The Select Committee investigated the facts relating to law enforcement entities’ preparation for, and response to, the January 6th events at the Capitol, including the character of the intelligence prior to the insurrection. This appendix does not address the cause of the attack, which resulted from then President Trump’s multi-pronged effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Prior to January 6th, numerous government agencies received intelligence that those descending on The Mall for a rally organized by the President were armed and that their target may be the Capitol. The intelligence community and law enforcement agencies detected the planning for potential violence directed at the joint session of Congress.

That intelligence included information about specific planning by the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militia group who ultimately led the attack on the Capitol. By contrast, the intelligence did not support a conclusion that Antifa or other left-wing groups would likely engage in a violent counterdemonstration, or attack President Trump's supporters on January 6th. Indeed, intelligence from January 5th indicated that some left-wing groups were instructing their members to “stay at home” and not attend on January 6th.1

As January 6th approached, some of the intelligence about the potential for violence was shared within the executive branch, including the Secret Service and the President’s National Security Council. That intelligence should have been sufficient for President Trump, or others at the White House, to cancel the Ellipse speech, and for President Trump to cancel plans to instruct his supporters to march to the Capitol. Few in law enforcement predicted the full extent of the violence at the Capitol, or that the President of the United States would incite a mob attack on the Capitol, that he would send them to stop the joint session knowing they were armed and dangerous, that he would further incite them against his own vice President while the attack was underway, or that he would do nothing to stop the assault for hours.

Nevertheless, as explained below, and in multiple hearings by the Committee on House Administration, there are additional steps that should have been taken to address the potential for violence on that day.

On December 19, 2020, President Trump tweeted: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”2 Following President Trump’s tweet, an analyst at the National Capital Region Threat Intelligence Consortium (NTIC) noticed a tenfold uptick in violent online rhetoric targeting Congress and law enforcement.3 The analyst also noticed that violent right-wing groups that had not previously been aligned had begun coordinating their efforts.4 These indications reached the head of the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA), Christopher Rodriguez, as well as incoming Chief of D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Robert Contee.5 Chief Contee remembered that the information prompted the DC Police to “change the way that we were going to deploy for January the 6th.”6

Following President Trump’s “be there, will be wild!” tweet, Director Rodriguez arranged a briefing to provide the DC Mayor Muriel Bowser the latest threat intelligence about January 6th, outline the potential for violence, and “make operational recommendations,” including that the Mayor request assistance from the DC National Guard.7 During the briefing, the Mayor was told that “there is greater negative sentiment motivating conversation than the last two events in November and December of 2020,” and that “others are calling to ‘peacefully’ storm the Capitol and occupy the building to halt the vote.”8

As early as December 30th, in its intelligence briefing entitled, “March for Trump,” the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) highlighted the President’s “will be wild!” tweet alongside hashtags #WeAreTheStorm, #1776Rebel, and #OccupyCapitols, and wrote, “President Trump supporters have proposed a movement to occupy Capitol Hill.”9 It added that promoters of the January 6th rally on social media had borrowed the President’s phrase and were marketing the January 6th rally as the “WildProtest.”10

Other law enforcement entities were receiving similar indications from both government and private entities. By December 21st, the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) had learned of a surge in viewers of online maps of the Capitol complex’s underground tunnels, which were attracting increased attention on www.thedonald.win, alongside violent rhetoric supporting the President.11 By the late afternoon of January 5, 2021, Capitol Police Assistant Chief for Intelligence Yogananda Pittman urged Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund to convene a “brief call” to discuss “a significant uptick in groups wanting to block perimeter access to the Capitol tomorrow starting as early as 0600 hours.”12 Chief Sund remembered discussing those indications and the preparations Capitol Police already had “in place, and [that] everybody seemed fine with utilizing the resources we had.”13 Chief Sund added that, by that time, he had already deployed “all the available resources.”14

