[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 149 (Tuesday, September 24, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H5741-H5745]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
{time} 2110
FURTHER INVESTIGATION INTO JANUARY 6
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 9, 2023, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Loudermilk) is
recognized until 10 p.m. as the designee of the majority leader.
General Leave
Mr. LOUDERMILK. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members
may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks
and include extraneous material on the topic of this Special Order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Georgia?
There was no objection.
Mr. LOUDERMILK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise this late evening to discuss and inform the
American people about a very important moment in the history of the
United States.
Now, as Members of Congress, we have a very important job to do here.
We have a lot of responsibility, but one of those responsibilities, Mr.
Speaker, is to seek the truth, especially in our investigative roles,
and report the truth.
We also have a job of correcting the record and calling attention to
a false narrative that, quite frankly, has been peddled on the American
people for the last 2 years.
Now, in January of 2023, Speaker Kevin McCarthy asked me to take on a
huge task, and that was to chair the first ever Subcommittee of
Oversight on the Committee on House Administration. The task that he
asked me to take on was to investigate the events of January 6 as well
as to investigate the actions of the January 6th Select Committee.
I agreed to take on this investigation under the condition that I was
provided the resources, the staff, and the funding that I needed to
conduct an appropriate investigation and that I was given the freedom
to pursue the truth without any political bias and thus report that
evidence and that truth to the American people.
My mission was simple: Conduct a real investigation, seek out and
report unaltered evidence--that is important, unaltered evidence--and
let the facts speak for themselves, and ultimately let the American
people draw the conclusion based on the evidence on the facts.
It is our duty to provide full transparency to the American people,
and that is something that has lacked a lot in our government,
especially in the past several years, but as we sought the truth of
what led to January 6, what happened on January 6, what transpired on
January 6, it wasn't to dispel any fact of what happened. Yes, there
was violence. Yes, there was violence in this building. There was
violence that happened around the Capitol, as the videos and other
evidence shows.
However, the reports that we have received, especially the select
committee's report is significantly flawed in their facts.
From the very beginning my subcommittee faced obstacles that were
left by the January 6th Select Committee. As the House rules required,
the select committee was to preserve all records that were used and
acquired during their investigation, but soon after starting my task in
this investigation, we realized that there was a significant amount of
evidence that we did not have. There were documents, videos, certain
evidence, or transcripts that had either been sent to other agencies
within the executive branch or in some cases deleted--we had to hire a
forensics team to recover that information--or there were certain
videos of transcribed interviews that everyone on the committee admits
actually existed, but no one seems to know what happened to those.
Regardless of the obstacles that we faced, we continued on with our
investigation, which we spent about an entire year obtaining the
information that was not archived by the select committee. A lot of
this information, as we found out, did not support the narrative of the
report that the select committee submitted to Congress.
My suspicion is that because that information that was deleted or
hidden or sent off did not support their report is probably why they
did not retain that information. However, we continued on our
investigation, looking at certain aspects of what happened, including
the security failure here in this building, which was one of the
primary tasks of the January 6th Select Committee, but yet when you
look at the report, there appears to be nothing about the security
failure here at the Capitol.
That was one of our first tasks: What led to the security failure
here at the Capitol? What about the pipe bombs? Looking at the pipe
bombs, the tremendous failures that we saw through multiple agencies of
law enforcement. There was a failure to contain the area where the pipe
bombs were. The Secret Service had an advance team because Vice
President-Elect Kamala Harris was going to be at the DCCC. The agent
advancing it walked by a pipe bomb twice with a bomb dog and never
alerted on it.
We also looked into the mysterious gallows that were erected, but we
also spent a lot of time on the operation and preparedness of the U.S.
Capitol Police and the mutual aid expected by other agencies here to
support them.
What I want to talk about here tonight is one of the mutual aid
partners that should have been here at the Capitol on January 6, and
that is the D.C. National Guard.
There were two significant delays in the National Guard coming to the
Capitol. The first delay was the request that was made by Chief Sund--
multiple requests on the days leading up to January 6. Chief Steven
Sund was the Chief of the Capitol Police. He knew from the size of the
crowds that were expected that he would need additional assistance.
