

Where is the plan that Secretary McCarthy generated with the Mayor?


Why didn’t McCarthy and or LaNeve invite DCNG participation in the planning that occurred at MPD?

Who conveyed the plan (any plan) to DCNG?

Where is the plan? Why wasn’t it implemented on 6 January?


Were congressional leaders and the press mislead by being told that the DCNG was mobilized (with an inference that the DCNG had been approved to come to the Capitol)?

What kind of operation are Troy O’Donnell [Sean O'Donnell? Acting Inspector General, DoD]and Marguerite C. Garrison [Deputy Inspector General Administrative Investigations, DoD OIG Senior Leadership] running, what is their agenda?
 
_______________

Notes:

1 The Capitol Insurrection: Unexplained Delays and Unanswered Questions (Part II) | House Committee on Oversight and Reform

2 HHRG-117-GO00-Wstate-FlynnC-20210615.pdf (house.gov)

3 HHRG-117-GO00-Wstate-PiattW-20210615-U1.pdf (house.gov)

4 https://www.dodig.mil/reports.html/Arti ... -to-prepa/

5 The QRF was actually directed to move at 2:14PM, according to JTF-DC records.

6 BG Dean directed BG Ryan to move the QRF from JBA to the Armory at 14

7 Mayor Bowser incorrectly introduces McCarthy as Mr. McCartney at the beginning of the news engagement.

8 It should be noted that this so-called plan for the deployment of the DCNG was developed by McCarthy between 4:05PM and 4:30PM, but that the publicly released DoD timeline for 6 January states that McCarthy participated in a 4:18PM phone call with the Acting Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of the National Guard Bureau, further shortening the supposed 20 minutes that McCarthy used to develop his detailed plan to employ the DCNG.

9 The DCNG SGS did not participate or observe the 2:30PM or the follow-on secure teleconference but signed the document as a staffing action. The timeline is drawn largely from the contemporaneous notes of MG Walker’s aide-de-camp, designated notetaker during the day.

10 Piatt’s January 2021 public statement was in response allegations from Steve Sund about the 2:30PM call. The statement no appears on the Army Public Affairs website as Piatt’s narrative has changed.

11 Notably neither Sund, Contee, nor Walker in recounting the 2:30PM phone call ever stated the either McCarthy or Mayor Bowser were on the call.

12 It is unclear why the Secretary of the Army who had a 1-star general and a lieutenant colonel on his personal staff to address media inquiries, needed to personally address false news stories while the Capitol was under siege and the D.C. National Guard had not been authorized to move.

14 The TF Guardian Commander, LTC Craig Hunter, was an actual combat-seasoned medevac pilot. He required no instruction or direction from the Army Staff.

15 Despite the restrictions imposed by the civilian chain of command.

16 DCNG logisticians had not received word of the restrictions on riot gear imposed by SecDef and SecArmy. They made sure full riot gear for each Guardsmen were contained in their GSA vehicles.

17 Much of the equipment DCNG had in stock on 6 January was left over for the summer 2020 civil unrest.

18 Pentagon restricted commander of D.C. Guard ahead of Capitol riot - The Washington Post

19 Matthews did not know Flynn well, but had been around MG Walker when he spoke to Flynn in person at the Pentagon.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Sun Dec 12, 2021 10:07 am

With Trump's COS Meadows' Democracy-Ending PowerPoint, It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like . . . RICO
by Glenn Kirschner
Dec 11, 2021

In a staggering development, Donald Trump's former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows turned over to the House select committee, pursuant to a subpoena, a 38-page PowerPoint presentation setting out how to corruptly overturn Joe Biden's election win and install Trump for a second term as president.

With each new revelation about the democracy-busting crime and corruption of Trump and his associates, it looks more and more like our nation's RICO laws might apply to certain segments of the Trump administration.

Although our RICO - Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations - laws came into existence in 1970 to combat organized crime in the form of the Mafia, the RICO laws can be applied to any organization operating as a corrupt enterprise, as is discussed run this video.



***************************

Mark Meadows PowerPoint Plan to Overturn Election Results Revealed
by Ewan Palmer
Newsweek
12/10/21 AT 4:48 AM EST

Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows handed over a PowerPoint presentation to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol that details how the Trump administration planned to overturn the 2020 election results, including by declaring a national emergency.

The 38-page presentation, entitled "Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 Jan," is dated one day before the Capitol riot. It's believed to have been submitted by Meadows after he was subpoenaed by the panel in connection with the insurrection.

The slides contained a series of recommendations for Donald Trump and his administration to follow ahead of the certification of the electoral votes ceremony to declare Joe Biden the winner.

These include informing senators and congressmen of apparent "foreign interference" in the election, namely by China, before declaring a National Security Emergency. The government was then to announce that electronic voting in all states for the 2020 Election would be invalid.

The PowerPoint file details a number of dismissed claims of voter fraud, including that electronic voting machines were "shifting votes from Trump to Biden," as well as disputed allegations of widespread occurrences of double voters, deceased voters and fake ballots/ballot stuffing in states such as Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania.

There were also apparent plans to make then Vice President Mike Pence, in his purely ceremonial and constitutional role as presiding officer of the Senate on January 6, reject the electoral votes from states "where fraud occurred," therefore forcing the vote to be decided by the remaining electoral votes.

The plan then called for Pence to delay the election decision in order to allow "for a vetting and subsequent counting" of all the legal paper ballots.

In a slide entitled "Restoring confidence: 'Clear the air—count and compare'" the next stage of the alleged plan to stop Biden becoming president was to do a "full check to weed out counterfeit paper ballots" and then a count of the remaining "legal ones" across the country.

U.S. Marshals and Troops

"It must be done in full public view (via web broadcast) where each person has the chance to do the count themselves if they so desire. No more hiding behind barriers, distances, secrecy, and gag orders," the slide states.

The presentation also shows the extent of the planned recount, including deploying U.S. Marshals to immediately secure all the ballots and "provide a protective perimeter around the locations" in all 50 states.

National Guard troops were then to be brought in to recount the tens of millions of votes across the country.

"As the counting occurs each ballot will be imaged and the images placed on the Internet so any US citizen can view them and count the ballots themselves. The process will be completely transparent," the presentation said.

Recommendations

• Brief Senators and Congressmen on foreign interference
• Declare National Security Emergency
• Foreign influence and control of electronic voting systems
• Declare electronic voting in all states invalid
• LEGAL & Genuine Paper ballot counts or Constitutional remedy delegated to Congress


The existence of the PowerPoint presentation appeared to have been first referenced in a letter from the House committee investigating the January 6 riot to Meadows' lawyer, saying that they had "no choice" but to move forward contempt charges against Trump's former chief of staff after he refused to appear for a second scheduled deposition on Wednesday.

The letter confirmed that Meadows had previously been cooperating with the investigation and provided documents as requested. Meadows' lawyers are also reported to have withheld several hundred additional documents and more than 1,000 text messages from the committee while citing executive privilege, a defense that has been thrown out by District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan.

"Despite your very broad claims of privilege, Mr. Meadows has also produced documents that you apparently agree are relevant and not protected by any privilege at all," the letter to attorney George Terwilliger adds.

