Tom Joscelyn On Just Security – Anatomy Of A Conspiracy Theory And A Smear: Still, No Evidence Of Trump Order For 10,000 Guard On Jan. 6th
In its final report, the House Jan. 6th Committee summarized the testimony of witnesses who claimed that former President Donald Trump had “floated” the idea of deploying 10,000 National Guardsmen — mainly to protect him and his supporters as they marched to the Capitol on January 6. While Trump wanted to join the march, he ultimately did not. As the Committee documented in its final report, the investigation uncovered “no evidence” that “President Trump gave an order to have 10,000 troops ready for January 6th.”
“More than one year after the committee disbanded, there is still no reason to think Trump ordered the National Guard to be ready on Jan. 6, 2021,” Tom Joscelyn writes in a new analysis published on Just Security.
Joscelyn was a professional staff member on the House Jan. 6th Committee and a principal drafter of its final report.
Nonetheless, Joscelyn explains, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) and The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway recently suggested that the Committee suppressed evidence that Trump pushed for 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the nation’s capital.
Joscelyn unpacks Loudermilk’s and Hemingway’s “slippery language” in their accusations. “As with so many other false conspiracy theories, this tale falls apart after just a cursory review of the evidence,” he writes.
Joscelyn outlines in detail seven reasons why this latest conspiracy theory has no merit, including showing that the evidence Loudermilk and Hemingway claim was suppressed has been publicly available for more than a year and why the House Committee’s evidence is correct – there is no evidence that Trump gave an order for 10,000 troops to be ready on Jan. 6.
Read Joscelyn’s full analysis on Just Security.