COVID was happening at that time, so we weren't at full force in the
Capitol Police because we had several officers who were out because of
being quarantined due to COVID. Chief Sund anticipated he would need
extra support, so he requested the National Guard in the days leading
up to January 6.
Under the law at that time, the request had to be made by the Capitol
Police Board. Under the Constitution, the President can't just send the
National Guard to the Capitol without a request. Otherwise, he could
send over the military to take over Congress if they didn't like what
was going on. There had to be a request.
That official request did not come until late in the afternoon, about
2:30 in the afternoon, well after the Capitol had been breached. Once
shots had been
[[Page H5742]]
fired at the Capitol, the final request was approved for the National
Guard.
Chief Sund had made several requests during that day, which those had
all been turned down for one reason or another through leadership.
However, once shots were fired in the Capitol, even leadership
determined maybe we do need help here, so an official request was made
to the D.C. National Guard to be deployed to the Capitol.
Let me put things in perspective. The outer perimeter on the west
front of the Capitol was breached by rioters at 12:53. That is 7
minutes to 1:00. President Trump was still speaking at the Ellipse at
that time when the outer barriers were breached. It wasn't until 5
hours later that the National Guard arrived.
We do know that there was an initial delay here, but at around 2:30
in the afternoon, the official request was made to the Pentagon. After
that request was made at 2:30, it was still almost 4 hours before the
National Guard arrived.
Just like our National Guard in our States, the D.C. National Guard,
one of their predominant roles is civil unrest. In fact, they are known
as the Guardians of the Capitol, the Capitol Guardians. They had been
used many times in the past to help quell riots and civil unrest or
even act as a deterrent.
The D.C. National Guard, you would think, well, yeah, they have to be
called in, they have to be mustered in, so maybe that was the delay.
Maybe once the order was given, it was going to get all the guardsmen
in and get them ready.
{time} 2120
The Governor of the State of Georgia, Brian Kemp, has used the
National Guard to help suppress riots. During the BLM riots in 2020, he
called out our National Guard. The National Guard does fall under the
authority of the Governor, but here in D.C., because we are not a
State, that authority falls under the President of the United States.
However, by law, the President can then delegate that authority to
the Department of Defense. With that chain of command, we found out in
our investigation that delegation of authority was done in the days
leading up to January 6.
As I will get into in just a little bit, the evidence that we have
uncovered is that days before January 6, President Trump had already
delegated the authority to deploy the National Guard and had the
National Guard ready for deployment.
In fact, on that day, the National Guard was less than 2 miles away
from this Capitol, ready with their riot gear, ready to deploy to the
Capitol--not only during the 4-hour delay, but they were there from
earlier that morning. Why? Because President Trump had already ordered
the National Guard to be ready because of the size of the number of
people who were coming to Washington, D.C. He wanted to make sure that
everyone was safe and that it was peaceful.
The D.C. National Guard is the only military organization within the
Department of Defense over which the President of the United States has
direct and immediate command authority. As I have said, the President's
command authority gets delegated to the Secretary of Defense, and the
Secretary of Defense has further delegated operational control of the
D.C. National Guard to the Secretary of the Army. So it goes the
President, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Army.
On January 6, 2021, the D.C. National Guard reported to the Secretary
of the Army, Ryan McCarthy. On January 5, Secretary McCarthy took it
upon himself to place an unprecedented restriction on the D.C. National
Guard to prevent any movement to the Capitol without his explicit
permission.
What that memo said is basically: If the President himself calls you,
General Walker, the Commander of the D.C. National Guard, you can't
move without my authority, the Secretary of the Army. If the Secretary
of Defense tells you to deploy, you can't go without my authority.
This tied the hands of the National Guard and placed sole tactical
operational command of their movements in the hands of Secretary of the
Army Ryan McCarthy.
As I said earlier, the breach of the outer perimeter happened at
12:53, 7 minutes till 1. As we are seeing the Capitol being overrun at
1 o'clock in the afternoon, the National Guard is less than 2 miles
from here, with riot gear, ready to deploy, and buses ready to go.
