Yesterday's release by the January 6 House Committee of a 51-page document concerning former Trump chief of staff and coup plotter Mark Meadows should make the imminent criminal contempt of Congress vote a slam dunk. Among the many outrages that Meadows was involved in was a plan to use the National Guard to facilitate the seditious Trump rioters' attack on the Capitol:
"Mark Meadows indicated in a Jan. 5 email that the National Guard was on standby to 'protect pro Trump people,' according to documents obtained by the House committee investigating the Capitol riot, which the panel described in a public filing Sunday night.
The context for the message is unclear, but it comes amid intense scrutiny of the Guard’s slow response to violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and conflicting timelines about their efforts from the Pentagon and National Guard leadership.
It's unclear who Meadows, the former White House chief of staff to Donald Trump, relayed the information to or whether it was the result of any insight provided by the Defense Department. But the exchange is of high interest to congressional investigators probing whether Trump played a role in the three-hour delay between the Capitol Police's urgent request for Guard support and their ultimate arrival at the Capitol, which had been overrun by pro-Trump rioters." (our emphasis)
Trump and his enablers like Meadows viewed the armed forces of the U.S. as his private, partisan army, so this revelation is in line with that fascistic thinking. This news suggests that they wanted a left-wing counter-protest so that they could use it as a justification to support the insurrectionists attacking the Capitol on January 6. As the Politico story notes, the delay in the National Guard's response to the attack is being examined in light of conflicting accounts, including that of Army Gen. Charles Flynn (brother of the disgraced Moscow-friendly, QAnon quacker Michael Flynn) who was pivotal in stalling the National Guard's response.
A hack like Mark Meadows wouldn't sneeze without the approval of his cult leader, the mentally unstable demagogue former guy. Indeed, in his testimony before the Committee, former Defense Secretary Christopher Miller indicated that on January 3 he had a conversation with Trump, who directed him to "whatever was necessary to protect the demonstrators" according to the linked Politico article. Never forget that successfully protecting "the demonstrators" would have meant the overthrow of the election and installation of Trump as the illegitimate President.
(photo: Corbis via Getty Images)