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (DHS I&A) were also aware of the increased online interest in the Capitol tunnels. The FBI’s special agent in charge of the intelligence division at the Washington Field Office, Jennifer Moore, pointed out that there was nothing illegal about discussing the tunnels. Without a very specific discussion of violence, it was a matter of ensuring that the appropriate law enforcement partner agencies were aware of the uptick, ensuring that the Capitol Police were aware.15 “People’s First Amendment rights, obviously, are protected. We cannot troll—can[’t] just troll the internet looking for things that’s out there,” Moore said.16 “So it would have to be with such specificity and such planning and such detail that we would be able to open a case, immediately seek authority for an undercover, have enough probable cause for that undercover off of one tip would be tough.”17

Other agencies were also surfacing indications and receiving tips. On December 26, 2020, the Secret Service received a tip about the Proud Boys detailing plans of having “a large enough group to march into DC armed and will outnumber the police so they can’t be stopped.”18 It stressed, “Their plan is to literally kill people …. Please please take this tip seriously and investigate further.”19 On December 24th, the Secret Service received a compilation of social media posts from “SITE,” a private intelligence group. One of them urged that protesters “march into the chambers.”20 Another, referring to President Trump’s December 19th “will be wild!” post, wrote that Trump “can’t exactly openly tell you to revolt,” so the December 19th post was “the closest he’ll ever get.”21 Another understood the President’s tweet to be urging his supporters to come to Washington “armed.”22 Others were to the same effect (“there is not enough cops in DC to stop what is coming,”23 “make sure they know who to fear,”24 and “waiting for Trump to say the word”25).

By December 28th, that compilation had reached the newly installed head of the Capitol Police intelligence unit, Jack Donohue.26 The same day, a self-styled “internet expert” who had been “tracking online far right extremism for years” sent an email to the Capitol Police public information inbox warning of “countless tweets from Trump supporters saying they will be armed,” and of tweets “from people organizing to ‘storm the Capitol’ on January 6th.”27 She added, “January 6th will be the day most of these people realize there’s no chance left for Trump. They’ll be pushed to what they feel is the edge,” noting that many would be armed and that she was, for the first time, “truly worried.”28 Other senior Capitol Police officers do not recall seeing that email before the January 6th attack.29 The next day, Secret Service agents forwarded to Capitol Police warnings that pro-Trump demonstrators were being urged to “occupy federal building[s],” “march into the capital building [sic] and make them quake in their shoes by our mere presence.”30

In addition, on January 1, 2021, a lieutenant in the intelligence branch of the MPD forwarded to the Capitol Police intelligence unit a tip—later forwarded to USCP Deputy Chief Sean Gallagher—that he had “found a website planning terroristic behavior on Jan 6th, during the rally.”31 The source included a link to www.thedonald.win site, describing a “detailed plan on [s]torming the capitol in DC on Jan 6th.”32 On January 2, 2021, the FBI saved in its system a social media post stating, “This is not a rally and it’s no longer a protest. This is a final stand . . . many are ready to die to take back #USA .... And don’t be surprised if we take the #capital building[sic].”33 On January 3rd, FBI and Capitol Police received a Parler post that “after weds we are going to need a new congress,” and “Jan 6 may actually be their last day in Congress.”34

On January 4th, Jack Donoghue, head of USCP’s intelligence unit, and his assistant director, Julie Farnam, briefed Capitol Police leadership, including Chief Gallagher and Chief Pittman (but not Chief Sund), about the January 3rd Threat Assessment, which highlighted that Congress itself was the target of potential violence on January 6th. Assistant Director Farnam explicitly warned the group:

Supporters see this as the last opportunity to overturn the election. There was disappointment and desperation amongst the protestors, and this could be an incentive to become violent, because they have nothing left to lose. The targets are not the counter protestors; the target is Congress. The protests are heavily publicized. Stop the Steal has a propensity for attracting White supremacists, militia groups, groups like the Proud Boys. There are multiple social media posts saying that people are going to be coming armed, and it's potentially a very dangerous situation.35

