J6 Committee Reportedly Covered Up Key Testimony, Resulted in Trump Being Struck from Ballot

A new report is suggesting that the January 6 Congressional Committee suppressed testimony supporting former President Trump’s claim that he and his administration requested 10,000 National Guardsmen be present at the nation’s Capitol. According to documents obtained by The Federalist, then-White House Deputy Chief of Staff Anthony Ornato testified in January of 2022 that his boss, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, pushed Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) to request more National Guard troops ahead of the January 6, 2021, rallies, and that Trump himself suggested 10,000 troops would be necessary.

Ornato told the committee that Meadows “was on the phone with [Bowser] and wanted to make sure she had everything that she needed,” and specifically “wanted to know if she need[ed] any more guardsmen,” according to a transcript of the interview. “And I remember the number 10,000 coming up of, you know, ‘The president wants to make sure that you have enough,’” Ornato testified. “You know, ‘He is willing to ask for 10,000.’ I remember that number.” He added that Bowser rejected the Trump administration’s suggestions and ordered less than 350 guardsmen to the Capitol. The mayor also ordered that none of the troops be armed.

After Bowser refused additional troops, Ornato asserted, the Trump administration asked the Department of Defense (DOD) for a “quick reaction force” if needed. “I remember Chief Meadows talking to DOD about that, I believe,” Ornato said. “I remember Chief Meadows letting me know that, ‘Hey, there was going to be National Guard that’s going to be at Joint Base Andrews in case they’re going to need some more, we’re going to — the Mayor would need any, we’re going to make sure they’re out there.’”

“[T]he crowd sizes were, you know, the organizers were saying, you know, there may be 50,000 here,” Ornato added. “So that’s where it started, I think, to scare the chief a little bit of how many people were coming in for this event, and wanted to make sure that they would be able to bring in National Guard if needed for this size of this many people inside D.C.” The Federalist noted that the January 6 Committee “prevented an investigation into Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s preparation — or lack thereof — for Capitol security ahead of the event, so it is unclear if she was as concerned about keeping the peace as Meadows and the Trump White House were.”

Later on, when protestors entered the U.S. Capitol building, Trump administration officials grew frustrated with the DOD for not sending its “quick reaction force” quickly enough. Ornato recounted Meadows calling Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller and saying, “‘Get them in here, get them in here to secure the Capitol now.’” He continued, “[T]he constant was, you know, where is the National Guard? … [W]e’ve got to get control of this. But, you know, [Meadows] understood the urgency, that’s for sure. And he kept, you know, getting Miller on the phone, wanting to know where they were, why aren’t they there yet.” Ornato further recounted:

“Every time [Meadows] would ask, ‘What’s taking so long?’ It would be, like, you know, ‘This isn’t just start the car and we’re there. We have to muster them up, we have to’ — so it was constant excuses coming of — not excuses, but what they were actually doing to get them there. So, you know, ‘We only have so many here right now. They’re given an hour to get ready.’ So there’s, like, all these timelines that was being explained to the chief. And he relayed that, like, you know — he’s like, ‘I don’t care, just get them here,’ you know, and ‘Get them to the Capitol, not to the White House.’”

The committee suppressed Ornato’s testimony. It never appeared on the Government Publishing Office’s website — in fact, fewer than half of the 1,000 interviews conducted by the committee were published on the website. Instead, the committee reported that Trump “never gave any order to deploy the National Guard on January 6th or on any other day. Nor did he instruct any Federal law enforcement agency to assist.” While refuting the claim that the DOD “intentionally delayed deployment of the National Guard,” the committee did report, “The Select Committee recognizes that some at the Department had genuine concerns, counseling caution, that President Trump might give an illegal order to use the military in support of his efforts to overturn the election.”

Just last week, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the Colorado State Supreme Court’s decision to bar Trump from appearing on the 2024 ballot, after the state court labeled him an insurrectionist in relation to January 6. Former Trump administration official Kash Patel had testified before Colorado’s highest court that the 45th president had authorized the use of 10,000 National Guardsmen — testimony that Ornato’s suppressed account corroborated. With Ornato’s testimony hidden from the public record, Colorado’s Supreme Court dismissed Patel’s testimony as “illogical” and “completely devoid of any evidence in the record.”

Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), chairman of the House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight, is currently investigating the January 6 committee, which The Federalist noted “has been accused of other unethical behavior at the expense of accuracy, as well as collusion with other Democrat efforts to prosecute political opponents.” Loudermilk told the outlet, “This is just one example of important information the former Select Committee hid from the public because it contradicted what they wanted the American people to believe.” He added, “And this is exactly why my investigation is committed to uncovering all the facts, no matter the outcome.”

Other individuals have corroborated the assertion that January 6, 2021, was not an insurrection. Former U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) Lieutenant Tarik Johnson said as much in December. “I’ve been saying publicly for a year that J6 was not an insurrection but not many people would listen,” Johnson said via social media. He explained that on the day itself, as protestors entered the Capitol building, Assistant USCP Chief Yogananda Pittman rejected Johnson’s request to authorize an evacuation, all while “watching the events unfold on CCTV…” When Johnson reported Pittman’s actions just days later, he was suspended for 17 months and placed “under a USCP gag order not to speak about the events of January 6, 2021 to the media until I separated from the Department.”

Such testimony follows polling that shows nearly half of the nation’s voters think the January 6 protestors “had a point.” Additionally, nearly a third of respondents said that the criminal charges leveled against over 700 protestors are “inappropriate and should be reversed.”