"Those documents include: a November 7, 2020, email discussing the appointment of alternate slates of electors as part of a 'direct and collateral attack' after the election; a January 5, 2021, email regarding a 38-page PowerPoint briefing titled 'Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN' that was to be provided 'on the hill.'"

Restoring Confidence in the 2020 General Election

• “Clear the air – count and compare”
• The tabulators cannot be trusted nationwide, and many counterfeit ballots have been inserted, therefore:
• A full check to weed out counterfeit paper ballots and then a count of the remaining legal ones across the nation must be done for all races in all states and will accurately determine who the people of America actually elected as our leaders.
• All ballots must remain locked and physically protected until directed by the federal government.
• A task force led by a trustworthy individual (we recommend Sid Gutierrez: NASA Astronaut, retired Air Force Colonel, Center Director at a National Laboratory) produce a standard procedure that will be required and will include full accountability so that counterfeit ballots are excluded and legal ballots are not lost, modified, substituted, or added in.
• We estimate counting can be done in each state in 5 to 10 days time with support from identified national assets.
• It must be done in full public view (via web broadcast) where each person has the chance to do the count themselves if they so desire. No more hiding behind barriers, distances, secrecy, and gag orders.
• We have the technology to do this.
• The paper ballots are secret ballots which means you cannot tell who voted it.
• Counterfeit ballots can easily and quickly be identified using technology similar to that used by Treasury to find counterfeit currency. Illegal paper stock, ballots filled out by a machine, mail-in ballots that never went through the mail, ballots printed and marked with the same ink can all be identified and rejected.
• Every legal paper ballot will have a camera pointed at it and will be captured for a few seconds.
• It will be recorded and be broadcast in real time on the Internet.


The letter from the panel chairman rep. Bennie Thompson adds that "there is no legitimate legal basis" for Meadows to refuse to cooperate with the Select Committee and answer questions about the documents he produced.

In a joint statement on Wednesday, Thompson and Vice Chair Liz Cheney said that they will be recommending that the House cites Meadows for contempt of Congress and refers him to the Department of Justice for prosecution.

Fellow key Trump ally Steven Bannon was indicted in November on two counts of contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas and refusing to answer questions from the House committee investigating the January 6 attack.

Terwilliger has been contacted for comment.

*******************

Inside the 38-page PowerPoint TrumpWorld circulated to justify election subversion: A version of the document circulating online is similar to one turned over by Mark Meadows: NYT
By Brett Bachman
Salon
PUBLISHED DECEMBER 11, 2021 1:02PM (EST)

As the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot continues its work, reports suggest it is closely scrutinizing a PowerPoint document filled with conspiracy theories and several plans to overturn the 2020 election results.

The 38-page file turned over by former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was titled "Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN" and was circulating "on the hill" in the days prior to Jan. 6, according to a letter Rep. Bennie Thompson, the select committee's chairman, sent to Meadows' attorney earlier this week.

The document is part of the reason the committee is so interested in speaking with Meadows more extensively, Thompson said, which leaves him "no choice" but to bring Meadows up on contempt of Congress charges after he stopped cooperating with the committee.

Both the Guardian and The New York Times report that a different, 36-page version of the PowerPoint circulating online is similar to the one received by the committee. Both include plans to declare a national emergency in order to delay the certification of the 2020 election and the outlines of a wild conspiracy that the country of Venezuela had taken over voting machines in a large number of important states, among other debunked and unverifiable allegations.

Though it remains unknown who first created the document, the Times notes it bears striking similarities to the theories of Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, which the paper describes as a "Texas entrepreneur and self-described inventor."

Meadows' attorney, George J. Terwilliger III, told the committee that the ex-Trump aide turned over the PowerPoint to the committee after receiving it via email and that he had not done anything with it.

"We produced the document because it wasn't privileged," Terwilliger wrote.

But the Times reports that Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel and one of the key propagators of Trump's Big Lie, apparently circulated the document among influential lawmakers, holding several briefings for Senators and House members on Jan. 4 and 5, respectively. Waldron, who reportedly cites a history of involvement with "informational warfare," told the paper that he hadn't given Meadows a copy but wasn't surprised it found his way to Trump's chief of staff.

"He would have gotten a copy for situational awareness for what was being briefed on the Hill at the time," he said.

It's unclear Meadows' continuing involvement with Waldron around Jan. 6 — though Waldron told The Washington Post that he met with Meadows and others at the White House just a few weeks earlier, around Christmas, to discuss investigative avenues, and held another meeting with Trump and several Pennsylvania legislators in the Oval Office on Nov. 25.

Former New York City Mayor and personal attorney to Trump Rudy Giuliani has also talked openly about receiving information from Waldron for his legal campaign to overturn the 2020 election, the Post reported, often serving as a go-between for Meadows and the retired Army colonel.

Shortly after turning over the document — and thousands of other emails and texts — Meadows decided to stop cooperating with the Jan. 6 committee. The drawback sets up an escalating legal battle that entered a new phase this week, with Meadows suing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Jan. 6 committee in the hopes a judge will block the subpoenas.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit also recently poked a hole in Trump's argument that he be allowed to keep documents from the Jan. 6 committee, writing that Congress has a broad mandate to Congress investigate any attacks launched against it.

"The January 6th Committee has also demonstrated a sound factual predicate for requesting these presidential documents specifically," the court writes. "There is a direct linkage between the former President and the events of the day."

BRETT BACHMAN
Brett Bachman is the Nights/Weekend Editor at Salon.


************************
Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN, January 5, 2021
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Fri Dec 17, 2021 9:21 pm

Congress Refers Meadows to DOJ for Prosecution: Here's Why Indicting Meadows is a Legal Layup
by Glenn Kirschner
Dec 15, 2021



Congress just voted to hold Donald Trump's former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress and refer him to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution. This means today is day 1 of "Mark Meadows - Indictment Watch." It took DOJ 22 days to indict Steve Bannon for his crime of contempt of Congress.

This video discusses the reasons why DOJ's decision whether to indict Meadows is an easy one based on the applicable law and the available facts.

*************************

Mark Meadows Held in Contempt of Congress as Jan. 6 Probe Expands. How Long Can Trump Hold Out?
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
DECEMBER 15, 2021
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/12/15 ... s_contempt

GUESTS: Jose Pagliery, political investigations reporter at The Daily Beast.
LINKS
Jose Pagliery on Twitter
"Mark Meadows' Personal Cell Is Becoming a Personal Hell"
"Don Jr. & Fox Stars Begged Meadows: Get Trump to Stop Capitol Riot"
"D.C. Attorney General Uses Anti-KKK Law to Sue Proud Boys, Oath Keepers Over Jan. 6"

The U.S. House voted to recommend the Department of Justice charge former President Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows with criminal contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack. The vote came after the committee released a series of text messages from Republican lawmakers and Fox News hosts to Meadows on January 6 that begged him to convince Trump to tell his followers to leave the Capitol. The messages show that Trump and his inner circle were “in the know” in the plot to overturn the election, says Daily Beast reporter Jose Pagliery.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: The House voted to Tuesday to hold former President Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Meadows is now the first former congressmember ever held in criminal contempt by Congress and the first held in contempt since 1832, when former Congressman Sam Houston was held in contempt for beating a colleague with a cane.

