It seems that the Army pushed back on the D.C government’s request to have National Guard onsite during the events that would lead up to January 6th, which lead many to believe that officials had downplayed the threats of far-right Trump supporters and Army officials were motivated simply out of fear of public perception when they told city officials that they would only deploy National Guard if more than 100,000 demonstrators attended the rally, according to a memo put out by The Washington Post.
The Army had rejected the city’s request for backup because it had not exhausted the help of other agencies, a move that was very perplexing, as District officials routinely ask for help from the D.C. Guard for major events, usually to help with traffic control to free up police officers for other potential duties.
Army Secretary Ryan D. McCarthy was pressured by Defense Secretary Christopher C. Miller to grant the request on the condition that one federal agency was charged to lead the security. However, Col. Cathy Wilkinson, a spokeswoman for the Army, objected to the claim that the Army shirked its duties leading up to the riot and cited that 340 members of the National Guard were deployed to manage traffic and crowd control.
A new report sheds some more light, however. Ex-Capitol police chief Steven Sund had been denied National Guard support on six different occasions and on Mar. 3, the commanding general of the D.C. Guard Maj. Gen. William J. Walker told Congress that, after receiving a frantic call from Sund, Walker was forced to wait three hours and nineteen minutes before receiving the Pentagon’s go-ahead to deploy troops.