On January 5, 2021, at 12:19 p.m., the Architect of the Capitol head of security, Valerie Hasberry, forwarded an alert to Capitol Police incident command that an individual was calling on thousands to “go to Washington Jan 6 and help storm the Capital [sic],” adding “we will storm the government buildings, kill cops, kill security guards, kill federal employees and agents.”36 “There is now chatter on Parler about storming the Capitol,” Ms. Hasberry wrote to her AOC employee working at the USCP.37 “Please let me know if there are any updates to credible threats.”38 Within an hour, she was advised by her staff that “[t]here is no talk about any credible threats or storming the Capitol.” That same day, representatives from DHS, FBI, HSEMA, Secret Service, DC Police, and Capitol Police shared notice of a website, Red State Secession, that urged its visitors to post the home and work addresses of Democratic Members of Congress and “political enemies” under the title, “Why the Second American Revolution Starts Jan 6.”39 It asked for their routes to and from the January 6th congressional certification because “the crowd will be looking for enemies.”40

The FBI was uploading to, and tagging in, its system incoming information from all FBI field offices about January 6th under the label, “CERTUNREST2021.” While the incoming information was reviewed on a regular basis by the Washington Field Office, “unified monitoring” of the items in the aggregate didn’t begin until January 5th.41 That same day, the FBI captured a January 6th-related threat that warned a “Quick Reaction Force” of Trump supporters was preparing for January 6th in Virginia with weapons and prepared “to respond to ‘calls for help’” in the event that “protesters believed the police were not doing their job,” and a “Situation Incident Report” from FBI’s Norfolk Field Office warned of a “war” on January 6th.42 While Capitol Police leadership received neither warning until after the attack,43 Assistant Director Farnam, USCP intelligence unit, warned that Congress would be the target on January 6th. She noted that a “sense of desperation and disappointment may lead to more of an incentive to become violent. Unlike previous post-election protests, Congress itself is the target on the 6th.” 44 The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, remembers Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist expressing a similar view based on the social media traffic in early January 2021: “Norquist says … [t]he greatest threat is a direct assault on the Capitol. I’ll never forget it.”45

Federal and local agencies agreed that there was a potential for violence on January 6th. As noted above, the intelligence leading up to January 6th did not support a conclusion that Antifa or other left-wing groups would likely engage in a violent counter-demonstration, or attack President Trump's supporters on January 6th. In fact, none of these groups was involved to any material extent with the attack on the Capitol on January 6th.

That said, certain witnesses testified that they believed that there would be violence with Antifa or similar counter protest groups. President Trump’s National Security Advisor, Robert O’Brien, said the White House saw a risk of violence from counter-protesters, 46 Then Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolfe said that his “main concern […] at the time was what we had seen throughout the summer and throughout the fall, which was you were going to have groups on either side, and so you were going to have counterprotests. And usually where those counterprotests interacted was where you had the violence.”47

General Milley said the potential for violence was clear to all: “Everyone knew. I can't imagine anybody in those calls that didn't realize that on the 6th was going to be the certification of an intensely contested election, and there were large crowds coming into town, and they were coming into protest. And everybody knew there was a probability, more than a possibility, a probability of violence.”48 He expected “street fights when the sun went down,” while [Deputy Secretary] Norquist said the most dangerous thing was assault on the Capitol.49 Director of DHS Special Operations Christopher Tomney remembered, “[T]here was broad discussion/acknowledgment that folks were calling for bringing weapons into the city on that day, so there was no surprise, there was no—you know, no one disagreed that there was going to be the high likelihood that there could be some violence on January 6.”50

Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue described the discussion about the threat landscape as “generally about left-wing, right wing, or Pro-Trump, anti-Trump groups coming to the Capitol. It didn't really matter what they called themselves. It was a matter of they're upset, they're coming to the Capitol, and there's a potential for violence.”51 Donoghue added: “Everyone knew what everyone else was doing. Everyone knew that there was a danger of violence. Everyone knew that the Capitol and other facilities were potential targets. And I think we all felt comfortable that we were aware what the situation was, and we had the resources in place to address it.”52

Preparing for January 6th required coordination among the several local and Federal law enforcement agencies that have distinct authorities and jurisdiction over adjacent areas in the Washington, DC, area. These range from the MPD, United States Park Police (USPP), and USSS to the USCP.

