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Joint Chief of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley described efforts by White House staff to rewrite Donald Trump’s actions regarding the January 6th insurrection, including pushing ‘the narrative that the president is still in charge.’
But Milley said it was actually then Vice President Mike Pence.
‘Vice President Pence – there were two or three calls with Vice President Pence. He was very animated, and he issued very explicit, very direct, unambiguous orders. There was no question about that,’ Milley said.
In video taped testimony played during Thursday’s prime time hearing, Milley described a public relations strategy that Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told him was needed in the aftermath of the riot.
‘He said we have to kill the narrative that the Vice President is making all of the decisions, we need to establish the narrative that the president is still in charge,’ Milley, the nation’s top military officer, said.
On the day of the insurrection Pence made calls to military officials to try and get their help to take back the Capitol building after it was over run by a mob of Trump supporters.
In an urgent phone call to the acting defense secretary on the day, Pence told Christopher Miller: ‘Clear the Capitol.’
Pence was referring to the D.C. National Guard, who report to the defense secretary.
Milley, who was in contact with Pentagon leaders that day, said he thought Meadows’ attempt to retake control of the narrative was a ‘red flag.’
‘I immediately interrupted that as politics, politics, politics. A red flag for me personally,’ he said.
Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley described efforts by White House staff to rewrite Donald Trump’s actions regarding the January 6th insurrection in his video taped testimony
Then Vice President Mike Pence called the Pentagon on January 6th and asked for help in retaking control of the Capitol
Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who became a target of Trump’s for serving on the House committee investigating the insurrection, introduced Millay’s testimony.
She argued President Trump did not give the order for the D.C. National Guard to mobilize that day, which the White House, at the time, said he did.
‘Not only did President Trump refuse to tell the mob to leave the Capitol, he placed no call to any element of the United States government to instruct that the Capitol be defended. He did not call the Secretary of Defense on January 6, he did not talk to his attorney general He did not talk to the Department of Homeland Security,’ she said.
‘President Trump gave no order to deploy the National Guard that day, and he made no effort to work with the Department of Justice to coordinate and display and deploy law enforcement assets. Vice President Pence did each of those things,’ she noted.
Milley’s testimony was one of several played as the committee, in primetime television, works to retell the story of what happened that day.
A series of public hearings – some in primetime – are played over the next few weeks as some try to recast what happened on the day the Capitol was stormed. The hearings also come in the runup to the November midterm election as Democrats try to retain their control of Congress.
The committee has conducted more than 1,000 interviews with people connected to the siege and collected more than 140,000 documents.
Cheney promised that in future hearings, the committee would reveal more testimony about what happened behind closed doors at the White House that day, including from multiple White House staff who resigned and discussed how Trump would not ask his supporters to leave the Capitol.
Trump has denied any personal responsibility for the insurrection and survived a second attempt to impeach him, based on charges related to that day.
But he also has said that Jan. 6 ‘represented the greatest movement in the history of our country.’
Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley said he saw Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ (above) effort to rewrite the narrative as a ‘red flag’
A video of Chiarman of the Joint Chiefs Mark A. Milley testifying is played in the committee room as members of the panel investigating the insurrection listen
President Donald Trump speaks during a rally protesting the electoral college certification of Joe Biden as President in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021
Trump repeatedly made the false claim the election was stolen from him and addressed his supporters on the Ellipse outside the White House on January 6th. He also reportedly wanted to march to the Capitol wth them.
But, in an interview with the Washington Post in April, Trump said it was the responsibility of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to stop the insurrection.
‘I hated seeing it. I hated seeing it,’ he told the newspaper. ‘And I said, ‘It’s got to be taken care of,’ and I assumed they were taking care of it.’
Publicly, Trump remained silent for 187 minutes after his supporters breached the Capitol on January 6.
He eventually recorded a message on Twitter that asked them to go home.
Other witnesses had described an effort to convince Trump to act, including having his daughter Ivanka Trump go to the Oval Office several times to encourage them to call his MAGA supporters to stand down.
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