Former President Trump told Fox News late Sunday that days before the deadly riots last month, he had expressed concern about the size of the crowd near the Capitol and personally called for the deployment of 10,000 National Guard troops.
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Trump told ‘The Next Revolution With Steve Hilton’ that his team had warned the Department of Defense a few days before the protest that the crowd would be larger than expected and that 10,000 national guards should be ready to deploy . He said that – according to what he understands – the warning was passed on to leaders at the Capitol, including House President Nancy Pelosi, and he heard that the request was rejected because these leaders do not have the optics of 10 000 troops at the Capitol.
“It was a big mistake, you know,” he said.
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Pelosi’s office and the Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a Fox News email inquiry. Trump told Steve Hilton, the show’s presenter, that he ‘hates’ watching what’s happening at the US Capitol on January 6.
Much of what led to the uprising at the Capitol remains a mystery.
Last week, former Capitol chief of police Steven Sund told a two-party Senate panel that he did not know then that his officers had received a report from the FBI’s field office in Norfolk, Virginia, in which the chances of extremists may entail, in detail predicted “war” against Washington the next day.
The head of the FBI’s office in Washington said that once he received the warning on January 5, the information was quickly shared with other law enforcement agencies by a joint task force on terrorism.
Sund and Arms Sergeant Paul Irving also could not agree on when the National Guard was asked for help.
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Sund said he submitted the request at 6:09 a.m. on Jan. 6. But Irving insisted that he only receive the request for support from the National Guard after 14:00 in the former Senate Sergeant Michael Stenger. When he pressed, Irving said he had previously called on the Congress floor from Sund.
Sund and Irving disagreed when the national guard was called and at the request of the guard beforehand. Sund said that in the days before the riot he had spoken to Stenger and Irving about the request for the National Guard, and that Irving said he was concerned about the ‘optics’ of having them present. Irving denied this, saying Sund’s version was ‘categorically false’.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, RS.C., told Fox News earlier this month that he was in favor of a 9/11-style commission to investigate important details that contributed to the deadly riot at the Capitol last month.
Republicans have indicated that evidence could show that the democratic leaders were aware of the threat and that they did little to prevent the January 6 attack.
Pelosi said the commission would “investigate and report on facts and causes related to the domestic terror attack on the U.S. Capitol complex on January 6, 2021, related to the interference with the peaceful transfer of power.”
Trump told Hilton that, contrary to reports circulating, he did not watch the riot in real time and only later began to follow the events when he heard of the chaos.
Trump said he hated the riot, but compared it to unrest in cities like Portland and Seattle.
“I hate to see anything of it, but it’s a double standard,” he said.
Associated Press contributed to this report