Following the DC HSEMA’s December 30th intelligence briefing, Mayor Bowser, anticipating that President Trump’s December 19th “will be wild!” tweet would have a big effect on the number of people coming into the District,53 agreed with HSEMA Director Rodriguez, who thought “the intelligence was showing that we needed to posture ourselves, we needed to brace ourselves, and we needed additional resources in the city particularly the DC National Guard.”54 MPD Chief Contee, who attended the December 30th briefing and was seeing similar intelligence, concurred with the request for the DC National Guard.55

In light of the upcoming holiday weekend, HSEMA Director Rodriguez wanted to expedite the DC request for National Guard assistance.56 On December 31st, Mayor Bowser requested the assistance of the DC National Guard to assist the MPD at traffic points within the city.57 Mayor Bowser’s request explicitly limited National Guard assistance to “non-law enforcement activities” so that the MPD could focus on the civil protests and specified that Guard troops should not be armed.58Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy approved Mayor Bowser’s request.59 By this time, DC HSEMA Director Rodriguez had fully activated HSEMA and coordinated with Federal, State and local partners, to deal with “consequence management.”60

On January 4th, Mayor Bowser held a press conference and invited the MPD, USCP, and USPP.61 Mayor Bowser announced that she had activated the DC Fire and Emergency Management Services (DC FEMS) in preparation of the January 6th event and that the DC National Guard would assist MPD at traffic points and with crowd control. Mayor Bowser urged DC residents to stay out of downtown on January 5th and 6th, acknowledging the possibility of violence. She stated that, while “[p]eople are allowed to come into our city to participate in First Amendment activities,” DC officials would “not allow people to incite violence, intimidate our residents, or cause destruction in our city.”62

The next day, Mayor Bowser sent a letter requesting that Federal agencies coordinate with the Mayor’s office and the MPD in their response on January 6th.63 The letter plainly stated that it was intended to ensure coordination among the agencies involved. DC HSEMA Director Rodriguez testified that there was a concern, in light of the Federal response to the previous summer’s civil justice protests, “that in the event that activities on the street escalated, the city could once again become … militarized and that armed military and Federal law enforcement personnel could be brought into the District,” perhaps intimidating residents.64

Mayor Bowser also activated DC FEMS (Fire and Emergency Medical Service Department), several days before January 6th.65 DC FEMS focused most of its attention on the event at the Ellipse since the permits indicated it would be the largest event of the day, with an estimated 5,000 people attending. Other DC and Federal agencies believed the number would likely be closer to 35,000. This led DC FEMS to establish an area command for the Ellipse, including a Mobile Command Unit, six ambulances, four engine companies, and a first aid tent staffed by George Washington University medical staff.66

After the DC HSEMA’s December 30th intelligence briefing, MPD Chief Contee ordered full deployment of the Department, cancelling previously scheduled days off, fully deploying the Civil Disturbance Unit, and contacting police departments in Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties in Maryland so that their forces would be pre-staged at certain locations. Chief Contee also staged police at the White House and Lafayette Park. Chief Contee said that although the MPD “are normally not fully deployed for civil disturbance for counting votes at the U.S. Capitol,”67 “obviously, as we got closer from the time of the initial [December 19th Trump] tweet leading up, with all of the rhetoric that's out there on social media, you know, people were going to bring guns, were going to do this and that and so forth, that caused us obviously to change the way that we were going to deploy for January the 6th.”68 Because of the numerous social media posts about guns, MPD also posted signs on the National Mall indicating that possession of firearms in Washington, D.C., was illegal and would be prosecuted.69

