Trump’s defense secretary denies there were orders to have 10K troops ready to deploy on January 6
By Annie Grayer, CNN
Former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller told the House select committee investigating the Capitol Hill insurrection that former President Donald Trump never gave him a formal order to have 10,000 troops ready to be deployed to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, according to new video of Miller’s deposition released by the committee.
“I was never given any direction or order or knew of any plans of that nature,” Miller said in the video.
Miller later said in the video definitively, “There was no direct, there was no order from the President.”
“We obviously had plans for activating more folks, but that was not anything more than contingency planning,” Miller added. “There was no official message traffic or anything of that nature.”
Trump has previously said that he requested National Guard troops be ready for January 6. He released a statement on June 9 that he “suggested & offered” up to 20,000 National Guard troops be deployed to Washington, DC, ahead of January 6 claiming it was because he felt “that the crowd was going to be very large.”
The committee released Miller’s testimony after already revealing that Trump did not make calls to military personnel or law enforcement to intervene as the Capitol attack was unfolding. General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the committee that he never received a call from Trump as the attack as unfolding.
Milley testified to the committee that he spoke to former Vice President Mike Pence “two or three” times on January 6. Keith Kellogg, former national security adviser to Pence, also told the committee that Trump never asked for a law enforcement response.
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