The vote came after the committee released a second batch of text messages from people begging Meadows to convince Trump to stop the deadly attack. This is Democratic Congressmember Jamie Raskin reading text messages sent to Meadows’ phone by Republicans on January 6th.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN: A whole set of messages that were discovered in asking questions to Mr. Meadows, including Republican lawmakers and others sending frantic messages saying, “We are under siege up here at the Capitol,” “They have breached the Capitol,” “Mark, protesters are literally storming the Capitol, breaking windows on our doors, rushing in. Is Trump going to say something?” “There’s an armed standoff at the House chamber door,” “We are all helpless.”

AMY GOODMAN: The text messages to Meadows are part of evidence he turned over to the committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. Tuesday’s vote came after the seven Democrats and two Republican committee members voted unanimously to seek contempt charges against Meadows. This is the vice chair of the committee, Republican Liz Cheney, reading private text messages sent to Meadows’ personal cellphone by Fox News hosts on January 6th.

REP. LIZ CHENEY: Quote, “Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home … this is hurting all of us … he is destroying his legacy,” Laura Ingraham wrote. “Please get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished,” Brian Kilmeade texted. Quote, “Can he make a statement? … Ask people to leave the Capitol,” Sean Hannity urged. As the violence continued, one of the president’s sons texted Mr. Meadows, quote, “He’s got to condemn this [bleep] ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough,” Donald Trump Jr. texted.

AMY GOODMAN: Those were text messages sent to Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows by Fox News hosts on January 6th. This was the response Monday on Fox News from Sean Hannity.

SEAN HANNITY: The hyperpartisan, predetermined outcome, anti-Trump January 6 committee just voted 9 to 0 to hold Mark Meadows in contempt for refusing to comply with their orders.

AMY GOODMAN: Sean Hannity also had Mark Meadows back as a guest on his show to discuss the vote to hold him in contempt, but Hannity did not bring up the text message he sent Meadows during the Capitol riots.

This comes as the January 6 committee has also voted to cite former White House adviser Stephen Bannon and ex-Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark for contempt of Congress after they refused to testify after receiving a subpoena.

For more, we’re joined Jose Pagliery. He is political investigations reporter at The Daily Beast. He’s been following all of this very closely. One of his latest pieces is headlined “Mark Meadows’ Personal Cell Is Becoming a Personal Hell.”

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Jose. So, let’s talk about the significance of this moment. This is the first time in U.S. history a congressmember has been held in criminal contempt and only the second time in, what, almost 200 years, been held in contempt. Talk about these thousands of pages that he himself gave to the committee, or his lawyers did, based on — we don’t even know his official phone, his White House phone, but this was his personal cellphone, thousands of pages, even though he is refusing to cooperate.

JOSE PAGLIERY: Well, good morning, Amy.

I’ve got to say, this is also the first time in history that a former member of Congress has become a chief of staff who tried to help a president stage a coup. And so what we’re seeing here is absolutely new ground, but it’s par for the course.

So, Mark Meadows and his situation is quickly worsening, and to understand it, we’ve got to realize this is the problem that a man creates by himself by only going halfway. He received a subpoena from the committee to turn over documents and to show up for a deposition. And just recently did we discover that this entire time that the committee has been saying that they’ve been engaging with him, what’s actually been going on behind the scenes is that they’ve just been delaying — not the committee; Mark Meadows and his legal team. So, for the past two months they fought off showing up for the deposition. They fought off any document — you know, turning over any documents. It wasn’t until really the end of November, basically, where they started turning over reams of data.

And when they did, what’s curious here is that it didn’t come from the kind of stuff that you’d expect to be at the National Archives, like the things that would be on his official phone or his official computer. What he was turning over was stuff from two Gmail accounts and his personal cellphone. Now, this is where it gets really curious, because, first off, you’re not supposed to have official work on your personal electronics. He would know that. This is one of the top Republicans who went after Hillary Clinton for her emails in her private server. And so he knew that from the beginning.

But in turning over this stuff over to the committee, he was also trapping himself, essentially. One, he was trying to claim executive privilege on some of them, thereby admitting that, essentially, it shouldn’t be in his possession now. And, two, the stuff he was turning over hinted at what could be in the other material that he’s not turning over. Like you said, these text messages between him and Fox News hosts and the text messages that he got from Donald Trump Jr. clearly show that he was in the know on January 6th, in the run-up to and after, on this plot to stop the certification of election results from 2020.

But the trap that’s really going to get him here is the following. It’s three parts. One, if these are official texts, they shouldn’t be on his personal cellphone. Two, if they are official communications for the executive branch, then that phone should not be reimbursed by donors for his congressional campaign, which is something we discovered. And the third point is, if this phone is being reimbursed by his congressional campaign, given that he’s no longer a congressman, they shouldn’t be used in a personal capacity. And so he’s absolutely trapped here.

One of the things that I’ve spoken to about with a former archivist for the United States is that the stuff he’s got on his personal devices needed to have been turned over to the National Archives on his way out the door. The fact that he didn’t do that could also potentially land him problems by being in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

And so, really what we’ve got here is Mark Meadows, for reasons that are yet to be determined, essentially making himself a martyr for the former president and just attracting all this trouble on himself, where, inevitably, what’s going to happen is, if the Justice Department comes after him, he’s facing jail time or huge fines. And this is going to be a problem for him going forward, because this is not escapable.


All of this hinges on the idea about whether or not a former president can claim executive privilege. And that’s something we can talk about, too, because the Trump case right now, that clearly is headed to the Supreme Court, is going to essentially determine the outcome for Mark Meadows, Steve Bannon, as you mentioned, and also Jeffrey Clark, that official at the Department of Justice, who’s since left, but, while he was there, tried to play a central role in essentially turning over the election in 2020.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jose, I wanted to follow up on that latter portion of your remarks there in terms of this issue of the executive privilege eventually — issue going to the Supreme Court. Isn’t the effort of Meadows and the Trump followers to drag this out, to run out the clock past the November elections, when hopefully they can regain control, from their perspective, of Congress and short-circuit this entire investigation?

JOSE PAGLIERY: Well, Juan, that’s certainly the position of the Department of Justice under the Biden administration. I mean, they’ve said in court papers that this is absolutely a delay tactic. I mean, the committee also is accusing this of being such. But while that does appear to be the case, there also seems to be something else at play here.

Reporting that I did last week reflects that Steve Bannon’s legal strategy appears not just to be a manner of delaying this, hoping that maybe if they stretch this out until late next year that we’ve got an election and then things get sort of fuzzy, but also that if there’s a case against Bannon, Bannon’s legal team seems to think that they can then use that as a way to reach into the Department of Justice, reach into the White House and try to seek documents that would purportedly show that this is a political prosecution. And so, this perfectly well fits Bannon’s strategy, right? We know him as this right-wing provocateur who is, frankly, really intelligent and smart at playing games with journalists, but also with messaging, with public messaging. And so, he seems to be trying to turn the tables here and say, “Well, forget the committee’s work for a second. What did the Biden administration do to me?” And in doing so, we can see how three different characters here — four, essentially, actually, if you consider Steve Bannon, Jeff Clark at the DOJ, Mark Meadows and then Trump himself — are trying to essentially not just block the committee’s work but turn it upside down.