On January 3rd, the same day Capitol Police’s Intelligence and Interagency Coordination Division (IICD) issued a threat assessment indicating that “Congress itself is a target,” Chief Sund called House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul D. Irving to discuss requesting the DC National Guard to assist in policing the Capitol’s perimeter.70 Chief Sund needed approval from the Capitol Police Board, which consisted of Irving, Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael C. Stenger, and the Architect of the Capitol J. Brett Blanton. Chief Sund remembers that Irving responded immediately that he did not “like the optics” and that the intelligence did not support the request.71 Irving, however, remembers Chief Sund calling him to say the DC National Guard had offered 125 unarmed National Guardsmen to the USCP and MPD. 72 He also remembered that, during a conference call, Chief Sund told Stenger and him that the National Guard would be utilized in similar fashion to the assistance provided to the DC police, namely, staffing intersections, and for traffic control to free up officers, but then could be used for crowd control, although he acknowledged that the Capitol campus does not have many intersections in need of staffing.73

The Capitol Police Board, including Chief Sund, later agreed that a request for the DC National Guard would not be necessary, particularly if the USCP was in an “all hands on deck” posture.74 Chief Sund agreed with Stenger and Irving that the intelligence did not support a request for DC National Guard assistance.75 According to Irving, Chief Sund did not believe the National Guard would add much to the USCP security plan for January 6th.76 Chief Sund briefed the Capitol Police Board on the USCP’s enhanced security plan, and “all hands on deck posture”—including 1,200-plus officers, added Civil Disturbance Units (CDU), an enhanced Containment Emergency Response Team (“CERT”), and an expanded perimeter.77 Chief Sund did not believe, based on the intelligence he had, that it was then necessary to cancel officers’ days off.78

USCP leadership did not create a department-wide plan for the January 6th event.79 In retrospect Chief Sund believed “there should have been a plan for the joint session of Congress inside the Capitol to reflect all the planning and all the coordination that goes on inside the Capitol.”80

In the appendix on Deployment of the National Guard, we describe certain reasons why the deployment of the National Guard was delayed, highlighting the activity of Secretary of the Army McCarthy and how he understood an order given by Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller. In our interviews with Department of Defense (DoD) officials, they testified that they had asked the Department of Justice to serve the role of “lead Federal agency,” meaning to lead the coordination and the response on January 6th. The Justice Department does not command National Guard units. Department of Defense, Department of Justice (DOJ), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials testified from each agency’s perspective about the discussions concerning which department would serve as a lead Federal agency. Notably, these discussions occurred at the same time President Trump was offering the Acting Attorney General position to Jeffrey Clark, replacing then Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. Had Clark ultimately been appointed, and had he been placed in charge of the Federal security response to the violence on January 6th, the situation could have been materially worse.

Realizing that there had not yet been a coordination call among the Federal agencies engaged in planning for the January 6th events and related contingencies, Acting Secretary Miller convened one for January 3rd, because “nobody else was doing it.”81 In addition to DoD officials including General Milley, DOJ, DHS, Department of the Interior (DOI) officials participated. Acting Secretary Miller’s objectives were to ensure that “everyone had the same perception of the threat and then figure out how to synchronize, coordinate.” He also wanted to make sure that DoD was prepared for any additional requests for support.82

Director of DHS Special Operations Tomney remembered that participants discussed the threat outlook and estimated crowd83 of up to 30,000—not large for the District.84 The consensus was that 8,000 to 10,000 police officers would be available on January 6th, a force regarded as appropriate for up to a million protesters. General Milley asked the police participants on the call whether they needed any other assistance from the Department of Defense.85 General Milley and Secretary Miller expressed concern about the number of groups requesting permits and the attendance of groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who, as Secretary Miller explained, had “conducted acts of violence in the past.”86 General Milley asked whether requests for permits could be declined, canceled, or permits revoked.87 Participants from the Department of the Interior responded that “that wasn't an option.”88

According to Director Tomney, DHS felt confident in the United States Secret Service’s ability to protect the White House and Vice President, the Federal Protective Service’s (FPS) ability to protect potentially affected Federal buildings, as well as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection’s ability to augment FPS, if needed.89 General Milley and the other DoD participants left the call reassured that the law enforcement agencies involved were prepared for January 6th.90

