The more that we learn about the events of January 6th, the more incredibly strange the tale becomes…and it has been this way for a while now.
The breadth of the story is so much wider now than it was just months, (or even weeks), ago, and as we approach the 1 year anniversary of the attempted insurrection, perhaps one of its wildest twists has just now arrived.
Mark Meadows indicated in a Jan. 5 email that the National Guard was on standby to “protect pro Trump people,” according to documents obtained by the House committee investigating the Capitol riot, which the panel described in a public filing Sunday night.
The context for the message is unclear, but it comes amid intense scrutiny of the Guard’s slow response to violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and conflicting timelines about their efforts from the Pentagon and National Guard leadership.
The email is piquing the interest of the committee for fairly obvious reasons.
It’s unclear who Meadows, the former White House chief of staff to Donald Trump, relayed the information to or whether it was the result of any insight provided by the Defense Department. But the exchange is of high interest to congressional investigators probing whether Trump played a role in the three-hour delay between the Capitol Police’s urgent request for Guard support and their ultimate arrival at the Capitol, which had been overrun by pro-Trump rioters. The comment also aligns with testimony from former Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, who said that in a Jan. 3 conversation with Trump, the then-president told him to “do whatever was necessary to protect the demonstrators that were executing their constitutionally protected rights.”
Meadows is currently under consideration for a contempt of Congress charge stemming from his refusal to cooperate with the select committee.