All these cases, though — it has to be said, all of these cases and any effort to block the committee’s work claiming executive privilege, it all hinges on Trump’s legal challenge, which deserves a close look, because everyone I’ve spoken to, every legal scholar, everyone who’s really knowledgeable about the Constitution and is currently teaching at a law school, has told me that there is no way that a former president can claim executive privilege that overrides the current president deciding to release those records to Congress. That said, we are also dealing with a Supreme Court that has been packed by that very former president.

And so, it has yet to be determined what exactly is going to come out of this, but at the very least, like you said, Juan, there’s going to be delays. And the problem with delays are at least twofold. One, we can run into the problem where if this stretches on until late next year, then maybe if it goes beyond the election, then there won’t be a Democrat-led committee. Maybe it will be Republican-led. And we all know what’s going to happen there. It’s going to just fizzle and disappear. On the other hand, though, the delay also buys time for people to delete information, to coordinate responses, to essentially drag this out so that the evidence is not as fresh. And that could also be problematic, because in this case, time is absolutely of the essence.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I wanted to ask you, in terms of how this is playing in the general public — I mean, we’ve had examples in the past of major scandals in Republican administrations — of course, most famously, Watergate during the Nixon era. But then we had Iran-Contra during the Reagan era. And while this could potentially be more like Iran-Contra, that it drags on for so long, with the people, the public, basically turning off, that even after the conclusions are reached in a congressional committee, that nothing major happens in terms of holding those responsible for what happened. I’m wondering your thoughts on that.

JOSE PAGLIERY: So, it’s a good question. And I’ve spoken with some people who have direct relations with the members of the committee, and they know this could happen. So, there is not — I wouldn’t say a concern, but they see this as a potential outcome. And so, what I’m hearing is that the committee absolutely plans, sometime early next year, to start having some kind of public hearings to garner attention, to lay out all the evidence all at once. The chairman of the committee, Representative Bennie Thompson, sort of hinted at this the other day when he said, “At some point we’re going to lay all the evidence out, but not just yet, not until we have it all put together.” Well, that’s essentially — the reason why they would do that is exactly what you’re saying here, which is that there would be a concern that the public will just get lost with hundreds of headlines. And if they have a few days or a few weeks where they have daily public hearings laying out all the evidence they’ve gathered, that could sort of shore that up.

I mean, look, if we think about what the committee has done so far, it’s a ton of work. They say that they’ve heard from almost 300 witnesses, received tens of thousands of documents — at least 9,000 pages from Meadows himself. And with that amount of information, we’ve got something that, frankly, could be compared to the FBI’s effort on the other end, prosecuting the actual people who tried to storm the Capitol.

I mean, there’s a multi-front sort of effort here that we’ve got to keep track of. One is the committee going after the people who staged this. The other is the FBI going after the people who actually showed up, sometimes armed. But then we’ve got, you know, efforts like what you mentioned on your show just now with the District of Columbia attorney general going after the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers in a civil lawsuit, making them literally pay for what they did, because unless you’ve got this multipronged approach, you’ve got a situation potentially where this could happen again in 2022 or 2024. There are a lot of people who are Trump loyalists, absolutely ticked off. They have guns, and they’re connected. And so, this multipronged approach could be an attempt to prevent this from happening again. The question is whether or not people are going to be paying attention when the January 6th committee actually shows the evidence they’ve got.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to that lawsuit in a minute. But during Monday’s hearing at the House committee investigating the insurrection, Republican co-chair Liz Cheney seemed to suggest the committee could refer former President Trump for criminal charges. This is what she said.

REP. LIZ CHENEY: Mr. Meadows’s testimony will bear on another key question before this committee: Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’s official proceedings to count electoral votes?

AMY GOODMAN: Jose Pagliery, the significance of what this Republican congressmember is saying?

JOSE PAGLIERY: Yeah. Well, I mean, it seems like she’s — she sounds like a prosecutor speaking to a jury, reading out the U.S. federal criminal code, because this would be obstruction of Congress’s work, which is a crime punishable by jail time. And so, it’s very clear, when she read that, that she is hinting at where this is going: ultimately going after the former president for his central role in trying to stage an insurrection — well, in successfully staging an insurrection, trying to stage a coup and staying in power.

And so, this is — we know where the committee is going here. They’re going after the people who put these rallies together, the people in the White House who knew what was going on and didn’t stop it or egged it on, and the president for, I mean, let’s not forget, literally telling his followers, his rallygoers in front of him, “Go to the Capitol.”

I mean, it can’t be stressed enough just how obvious this was going on in plain sight. And, look, some members of Congress yesterday, when they were debating whether or not to hold Meadows in contempt, were noting the fact that it seems like the weird thing about the last four or five years is that if it happens in plain sight, people sort of shrug. But it can’t be that way.

AMY GOODMAN: I also wanted to go to Congressmember Adam Schiff reading that text message sent January 3rd to Mark Meadows from an unidentified sender — but it’s a congressmember — about the possibility that Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who appeared open to pursuing Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results, would replace Jeffrey Rosen, then the acting attorney General. And this was the text Schiff read: “I heard Jeff Clark is getting put in on Monday. That’s amazing. It will make a lot of patriots happy and I’m personally so proud that you are at the tip of the spear and I can call you a friend.” He’s talking to Mark Meadows. And what about these anonymous texts, which are believed to be congressmembers, and will congressmembers get implicated in this, helping with the insurrection as their fellow congressmembers were being targeted and police were being physically attacked?

JOSE PAGLIERY: This is a really tricky question, because this doesn’t just border on, like, constitutional issues in the U.S. I mean, who’s going to go after a sitting congressmember, right? Are they going to be able to police themselves? I mean, we’ve shown that throughout the past few months, there have only really been two Republicans — Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney — who have actually decided to go along with investigating what happened on January 6th. What’s going to happen when the closest people to Mark Meadows, like Matt Gaetz or Jim Jordan, are revealed, you know, for their role they potentially played in those days? I don’t know that their fellow members are going to hold them accountable. That’s an open question.

But what we do see now that’s very interesting from the committee is that in reading these texts without saying who it is that sent them — because we don’t know who it is that sent them; we just know that, according to them, they’re members of the House, they’re not senators — they’re flexing a muscle here. They’re saying, “We have these communications, and this will keep going.” And it should come to no surprise that nearly every Republican voted against holding Mark Meadows in contempt. They want to hit the brakes on this.

But it’s worth noting, by the way, that Mark Meadows, in the run-up to all of this, was going back and forth with the committee about whether or not he would testify and under what conditions. And one of the things that seems to have absolutely become a wall to those discussions is when the committee sought his private text message and call logs from Verizon. It was then that Mark Meadows just stopped talking to the committee and then sued Nancy Pelosi and the committee members to stop them from getting any more records from Verizon, because it’s clear that that’s where the goods are. What’s curious is, as I mentioned earlier, you know, he’s trapped here, because if the relevant material is in a personal account, then he cannot claim that there is executive privilege over this without essentially saying that he should have turned it over anyway. And that’s a big problem for him.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jose, I wanted to ask you: Is there any indication that Mark Meadows was not alone in using private accounts, private phone or email accounts, to conduct government business? Because, after all, as you note, this was one of the major criticisms of Hillary Clinton in the famous email — in the battle over the emails. Is there any indication that there were many other members of the Trump administration doing the same thing?

