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Since the very day of the January 6th insurrection, we’ve known that there were people within the Trump administration orchestrating the coup from the inside. Donald Trump and his people actively organized and promoted the “Stop the Steal” rally on the 6th, then Trump went to the rally in person and told them to storm the Capitol. Once Trump was back in the White House, he refused to authorize National Guard units to retake the Capitol for hours, and it was said that he enjoyed seeing the armed mob of white supremacists lay siege to the Capitol and terrorize the people inside.

Even beyond what we could see and read from Trump himself, it was also clear that the Capitol Police and National Guardsmen had been willfully unprepared for the attempted coup. Then, as the National Guard finally expelled the terrorists from the Capitol building, the terrorists still stayed on the federal property, throwing flash-bangs, waving Confederate flags and posing with the gallows they had erected. There were only a handful of arrests ON THE DAY of the siege, a fact which still shocks me. The lack of preparedness by the Capitol Police is one of the reasons why Speaker Pelosi demanded the resignation of the chief of the CP (she got the resignation). That’s why the Capitol Police have still not given one f–king press conference about the events of January 6th, even when one of their officers was murdered by the terrorist mob, and even now that two of their officers have died by suicide post-insurrection.

All that being said – and I don’t want it to get lost that the Capitol Police have been infiltrated by white supremacists who were rooting for the terrorists – it’s also the case that Trump Pentagon officials placed deadly limits on how the National Guard could and should react to armed terrorists laying siege to the Capitol.

In testimony before the House this week, Capitol Police and D.C. National Guard officials acknowledged that by Jan. 4 they understood that “… the January 6th event would not be like any of the previous protests held in 2020. We knew that militia groups and white supremacist organizations would be attending. We also knew that some of these participants were intending to bring firearms and other weapons to the event. We knew that there was a strong potential for violence and that Congress was the target.”

On that same day, former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller issued a memo to the secretary of the Army placing some extremely unusual limits on National Guard forces for that event. It’s not a to-do list. It’s a list of thou shalt nots. A long list. A list that says guard forces can’t arrest any of the pro-Trump protesters, or search them, or even touch them. And that’s just for starters.

The full memo shows that the D.C. Guard did receive a request from D.C. government for guard presence during the Jan. 6 event. Miller responds promptly to go ahead, so long as the soldiers are given no weapons, no body armor, and no helmets. They can bring agents like pepper spray or flashbangs. They can’t share any gear with Capitol Police or Metro D.C. Police. They can’t … really do much of anything.

When initial reports indicate that the handful of National Guard forces that were deployed to D.C. on that day were dedicated to directing traffic several blocks away from the area of the Trump rally, it may simply be because that’s the only thing they could find for them to do considering the restrictions that were given. It’s clear that these restrictions would have absolutely prevented any guard forces from trying to protect any location.

[From National Memo]

This goes along with the stories of how the Capitol Police officers were mostly left without the necessary gear on the day as well – Capitol Police superiors were working in concert with the Trump administration to aid and abet the terrorists. There were officials in the Pentagon facilitating an attempt to overthrow the American government and murder the vice president and members of Congress.

Smoking gun: The orders from Miller to the DC National Guard for January 6 included in linked article— is a must read. The DC guard were allowed no helmets, no body armor, no weapons. They were not allowed to stop or arrest protesters. Letter orders no interference with rioters https://t.co/py9y17iw0U pic.twitter.com/tjsLBVcbPn

— Holly Brewer (@earlymodjustice) January 30, 2021

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