Meadows Said National Guard Would 'Protect Pro-Trump People' On January 6
Reprinted with permission from AlterNet
With former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows refusing to cooperate with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s select committee on the January 6 insurrection, the committee is now recommending that the Trump loyalist be held in contempt of Congress. Meadows, however, did share some documents with the committee before he stopped cooperating, and one of them — released on Sunday, December 12 — shows a promise that on January 6 the National Guard would be on standby to “protect pro-Trump people.”
Business Insider’s Kelsey Vlamis reports that according to the document, “Mr. Meadows sent an e-mail to an individual about the events on January 6 and said that the National Guard would be present to 'protect pro Trump people' and that many more would be available on standby.”
Meadows sent that e-mail on January 5, the day before then-President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally and the subsequent storming of the U.S. Capitol Building by a violent mob of Trump supporters.
“The context of the January 5 e-mail is unclear, and no additional details about it have been given,” Vlamis explains. “But the National Guard has come under scrutiny for its slow response to the attack on the Capitol and the conflicting timelines that have been given.”
Vlamis adds, “The committee's document also describes other exchanges Meadows had leading up to and on January 6, as well as questions the committee would have asked him if he had sat down for a deposition. In addition to asking about the National Guard e-mail, the committee said it would have asked about exchanges in which Meadows reached out to members of Congress asking them to help President Donald Trump get in touch with state lawmakers.”
Liberal Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent, in response this new reporting on Meadows, January 6, and the National Guard, tweeted:
The news that Mark Meadows emailed about the National Guard protecting "pro-Trump people" suggests that Richard Ben-Veniste's theory of the case is worth thinking about right now. He laid it out in an interview with me recently:https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1435710135742214150\u00a0\u2026— Greg Sargent (@Greg Sargent) 1639401456
Back on September 8, Sargent tweeted:
I just had a long talk with Richard Ben-Veniste, a veteran member of the 9/11 Commission, about what the 1/6 select committee should examine. He suggested some fascinating lines of inquiry that could uncover a worse coup plot than we have imagined:https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/08/what-should-jan-6-probe-examine-veteran-sept-11-investigator-weighs/\u00a0\u2026— Greg Sargent (@Greg Sargent) 1631134039
Ben-Veniste thinks Pence's role is critical. He suggests the 1/6 committee can determine whether Trump pressured DOJ to develop a way for Pence to subvert the electoral count, and why Pence so adamantly resisted being removed on 1/6 by security detail:\n\nhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/08/what-should-jan-6-probe-examine-veteran-sept-11-investigator-weighs/\u00a0\u2026pic.twitter.com/ob0NHCdbBx— Greg Sargent (@Greg Sargent) 1631134627
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