JOSE PAGLIERY: So, there’s been reporting from others that clearly show that members of the Trump administration didn’t want to let go of their personal devices. I mean, if you remember, at the start of the Trump administration, there was a big issue when his family members and his close advisers were reluctant to use phones that had been secured by the intelligence community here in the country. And so, you know, some of that was deep state concerns, right? But, yeah, when they didn’t want to use government phones and they used personal phones, yes, we had heard about use of Signal and other encrypted apps to do this. And there’s been reporting from others that there may have been a burner phone involved with Meadows in his communication with the rally organizers. And so, there is absolutely that question.

I mean, look, going back, let’s remember that if you go back six or seven years, yes, there was a national debate about whether or not a politician should use a personal device for official work and keep official documents on a personal server. I think there was a resounding response to that, that says, “No, you can’t do that. You shouldn’t do that. You should be held accountable.” The question is: Are Republicans going to hold their own former colleague accountable here, and are they going to hold themselves accountable? Because we clearly see from what the committee has shown so far that these private texts were going back and forth between him and other members. And so there is absolutely an open question as to whether or not you’ve got all these personal devices going around, on official business, that is official business plotting a coup. I mean, let’s not forget what this is really about. This is official business about an insurrection. And that’s going to blow up in their face.


AMY GOODMAN: Jose, maybe this is connected, but I want to end on your pinned tweet. You’re the political investigations reporter at The Daily Beast. Your pinned tweet is from 2019. You wrote, “Sitting in a nearly empty immigration court on Tuesday, the judge called the next case. In walks a 4-year-old Honduran girl, her hair in a dozen braids each with a black bow. She refused to sit in the chair. She preferred to sit next to me in the back. The translator leaned over, telling her about upcoming court dates & the importance of attending — or being subject to a deportation order in absentia. Of course this little darling had no idea what was going on. She blew raspberries my way & giggled the whole time. The first time she responded to the judge was when she asked her age. The girl raised her right hand and four little fingers, then looked at me and smiled. 'Wow,' I whispered to her. 'Tienes cuatro años?' She nodded, and all the bows swung in the air. 'Si!' When it was all over, she didn’t want to get up & leave. She seemed so content just sitting by my side and swinging her legs from the pew. I complimented the rainbow unicorn on her jacket. It’s cold outside & you should really put it on, it’s such a beautiful jacket, I said. The child care center worker held her hand, and they walked out. I have no idea where her mom is. She has no idea where her mom is. I couldn’t stop thinking about little Merolin for the rest of the day.”

We just have 30 seconds. It’s such a heartbreaking story. But if you can connect what happened then, under President Trump in 2019, to his insurrection of January 6th and what he’s doing today?

JOSE PAGLIERY: Well, look, the Trump era was one that really took everything that Americans traditionally considered American values — whether or not they had any right to claim or assert ownership of those values and support them, he took everything that people considered American values, and flipped them upside down. The big question I have had as a reporter covering this has always been: Why have so many people not — you know, not caught that and said, “No, this is wrong. We’re not going to go along with this”?

I mean, when I wrote that, I was at Univision here locally in New York, and I was covering the child separations. I mean, if you take that to the insurrection, what we’ve got is everything that Americans have considered sacred was chucked out the window. The question still is: Are we going to hold people accountable for that? I don’t know.

AMY GOODMAN: Jose Pagliery, I want to thank you for being with us, political investigations reporter at The Daily Beast.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Fri Dec 17, 2021 9:31 pm

Jim Jordan's Text to Mark Meadows & the Crime of Obstructing a Congressional Proceeding
by Glenn Kirschner
Dec 16, 2021



The House select committee released multiple text messages sent to Donald Trump's former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on January 6. These texts form Donald Trump's allies and supporters - Fox News hosts, Republicans in Congress and Trump's own son - make clear it was widely (and accurately) believed that Trump was in control of the actions of the mob that he set on the Capitol that day to stop the certification of the election results. The text messages also prove that, despited all the begging and pleading that Trump call off his mob, he refused to do so for more than three hours.

The committee also released a text from Rep. Jim Jordan to Meadows sent on January 5, on the eve of the Capitol attack. Importantly, before January 5, Trump's Attorney General Bill Barr had announced that there was no election fraud undermining Joe Biden's win. Moreover, before January 5, Trump's own agencies announced that the 2020 presidential election was the most secure election in US history. Nevertheless, Jordan sent Meadows a text urging him to have Vice President Mike Pence throw out votes he deemed unconstitutional. This conduct qualifies as an attempt to obstruct or impede an official congressional proceeding, in violation of 18 United State Code section 1512. Time for accountability.

****************************

GOP Rep. Jim Jordan confirms January 6 panel released text message he sent to Meadows
Jordan's office said the text from the Ohio Republican was a forwarded message and that the Jan. 6 committee misrepresented its content by shortening it.

by Dartunorro Clark, Ali Vitali and Haley Talbot
NBC News
Dec. 15, 2021, 4:13 PM MST

WASHINGTON — Rep. Jim Jordan's office confirmed Wednesday that the Ohio Republican was one of the lawmakers whose text messages to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows were released this week by the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

The acknowledgement comes two days after the Jan. 6 committee made public numerous documents, including text messages, provided to the panel by Meadows. The House committee revealed several text messages sent to Meadows by GOP lawmakers but did not name any of them.

Jordan's office said Wednesday that the message cited by the panel on Monday was a forwarded text, and that it was truncated by the committee.

“Mr. Jordan forwarded the text to Mr. Meadows and Mr. Meadows certainly knew it was a forward,” Jordan’s spokesman told NBC News on Wednesday.

Some smartphones do not specify that a text message has been forwarded.

The text message from Jordan to Meadows released by committee on Monday read: "On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.”

Jordan's office said the shortened version misrepresented the content of the text with an "inadvertently" placed period.

The Jan. 6 committee acknowledged trimming the text before making it public.

“The Select Committee is responsible for and regrets the error,” a spokesman told NBC News on Wednesday.

The full text read: “On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all — in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence. 'No legislative act,' wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78, 'contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.' The court in Hubbard v. Lowe reinforced this truth: 'That an unconstitutional statute is not a law at all is a proposition no longer open to discussion.' 226 F. 135, 137 (SDNY 1915), appeal dismissed, 242 U.S. 654 (1916). Following this rationale, an unconstitutionally appointed elector, like an unconstitutionally enacted statute, is no elector at all.’”


And Jim Jordan made this statement urging Mike Pence to just throw out votes that let's be clear were going to be cast for Joe Biden, he made this statement after Donald Trump's own attorney general Bill Barr said there was no fraud undermining Joe Biden's win. Jim Jordan made this statement urging Mike Pence to throw out electoral college votes after "Trump's own officials say 2020 was America's most secure election in history." (Vox) Jim Jordan made this statement urging Mike Pence to throw out votes after "The Department of Homeland Security calls election 'the most secure in American history.' (Axios) Jim Jordan made this statement after Donald Trump's own officials and administration vouched for the validity and legitimacy of the election results. But Jim Jordan just said, "I don't care. Throw them out," apparently based on false claims, baseless claims, debunked claims of voter fraud.

