Days before the January 6 insurrection President Donald Trump told his acting Secretary of Defense to protect the rioters and insurrectionists at all costs.
In stunning testimony Wednesday afternoon, then-Acting Secretary of Defense, Christopher Miller, told members of Congress Trump said: “Do whatever is necessary to protect the demonstrators, executing their constitutionally protected rights.”
“We had a meeting with President Trump on the third of January, concerning some international threats,” Miller told U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL).
“At the very end he asked if there were any requests for National Guard support and I informed him of [D.C.] Mayor Bowser’s request.”
“What was the president’s response to you, with regard to the request made by Mayor Bowser?” Rep. Donalds asked.
“Fill it and do whatever was necessary to protect the, the demonstrators, and, uh, who were executing their constitutionally-protected rights,” Miller says Trump told him.
Miller appears uncomfortable, stammering and crossing his arms in front of him as he stumbles on the fact that the president – who had been involved for months in laying the groundwork for the insurrection, including calling on his supporters to come to D.C. for a “wild” day – said to protect the demonstrators, who days later would storm the Capitol in a deadly destructive attempted coup to overturn the election he had lost.
If Miller’s sworn testimony is accurate, this means Trump knew days in advance there would be violence, and that he was warned about it, and his reaction was not to protect members of Congress or the Capitol, or the Capitol Police, but the insurrectionists he would on January 6 call on to “walk down to the Capitol…because you’ll ever take back our country with weakness.”
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