The President had already ordered days in advance the National Guard
to be readied, but senior Pentagon leaders ignored President Trump's
directive to, as President Trump said in sworn testimony by Pentagon
leaders, ``make sure it is a safe event.'' Instead, they focused on
optics as the Capitol was being breached.
In fact, the Director of the Army Staff, Lieutenant General Walter
Piatt, later would say, ``Was optics a concern for us as we prepared to
use soldiers downtown in Washington, D.C.? Absolutely.''
As optics concerns were being discussed, and Secretary McCarthy
claimed that he was ``developing a plan'' during this delay--after this
order was given, he is developing a plan--the D.C. National Guard was
ready to move less than 2 miles from here during that crucial time.
To put things in perspective, at 2:30, the request was made by the
Capitol Police Board. At 3 o'clock, the Secretary of Defense told the
Secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, to deploy the National Guard.
That was just a few minutes after 3 p.m.
Because it was almost 6 p.m. before the National Guard arrived here
at the Capitol, Secretary McCarthy stated that he was working on a
concept of operations, that he had developed a CONOPS, but he never
communicated with the Capitol police or D.C. National Guard during that
time period that he was developing this concept of operations.
What is more, the National Guard already had a plan. This isn't the
first time that they have done this, or as they say in Texas, this
wasn't their first rodeo. Many times in the past, they had been
deployed to the Capitol, the National Mall area, and around the
Nation's Capital to help keep the peace. In fact, the Metropolitan
Police Department was already using some National Guard forces for
traffic control that day.
Secretary McCarthy, as you can see in this poster, was well aware of
the National Guard as he had observed training operations. He was well
aware of their concept of operations, that they knew what they were
doing, that they had trained for events like this.
Basically, when you are being used to supplement law enforcement, the
operations plan is get yourself to the Capitol, report to the Capitol
Police, get sworn in, and then do whatever the chief of police tells
you to do. It is that simple, the concept of operations.
What concerns me is even though the National Guard trained for civil
disturbance missions over and over again, which McCarthy was aware of,
the question is: Did he use the CONOPS as a delay tactic because he
knew what they were capable of doing?
In fact, over 2 hours were wasted to allegedly develop a plan, and to
this day, a plan has never been produced. If they were working on a
concept of operations plan, where is it? It was never communicated to
the National Guard even once they were given the orders to deploy.
As we started looking into the reason for the delay, we found out
that the Department of Defense inspector general was also looking into
this delay. In fact, they had already produced a report, and their
report laid the blame of the delay on the D.C. National Guard.
We had some whistleblowers who actually were senior officers in the
D.C. National Guard who started coming to my committee and telling us:
The IG report is wrong. It is flawed. That is not what happened. We
were ready to go. We were purposefully delayed.
We started digging into this, and we kept digging and digging until
we were able to obtain all the evidence that the DOD IG used in their
report.
I can tell you here, Mr. Speaker, I still don't know how they came up
with their report saying that the National Guard was the purpose of the
delay when it was clearly that senior officials in the Department of
Defense purposefully delayed the National Guard from coming to the
Capitol that day. We will dig a little further into that evidence here
in a few moments.
Two hours were wasted as, literally, there was a death outside the
west
[[Page H5743]]
front of the Capitol during the time that the National Guard could have
been here had they been deployed.
When that 2-hour delay started at 3:04, Secretary of Defense Miller
provided verbal approval to Secretary McCarthy for immediate deployment
to the Capitol. At 3:04, he told the Secretary of the Army to deploy to
the Capitol. Numerous eyewitnesses confirmed that Miller gave this
order, including Secretary McCarthy himself. He testified: Yes, I got
that order.
After Miller gave this order and while the D.C. National Guard sat
ready to respond, Secretary McCarthy occupied himself by allegedly
coming up with a CONOPS plan, as we discussed, and drafting talking
points for a national press conference with the D.C. Mayor.
At that time, no one was communicating with the D.C. National Guard,
which was sitting less than 2 miles from here ready to deploy. No one
was communicating while they were watching on television what was
happening at the Capitol and were eager to get over here to help.
During that time of making talking points for a press conference and
supposedly developing an operations plan, Members were being evacuated
from this very Chamber as people were pounding on the back door and
breaking glass trying to get in.