So let's be clear. This is Jim Jordan in a text message to Mark Meadows saying -- apologies -- "F the voters! They don't matter. They don't count. Just throw out Joe Biden's win and install Trump for a second term."

-- Jim Jordan's Text to Mark Meadows & the Crime of Obstructing a Congressional Proceeding, by Glenn Kirschner


Politico reported on Jordan's text message earlier Wednesday.

Joseph Schmitz, a conservative lawyer and one-time national security adviser on former President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, sent the legal theory to Jordan who then passed it on to Meadows, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News.

The text reveals another instance of how those in Trump's orbit were pressing the White House to challenge the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6.

Jordan is a close ally of Meadows from their time in Congress and as members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

Jordan has been a staunch Trump ally and was one of the Republican lawmakers tapped by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to serve on the Jan. 6 committee. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., rejected Jordan and another Republican offered by McCarthy, who later pulled his picks. Pelosi later added two GOP lawmakers — Reps. Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, and Adam Kinzinger, of Illinois — to the nine-member committee.

The Jan. 6 committee this week also released texts from three Fox News hosts and Donald Trump Jr. showing they had urged Meadows to get Trump to call off the rioters during the attack on the Capitol.

The House voted Tuesday night to refer Meadows to the Justice Department for a potential criminal charge over his refusal to answer questions about the Jan. 6 attack. Lawmakers passed the measure largely along party lines in a 222-208 vote. Cheney and Kinzinger were the only Republicans to cross the aisle and vote with Democrats.
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Sun Dec 19, 2021 3:21 am

Meadows and the Band of Loyalists: How They Fought to Keep Trump in Power: A small circle of Republican lawmakers, working closely with President Donald J. Trump’s chief of staff, took on an outsize role in pressuring the Justice Department, amplifying conspiracy theories and flooding the courts in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
by Katie Benner, Catie Edmondson, Luke Broadwater and Alan Feuer
New York Times
Dec. 15, 2021

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President Donald J. Trump seemed to believe that a small group of Republican lawmakers would help him stay in office. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Two days after Christmas last year, Richard P. Donoghue, a top Justice Department official in the waning days of the Trump administration, saw an unknown number appear on his phone.

Mr. Donoghue had spent weeks fielding calls, emails and in-person requests from President Donald J. Trump and his allies, all of whom asked the Justice Department to declare, falsely, that the election was corrupt.
The lame-duck president had surrounded himself with a crew of unscrupulous lawyers, conspiracy theorists, even the chief executive of MyPillow — and they were stoking his election lies.

Mr. Trump had been handing out Mr. Donoghue’s cellphone number so that people could pass on rumors of election fraud. Who could be calling him now?

It turned out to be a member of Congress: Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, who began pressing the president’s case. Mr. Perry said he had compiled a dossier of voter fraud allegations that the department needed to vet. Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer who had found favor with Mr. Trump, could “do something” about the president’s claims, Mr. Perry said, even if others in the department would not.

The message was delivered by an obscure lawmaker who was doing Mr. Trump’s bidding. Justice Department officials viewed it as outrageous political pressure from a White House that had become consumed by conspiracy theories.


It was also one example of how a half-dozen right-wing members of Congress became key foot soldiers in Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election, according to dozens of interviews and a review of hundreds of pages of congressional testimony about the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.

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Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio, left, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania at a rally in Harrisburg, Pa., two days after the 2020 election. Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

The lawmakers — all of them members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus — worked closely with the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, whose central role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn a democratic election is coming into focus as the congressional investigation into Jan. 6 gains traction.

The men were not alone in their efforts — most Republican lawmakers fell in line behind Mr. Trump’s false claims of fraud, at least rhetorically — but this circle moved well beyond words and into action. They bombarded the Justice Department with dubious claims of voting irregularities. They pressured members of state legislatures to conduct audits that would cast doubt on the election results. They plotted to disrupt the certification on Jan. 6 of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.

There was Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the pugnacious former wrestler who bolstered his national profile by defending Mr. Trump on cable television; Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, whose political ascent was padded by a $10 million sweepstakes win; and Representative Paul Gosar, an Arizona dentist who trafficked in conspiracy theories, spoke at a white nationalist rally and posted an animated video that depicted him killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York.


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Representatives Paul Gosar of Arizona, left, and Louie Gohmert of Texas spoke at a news conference this month expressing concerns about the treatment of those who had stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. Credit...T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

They were joined by Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, who was known for fiery speeches delivered to an empty House chamber and unsuccessfully sued Vice President Mike Pence over his refusal to interfere in the election certification; and Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, a lawyer who rode the Tea Party wave to Congress and was later sued by a Democratic congressman for inciting the Jan. 6 riot.

Mr. Perry, a former Army helicopter pilot who is close to Mr. Jordan and Mr. Meadows, acted as a de facto sergeant. He coordinated many of the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office, including a plan to replace the acting attorney general with a more compliant official. His colleagues call him General Perry.

Mr. Meadows, a former congressman from North Carolina who co-founded the Freedom Caucus in 2015, knew the six lawmakers well. His role as Mr. Trump’s right-hand man helped to remarkably empower the group in the president’s final, chaotic weeks in office.


In his book, “The Chief’s Chief,” Mr. Meadows insisted that he and Mr. Trump were simply trying to unfurl serious claims of election fraud. “All he wanted was time to get to the bottom of what really happened and get a fair count,” Mr. Meadows wrote.

Congressional Republicans have fought the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation at every turn, but it is increasingly clear that Mr. Trump relied on the lawmakers to help his attempts to retain power. When Justice Department officials said they could not find evidence of widespread fraud, Mr. Trump was unconcerned: “Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” he said, according to Mr. Donoghue’s notes of the call.

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Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, promoted several conspiracy theories as he fought the electoral process. Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

November

On Nov. 9, two days after The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Biden, crisis meetings were underway at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va.

Mr. Perry and Mr. Jordan huddled with senior White House officials, including Mr. Meadows; Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser; Bill Stepien, the campaign manager; and Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary.

According to two people familiar with the meetings, which have not been previously reported, the group settled on a strategy that would become a blueprint for Mr. Trump’s supporters in Congress: Hammer home the idea that the election was tainted, announce legal actions being taken by the campaign, and bolster the case with allegations of fraud.

At a news conference later that day, Ms. McEnany delivered the message.

“This election is not over,” she said. “Far from it.”


Mr. Jordan’s spokesman said that the meeting was to discuss media strategy, not to overturn the election.

On cable television and radio shows and at rallies, the lawmakers used unproved fraud claims to promote the idea that the election had been stolen. Mr. Brooks said he would never vote to certify Mr. Trump’s loss. Mr. Jordan told Fox News that ballots were counted in Pennsylvania after the election, contrary to state law. Mr. Gohmert claimed in Philadelphia that there was “rampant” voter fraud and later said on YouTube that the U.S. military had seized computer servers in Germany used to flip American votes.

Mr. Gosar pressed Doug Ducey, the Republican governor of Arizona, to investigate voting equipment made by Dominion Voting Systems, a company at the heart of several false conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump and his allies spread.


