Further Investigation Into January 6

Floor Speech

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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