While rioters breached the Capitol, McCarthy never once called the
Commander of the D.C. National Guard, who is Major General Walker. He
said that Major General Walker testified that he never received any
communication during that time period or any communication at all from
Secretary McCarthy, who did not relay Secretary of Defense Miller's
order for immediate deployment of the National Guard to the Capitol.
{time} 2130
General Walker ultimately received the order to deploy at 5:08 p.m.
Now, remember, the Secretary of Defense tells the Secretary of the
Army at 3:04 to immediately deploy the National Guard. The National
Guard doesn't receive the order until 5:08 p.m., well after law
enforcement from neighboring States and jurisdictions had already came
and helped quell the riots.
This is unacceptable in my opinion.
Now, Secretary McCarthy was asked specifically about his actions
following Secretary Miller's 3 or 4 p.m. order by the select committee
and multiple Senate committees investigating this, as well as the
Department of Defense IG.
When asked by the DOD IG in March of 2021, Secretary McCarthy stated
that one of his staff conveyed the order to deploy the D.C. National
Guard within minutes of Miller's verbal order. So Secretary McCarthy is
saying, yes, within minutes of getting the order, I conveyed that
information to the D.C. National Guard.
However, the DOD IG report alleged that McCarthy personally conveyed
this order to deploy within minutes without explanation or providing
evidence to support his assertion.
Major General Walker, the commander of the D.C. National Guard, has
consistently refuted that order that was relayed supposedly at 3:04
p.m. He never received any communication from the Secretary of the
Army.
Almost a year later, in testimony to the select committee, McCarthy
testifies that he completed his CONOPS around 4:35 p.m. and called
Secretary of Defense Miller and received his approval. However, that
CONOPS has never emerged. It wasn't in any of the Department of Defense
IG's report or their evidence, Select Committee on January 6th
evidence, and we have found no evidence of that CONOPS plan.
In his testimony to the select committee when asked about the 4:35
p.m. call, McCarthy finally admitted that he never spoke directly to
Major General Walker at 4:35, even though it had been testified that he
had. Instead, Secretary McCarthy changed his story and told the select
committee that a member of his staff who had the authority to speak as
Secretary of the Army was communicating with the D.C. National Guard on
his behalf on January 6.
Now, this revision to his previous version of the events is
significant. The individual McCarthy claimed made this call on his
behalf testified to the DOD IG that it was Secretary McCarthy who
conveyed the order at 4:35 p.m.
Now, let me pause here.
The conflicting testimony raises serious doubts about the actions of
the numerous senior DOD officials failing to follow direct orders
resulting in the delayed deployment of the D.C. National Guard.
The only reason that Congress is now aware of these significant
conflicting versions of events is because of the courageous D.C.
National Guardsmen who testified in front of my subcommittee and
because my subcommittee has forced the DOD IG to produce the witness
interviews revealing these conflicting versions of events, which I now
share publicly. These have been made public. They can be seen by
anyone, all the testimony that was used by the DOD IG.
As Secretary McCarthy's story changed, it started actually to align
more with Major General Walker's testimony. Again, he was the commander
of the D.C. National Guard. At a March 2021 Senate hearing, General
Walker testified that the DOD IG--actually, the DOD IG report alleged
that in this congressional testimony General Walker mischaracterized,
and his testimony was untrue without any evidence to support an
allegation that General Walker committed perjury. Basically, General
Walker's testimony didn't align with the DOD IG's report, so they
claimed that his testimony was perjurious to the Senate.
Now, to make matters worse, while the violence and chaos continued to
unfold at the Capitol, Pentagon officials deceivingly told
congressional Democrat leadership on a phone call that the D.C.
National Guard was on the way.
So during this entire 2\1/2\-hour delay of getting the D.C. National
Guard going, no one had communicated with General Walker at all. He is
sitting less than 2 miles from here with the D.C. National Guard with
riot gear ready to come and help quell the riots here. No one is
communicating during this entire time.