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Mr. Trump’s supporters protested at the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in Phoenix as ballots were being counted in November 2020. Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

Mr. Gosar embraced the fraud claims so closely that his chief of staff, Tom Van Flein, rushed to an airplane hangar parking lot in Phoenix after a conspiracy theory began circulating that a suspicious jet carrying ballots from South Korea was about to land, perhaps in a bid to steal the election from Mr. Trump, according to court documents filed by one of the participants. The claim turned out to be baseless.

Mr. Van Flein did not respond to detailed questions about the episode.

Even as the fraud claims grew increasingly outlandish, Attorney General William P. Barr authorized federal prosecutors to look into “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities. Critics inside and outside the Justice Department slammed the move, saying it went against years of the department’s norms and chipped away at its credibility. But Mr. Barr privately told advisers that ignoring the allegations — no matter how implausible — would undermine faith in the election, according to Mr. Donoghue’s testimony.

And in any event, administration officials and lawmakers believed the claims would have little effect on the peaceful transfer of power to Mr. Biden from Mr. Trump, according to multiple former officials.

Mainstream Republicans like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said on Nov. 9 that Mr. Trump had a right to investigate allegations of irregularities, “A few legal inquiries from the president do not exactly spell the end of the Republic,” Mr. McConnell said.

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Mr. Gohmert unsuccessfully sued Vice President Mike Pence, center, in an attempt to force him to nullify the election results. Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

December

On Dec. 1, 2020, Mr. Barr said publicly what he knew to be true: The Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread election fraud. Mr. Biden was the lawful winner.

The attorney general’s declaration seemed only to energize the six lawmakers. Mr. Gohmert suggested that the F.B.I. in Washington could not be trusted to investigate election fraud. Mr. Biggs said that Mr. Trump’s allies needed “the imprimatur, quite frankly of the D.O.J.,” to win their lawsuits claiming fraud.

They turned their attention to Jan. 6, when Mr. Pence was to officially certify Mr. Biden’s victory. Mr. Jordan, asked if the president should concede, replied, “No way.”

The lawmakers started drumming up support to derail the transfer of power.

Mr. Gohmert sued Mr. Pence in an attempt to force him to nullify the results of the election. Mr. Perry circulated a letter written by Pennsylvania state legislators to Mr. McConnell and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, asking Congress to delay certification. “I’m obliged to concur,” Mr. Perry wrote.

Mr. Meadows remained the key leader. When disputes broke out among organizers of the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” rallies, he stepped in to mediate, according to two organizers, Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lynn Lawrence.


In one case, Mr. Meadows helped settle a feud about whether to have one or two rallies on Jan. 6. The organizers decided that Mr. Trump would make what amounted to an opening statement about election fraud during his speech at the Ellipse, then the lawmakers would rise in succession during the congressional proceeding and present evidence they had gathered of purported fraud.

(That plan was ultimately derailed by the attack on Congress, Mr. Stockton said.)

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Mr. Trump at the rally outside the White House on Jan. 6. “We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he told his supporters. Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times

On Dec. 21, Mr. Trump met with members of the Freedom Caucus to discuss their plans. Mr. Jordan, Mr. Gosar, Mr. Biggs, Mr. Brooks and Mr. Meadows were there.

“This sedition will be stopped,” Mr. Gosar wrote on Twitter.

Asked about such meetings, Mr. Gosar’s chief of staff said the congressman and his colleagues “have and had every right to attend rallies and speeches.”

“None of the members could have anticipated what occurred (on Jan. 6),” Mr. Van Flein added.

Mr. Perry was finding ways to exert pressure on the Justice Department. He introduced Mr. Trump to Mr. Clark, the acting head of the department’s civil division who became one of the Stop the Steal movement’s most ardent supporters.

Then, after Christmas, Mr. Perry called Mr. Donoghue to share his voter fraud dossier, which focused on unfounded election fraud claims in Pennsylvania.

“I had never heard of him before that day,” Mr. Donoghue would later testify to Senate investigators. He assumed that Mr. Trump had given Mr. Perry his personal cellphone number, as the president had done with others who were eager to pressure Justice Department officials to support the false idea of a rigged election.


Key Figures in the Jan. 6 Inquiry

The House investigation. A select committee is scrutinizing the causes of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, which occurred as Congress met to formalize Joe Biden’s election victory amid various efforts to overturn the results. Here are some people being examined by the panel:

Donald Trump. The former president’s movement and communications on Jan. 6 appear to be a focus of the inquiry. But Mr. Trump has attempted to shield his records, invoking executive privilege. The dispute is making its way through the courts.

Mark Meadows. Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, who initially provided the panel with a trove of documents that showed the extent of his role in the efforts to overturn the election, is now refusing to cooperate. The House voted to recommend holding Mr. Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress.

Republican congressmen. Scott Perry, Jim Jordan, Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar, Louie Gohmert and Mo Brooks, working closely with Mr. Meadows, became key in the effort to overturn the election. The panel has signaled that it will investigate the role of members of Congress.

Phil Waldron. The retired Army colonel has been under scrutiny since a 38-page PowerPoint document he circulated on Capitol Hill was turned over to the panel by Mr. Meadows. The document contained extreme plans to overturn the election.

Fox News anchors. ​​Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Brian Kilmeade texted Mr. Meadows during the Jan. 6 riot urging him to persuade Mr. Trump to make an effort to stop it. The texts were part of the material that Mr. Meadows had turned over to the panel.

Steve Bannon. The former Trump aide has been charged with contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena, claiming protection under executive privilege even though he was an outside adviser. His trial is scheduled for next summer.

Jeffrey Clark. The little-known official repeatedly pushed his colleagues at the Justice Department to help Mr. Trump undo his loss. The panel has recommended that Mr. Clark be held in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate.

John Eastman. The lawyer has been the subject of intense scrutiny since writing a memo that laid out how Mr. Trump could stay in power. Mr. Eastman was present at a meeting of Trump allies at the Willard Hotel that has become a prime focus of the panel.


Mr. Donoghue passed the dossier on to Scott Brady, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, with a note saying “for whatever it may be worth.”

Mr. Brady determined the allegations “were not well founded,” like so much of the flimsy evidence that the Trump campaign had dug up.


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A mob breached the Capitol on Jan. 6. Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times

January

On Jan. 5, Mr. Jordan was still pushing.

That day, he forwarded Mr. Meadows a text message he had received from a lawyer and former Pentagon inspector general outlining a legal strategy to overturn the election.

“On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all — in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence,” the text read.

On Jan. 6, Washington was overcast and breezy as thousands of people gathered at the Ellipse to hear Mr. Trump and his allies spread a lie that has become a rallying cry in the months since: that the election was stolen from them in plain view.

Mr. Brooks, wearing body armor, took the stage in the morning, saying he was speaking at the behest of the White House. The crowd began to swell.

“Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass,” Mr. Brooks said. “Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America?”

Just before noon, Mr. Pence released a letter that said he would not block certification. The power to choose the president, he said, belonged “to the American people, and to them alone.”

Mr. Trump approached the dais soon after and said the vice president did not have “the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution.”

