Capitol Police Commander: ‘J6 Was Not an Insurrection’

A former Washington, D.C. Capitol Police official is declaring that the events of January 6, 2021, were not an insurrection, and alleging that government agencies have attempted to silence his firsthand testimony. Former U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) Lieutenant Tarik Johnson posted on Twitter on Thursday, “I’ve been saying publicly for a year that J6 was not an insurrection but not many people would listen.” Johnson explained that he was the commander who ordered the House and Senate evacuations that day, noting, “No one would benefit more than I if J6 was an insurrection…”

According to Johnson, he was “begging” Assistant Chief Yogananda Pittman for permission to evacuate the Capitol while “she sat comfortably in the Commander Center watching the events unfold on CCTV while Chief Steven Sund was obtaining National Guard approval and getting assistance from local law enforcement agencies.” The former lieutenant explained that since Pittman ignored his request, he ordered the evacuation without her permission.

Three days afterwards, he called then-Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who was serving at the time as president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, to file a report against Pittman. “[A]pproximately an hour after I got off the phone with the senator I was contacted by the USCP internal affairs section and informed I was suspended,” Johnson continued. “The suspension lasted for 17 months and I was under a USCP gag order not to speak about the events of January 6, 2021 to the media until I separated from the Department.” The former commander also stated that he was required to remain in his home from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. from Monday through Friday due to USCP orders and was afraid his job would be terminated if he even set foot off his property.

After the events of January 6, former Montgomery County, Maryland, police chief John Thomas Manger was hired to lead the USCP. Johnson called Manger “arguably the most corrupt politician in the country” and alleged the chief was hired specifically to “cover-up” the true events surrounding January 6.

Johnson’s post was in response to a video clip featuring Republican presidential primary contender Vivek Ramaswamy discussing January 6 during a Wednesday night CNN Townhall event. In the clip, Ramaswamy quipped, “If you had told me [in 2021] that January 6 was in any way an inside job the subject of government entrapment, I would have told you that was crazy talk, fringe conspiracy theory nonsense.” He continued, “I can tell you now having gone somewhat deep in this — it’s not.”

The presidential hopeful noted that the federal government has lied on a number of subjects, including the origins of COVID-19, the Hunter Biden laptop, and the alleged Trump-Russia collusion of 2016, which investigative journalist Lee Smith exposed as a Democratic Party-led hoax in his books “The Plot Against the President” and “The Permanent Coup.”

“Now we come to January 6,” Ramaswamy continued. “The reality is we know that there were federal law enforcement agents in that field, we don’t know how many.” When CNN moderator Abby Phillip interrupted Ramaswamy to say that he had no evidence to support his claims, the businessman-turned-presidential hopeful responded, “So why before Congress, when pressed on what the number was, they [the FBI] didn’t say there were none, they just couldn’t say how many there were? … We’ve seen multiple informants suggesting that there were, we know people were FBI informants.”

He also asked why the Congressional January 6 Committee only released 12 hours of video footage from the day and suppressed the other hundreds of hours of footage, which included video of police firing rubber bullets and tear gas at the crowd outside the Capitol. When Phillip accused Ramaswamy of “cherry-picking” incidents to craft a narrative, he responded, “You know who cherry-picked? The government did. The government cherry-picked 12 hours of footage, when there was 200 hours of footage.”

In a Twitter post accompanying the video clip, Ramaswamy wrote, “There is clear evidence that there was at the very least entrapment of peaceful protestors, similar to the fake Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot & countless other cases.” He noted that newly-released video footage from January 6 shows that Capitol Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at the crowd and then “willingly later allowed [the crowd] to enter the Capitol.” He concluded, “That doesn’t add up & the actual evidence turns the prior narrative upside down: if the deep state is willing to manufacture an ‘insurrection’ to take down its political opponents, they can do anything.”

Johnson had posted, “If presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy would like more FACTS to disrupt the insurrection narrative, I will inbox his designated representative my personal phone number. God bless our country now and in 2024.” Ramaswamy reposted the former officer’s testimony with the caption “This is wild.”