Secretary McCarthy told Democrat leadership that the National Guard
was on the way. HBO footage that was obtained by my subcommittee shows
that at 3:18 p.m. Secretary McCarthy told Speaker Pelosi that he never
blocked the deployment of the National Guard; instead, he first needed
to get approval from Secretary Miller. That was at 3:18 p.m. Secretary
Miller had already told Secretary McCarthy to deploy at 3:04.
McCarthy then assured Speaker Pelosi:
We have the green light. We are moving.
However, no one had communicated to General Walker to move until
after 5:00 p.m. The Pentagon mislead congressional leadership into
thinking help was on the way at 3:18, when they knew for a fact it was
not.
Remember, Secretary McCarthy at this time had still not communicated
Secretary of Defense Miller's 3:04 deployment to the D.C. National
Guard. A full 2 hours would pass before the deployment order was
actually communicated to the D.C. National Guard.
The order was eventually communicated by a different McCarthy aide
and not by McCarthy himself.
So on January 5, McCarthy revised the chain of command to deploy the
D.C. National Guard. He informed General Walker:
You cannot go unless I specifically authorize you to go.
Yet, he had not communicated with him at any time on January 6 as
they were waiting to deploy.
In these vital hours, General Walker tried to contact Secretary
McCarthy, but his calls kept going straight to voicemail.
I want to reemphasize; the D.C. National Guard was ordered to be
ready to deploy on January 6 on January the 3rd by an order from
President Trump. That order was confirmed in testimony--if you can put
up the other poster again--by General Milley himself who testified that
in a phone call with the Commander in Chief, President Trump, he told
Secretary Miller that POTUS said, hey, I don't care if you use the
National Guard or soldiers, Active-Duty soldiers, do whatever you have
to do, just make sure it is safe.
This was the testimony by General Milley testifying that, yes, on
January 3, days before January 6, Trump had already delegated authority
to deployment. So the reports that we heard that Trump could have just
sent the
[[Page H5744]]
National Guard or Trump just should have picked up the phone and told
them to go, he had already done his duty as Commander in Chief.
Now, I want to talk a little bit about the DOD IG report because, as
I said earlier, we have investigated the same evidence that the DOD IG
did, and we came up with a totally different conclusion based on the
evidence and the facts that we found in the sworn testimony that there
was a purposeful delay by the Department of Defense to deploy the D.C.
National Guard.
The then-Army chief of staff's testimony revealed confusion regarding
certain entries in the Army's timeline, but an individual within
Secretary McCarthy's inner circle--this was not included in the DOD
IG's report. So what has happened is we have got people within the
Pentagon testifying one thing to Congress and another thing to the DOD
IG in their sworn testimony.
A witness who was with McCarthy on that day testified that the D.C.
National Guard did not get specific instructions from the Army until
after 5:00 p.m. The DOD IG report acknowledged this inconsistency but
still maintained in its report that McCarthy himself conveyed the order
at 3:05.
The DOD IG reports that the order was given at 3:05 to General Walker
and General Walker just did not deploy. Even though all of the
testimony in the sworn affidavits or the sworn depositions and
transcribed interviews all say that that communication never happened,
but the DOD IG still reports that it does.
{time} 2140
I do know that one DOD IG investigator claimed to Major General
Walker that getting to the bottom of why was not in their lane.
The DOD IG is telling General Walker that it is not in our lane to
figure out why you weren't communicated to.
They went on to say that they don't judge operational decisions. The
IG only looks at whether a law was broken or a policy was violated, but
those are operational decisions.
That is fine, except for why does your report say that it was the
D.C. National Guard that failed to deploy when it was clear through all
the records that there was a purposeful delay within the DOD?
As a result of my investigation, it is clear that the Pentagon DOD IG
deliberately attempted to cover up the actions of certain DOD officials
that day.
DOD IG was tasked with evaluating the Department of Defense's
response on January 6; however, the Department of Defense Office of the
Secretary of Defense began exerting its influence in order to
manipulate the report to protect senior DOD officials who failed
President Trump on that day and failed Congress.
As we have seen quite often, the coverup is worse than the crime
itself.
Although the Department of Defense IG touts its independence and
ability to produce unbiased reports, the evidence obtained by my
subcommittee shows that the former IG produced a flawed report with
many inaccuracies that violate investigative standards. The Department
of Defense IG failed to interview key personnel, specifically the D.C.