“We will never give up,” Mr. Trump said. “We will never concede.”

Roaring their approval, many in the crowd began the walk down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol, where the certification proceeding was underway. Amped up by the speakers at the rally, the crowd taunted the officers who guarded the Capitol and pushed toward the building’s staircases and entry points, eventually breaching security along the perimeter just after 1 p.m.

By this point, the six lawmakers were inside the Capitol, ready to protest the certification. Mr. Gosar was speaking at 2:16 p.m. when security forces entered the chamber because rioters were in the building.

As the melee erupted, Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, yelled to his colleagues who were planning to challenge the election: “This is what you’ve gotten, guys.”

When Mr. Jordan tried to help Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, move to safety, she smacked his hand away, according to a congressional aide briefed on the exchange.

“Get away from me,” she told him. “You fucking did this.”


A spokesman for Mr. Jordan disputed parts of the account, saying that Ms. Cheney did not curse at the congressman or slap him.

The back-and-forth was reported earlier by the Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker in their book “I Alone Can Fix It.”

Of the six lawmakers, only Mr. Gosar and Mr. Jordan responded to requests for comment for this article, through their spokespeople.

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The House reconvened after the riot to continue the process of certifying the election results. Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

The Aftermath

Mr. Perry was recently elected leader of the Freedom Caucus, elevating him to an influential leadership post as Republicans could regain control of the House in 2022. The stolen election claim is now a litmus test for the party, with Mr. Trump and his allies working to oust those who refuse to back it.

All six lawmakers are poised to be key supporters should Mr. Trump maintain his political clout before the midterm and general elections. Mr. Brooks is running for Senate in Alabama, and Mr. Gohmert is running for Texas attorney general.

Some, like Mr. Jordan, are in line to become committee chairs if Republicans take back the House. After Jan. 6, Mr. Jordan has claimed that he never said the election was stolen.

In many ways, they have tried to rewrite history. Several of the men have argued that the Jan. 6 attack was akin to a tourist visit to the Capitol. Mr. Gosar cast the attackers as “peaceful patriots across the country” who were harassed by federal prosecutors. A Pew research poll found that nearly two-thirds of Republicans said their party should not accept elected officials who criticize Mr. Trump.


Still, the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack appears to be picking up steam, voting this week to recommend that Mr. Meadows be charged with criminal contempt of Congress after he shifted from partly participating in the inquiry to waging a full-blown legal fight against the committee.

His fight is in line with Mr. Trump’s directive to stonewall the inquiry.

But the committee has signaled that it will investigate the role of members of Congress.

According to one prominent witness who was interviewed by the committee, investigators are interested in the relationship between Freedom Caucus members and political activists who organized “Stop the Steal” rallies before and after the election.

Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said the panel would follow the facts wherever they led, including to members of Congress.

“Nobody,” he said, “is off-limits.”

Katie Benner covers the Justice Department. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for public service for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. @ktbenner

Catie Edmondson is a reporter in the Washington bureau, covering Congress. @CatieEdmondson

Luke Broadwater covers Congress. He was the lead reporter on a series of investigative articles at The Baltimore Sun that won a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award in 2020. @lukebroadwater

Alan Feuer covers courts and criminal justice for the Metro desk. He has written about mobsters, jails, police misconduct, wrongful convictions, government corruption and El Chapo, the jailed chief of the Sinaloa drug cartel. He joined The Times in 1999. @alanfeuer
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Sun Dec 19, 2021 3:40 am

Jan. 6 investigators believe Rick Perry sent Mark Meadows a text outlining 'aggressive strategy' to sabotage the election results, CNN report says
by Alia Shoaib
Business Insider
DEC 18, 2021, 17:07 IST

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

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Former Texas Governor and Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Thierry Monasse/Getty Images

Jan. 6 investigators believe Rick Perry sent Mark Meadows a text outlining 'aggressive strategy' to sabotage the election results, CNN report says

• Rick Perry likely authored a text outlining a strategy to undermine election results, CNN reported.
• The text said GOP-controlled state legislatures could have electors vote for Trump regardless of the result.

The former Texas Governor and Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry is believed to be the author of a text to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows outlining a strategy to undermine the results of the 2020 election, a CNN report says.

On Tuesday night, the text was read on the House floor during a vote to hold Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress.

The text sent on November 4, 2020 – the day after the presidential election – suggested that the Republican-controlled state legislatures of Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania could go against voters and have their state electors vote for Donald Trump.


Image
Acyn @Acyn Dec 14, 2021
Unknown text to Meadows: I heard Jeff Clark is getting put in on Monday. That's amazing. It will make a lot of patriots happy and I'm personally so proud that you are at the tip of the spear and I can call you a friend.

Acyn
@Acyn
Lawmaker to Meadows on November 4th: Here's an aggressive strategy. Why can't the states GA, NC, PENN, and other R controlled state houses declare this BS.. and just send their own electors to vote and have it go to SCOTUS
4:04 pm Dec 14, 2021


It read: "HERE's an AGRESSIVE [sic] STRATEGY: Why can t [sic] the states of GA NC PENN and other R controlled state houses declare this is BS (where conflicts and election not called that night) and just send their own electors to vote and have it go to the SCOTUS."

Three sources familiar with the January 6 House committee investigating the Capitol attack told CNN that members believe Perry was behind the text.

The outlet reported that "multiple people" who know Perry confirmed that the cell phone number used to send the text is his.

Furthermore, CNN found that the phone number appears in databases as registered to James Richard Perry of Texas, the former governor's full name.

The number also appears in another database registered to a Department of Energy email address associated with Perry during his time as secretary, the outlet reported.

A spokesman for Perry told CNN that he denies being the author of the text but had no explanation when asked about the evidence suggesting it came from his number.


The text message is one of many included in the 9,000 pages of records handed over by Mark Meadows to the House committee.

Although Meadows initially cooperated with the House investigation, he later declined to sit for a scheduled deposition, and on Wednesday, the House voted to hold him in contempt.

During the debate, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat, cited the text message as to why the House wants to question Meadows directly.

"How did this text influence the planning of Mark Meadows and Donald Trump to try to destroy the lawful electoral college majority that had been established by the people of the United States and the states for Joe Biden?" Raskin said on the House floor.

"Those are the kinds of questions that we have a right to ask Mark Meadows."

Although Raskin described the text as having come from a "House lawmaker," sources told CNN that this was an inadvertent error. The congressman has written a letter to correct the Congressional record.

The text was sent before any of the three mentioned states had declared winners. President Joe Biden won Pennsylvania and Georgia, and Trump won North Carolina.

Perry, who briefly bid to be the Republican candidate for president in 2016, was once a fierce critic of Trump, calling his candidacy "a cancer on conservatism."

However, he later allied himself with the president, claiming Trump was "sent by God to do great things."
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Re: Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certificat

Postby admin » Fri Dec 24, 2021 3:06 am

Legal Expert Laurence Tribe: DOJ Must Immediately Conduct 'Full-Blown' Jan. 6 Probe
by MSNBC
Dec 23, 2021

Laurence Tribe calls on his former student, Attorney General Garland, to take action over Trump’s role in the insurrection: “If Merrick Garland has not yet ginned up a full-blown investigation, he should do so yesterday.”

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