National Guard personnel with firsthand knowledge, and failed to
conduct complete interviews focused on facts instead of seeking
witnesses to affirm the Pentagon's predetermined narrative.
As part of the coverup, the IG report invented phone calls between
senior leaders that never occurred where both parties allegedly on the
call denied that it ever took place. These are people who testified to
the DOD IG that they never made those calls, but yet the report
reflects that they did.
Worst of all, the IG report chose to protect Pentagon leadership at
the expense of members of the National Guard, our volunteer men and
women who were ready and waiting less than 2 miles from this Capitol
with their riot gear ready to come and help Chief Sund.
The subcommittee has been seeking the truth despite efforts of the
Department of Defense to obstruct and hide the evidence.
However, we have been able to bring this to light to the American
people thanks to the hard work by the committee staff and our
investigators who were relentless in working to get all of this
evidence from the Department of Defense.
As a result of my subcommittee's work, this Congress and the American
people know the truth now.
President Trump directed senior Pentagon leadership to keep January 6
peaceful and safe, including the National Guard, if needed.
General Milley was no fan of President Trump, that is known, but he
testified under oath that, yes, President Trump did order the National
Guard to be readied and ready for deployment on January 6. That is
clear and unrefuted.
It was specific individuals at Pentagon who failed to properly
execute on this directive from the Commander in Chief.
What is most concerning to me is that these revelations come from the
Department of Defense's Inspector General's witness interviews. This
isn't something we are making up. This is within the evidence that the
Department of Defense acquired themselves that doesn't match up with
their report.
However, we have now made these public so the American people can
draw their own conclusions of what happened.
The DOD IG report absolved the Pentagon and DOD senior leadership of
any failures on January 6. It even specifically found that there was
``no delay.''
This conclusion is inconsistent with the evidence in the possession
of the DOD IG; therefore, the report is fundamentally flawed. We are
asking the DOD IG to reissue their report based on the evidence.
I give a lot of credit to the whistleblowers of the D.C. National
Guard. In April of 2024 we were approached by National Guard who came
forward as whistleblowers risking their own careers. They came forward
to ensure that the truth was made known. Four of them even testified in
a public hearing of the truth of what happened on that fateful day.
After months of negotiation with the DOD Inspector General and the
Pentagon, our subcommittee was able to obtain and publish never-before-
seen DOD IG transcripts previously withheld by the Biden-Harris
administration.
Mr. Speaker, let me just give you some highlights of what we have
found, and then I will wrap up as the hour is getting late.
We have senior military officials, civilian and Active Duty, who said
under oath their mission was to delay the National Guard deployed to
the Capitol. We have some who said: I wanted to make sure that the
National Guard never arrived at the Capitol because of the optics.
Yet, had they been here, lives could have been saved. They wanted to
do their job. They were less than 2 miles away ready to deploy, but no
one was communicating that order to them.
The very leaders who were responsible for the security of the Capitol
on January 6 used a select committee to cast their well-deserved black
eye on to someone else, the same thing that happened with the DOD IG.
Instead of looking at the truth, we need to make sure that we come out
of this looking good.
The Capitol guardians have faced a complete leadership turnover, and
we hope that we can go forward with some legislation to ensure that the
D.C. National Guard is trained and ready to deploy as they were then,
but we also need to make sure that when they are needed that they are
sent and that they are not purposely held back.
Let me conclude with this thought: the evidence clearly shows, and
the American people can go out on the website, and they can see all
these sworn testimonies, they can see quotes by DOD officials concerned
about the optics of National Guardsmen being at the Capitol while the
Capitol is being breached violently.
If, as some believe, that January 6 was an insurrection on this
institution, then purposely delaying the D.C. National Guard from
coming to help quell the insurrection was, in fact, participating.
When you had the ability to send the forces to stop it, and you
refused to do it because you didn't like the optics, then we need to
take a serious look at this.
Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the time here this evening. We will
continue to look into the truth of what happened on that day in an
unbiased way and report that.
[[Page H5745]]
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________