During the January 3rd call, the DoD also raised the issue of a lead Federal agency. General Milley noted the desirability of a law enforcement lead for coordinating the interagency planning and response effort, given the “potpourri of jurisdictions” and diversity of agency authorities.91 Secretary Miller testified that he believed he and Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen were in agreement that the DOJ should lead interagency coordination for January 6th,92 although when asked during the call, Rosen did not confirm that the DOJ would play that role.93 The question of a lead Federal agency remained “an open, unanswered question” at the end of the January 3rd call.94 The same day, Rosen was attempting to secure a White House meeting with President Trump regarding the imminent appointment of Clark in his stead.95

On a January 4th inter-agency call with the same group, Acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue made the DOJ’s role clear: it would take the lead in certain areas of responsibility, although he stressed that the DOJ was never designated lead Federal agency and could not serve in that capacity.96 On the evening of January 4th, the FBI established a Strategic Information Operations Center (“SIOC”) at FBI headquarters, which became operational on January 5th.97 Unlike the previous summer’s civil protests, DoD did not have a representative at the SIOC. All the DoD officials who were interviewed by the Select Committee, however, believe that the DOJ agreed to take—and may have been assigned by the White House—the lead coordinating role.98 Director Tomney, however, remembered that the DOJ participants neither agreed to, nor explicitly declined, the lead agency role.99

During the January 3rd and 4th calls, General Milley, according to Donoghue, noted that “[t]here should be plenty of police forces available without using Federal military troops,” so he was adamant that no active-duty troops would be deployed on January 6th.100 During this call, participants also discussed whether there was a need for a police-based quick reaction force and concluded that the size of the MPD and USCP police forces made that unnecessary.101

According to Donoghue, at the end of the January 4th call, “[i]t was clear that everyone understood what everyone else's responsibility was, and everyone understood what was available to them if they needed more resources to meet their responsibilities.”102 The calls had also given local and Federal law enforcement entities the chance to “voice any issues, concerns, or requests for Department of Defense support if they felt that they were incapable of handling at their level. So, institutionally, there was agreement on the threat assessment and the plan going forward.”103 The DoD’s leading role during the January 3rd and 4th calls had, in fact, left Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf with the impression that DoD was the lead agency, as they were “coordinating phone calls, they were setting agendas for phone calls, and they were calling out different people, okay, what do you need… So they were quarterbacking the situation and the response.”104

Three organizations in the National Capitol Region handle permits for organized activities depending on where the planned activity is to occur. The USSS issues permits for the Ellipse, while the DC MPD issues permits for the area around the Ellipse. The USCP handles permitting for activities on the Capitol campus. All three entities, as well as other law enforcement agencies, communicate about applications for permits and the expected number of attendees. They are reluctant to deny permits for what appear to be First Amendment-protected protests.105 The USCP received, evaluated, and approved six group permit requests for January 5th and 6th activity on Capitol Grounds.106

On December 19th, the day of President Trump’s “will be wild!” tweet, Cindy Chafian, spokesperson from the “Eighty Percent Coalition,” applied to the MPD and USCP for a permit to hold a rally.107 On December 29th, Chafian applied to USPP for a permit for a January 5th rally in Freedom Plaza.108 The next day, Kylie Kremer filed for a permit for “Women for America First” to hold a rally for up to 5,000 people on the Ellipse.109 On December 31st, the National Park Service (NPS) held two meetings with Chafian as well as the MPD and USCP.110 Then, on January 1st, the USSS confirmed that President Trump would attend the January 6th rally at the Ellipse, prompting USPP to provide additional support for the rally.111

On January 4th, “Women for America First” requested that the NPS increase the authorized attendance at its rally to 20,000 from the 5,000 in the original application. The same day, reacting to the USPP briefing that 5,000 people were expected, Joseph Roth, the USSS site lead, commented that he found it “funny that this permit says 5,000 people when they have said 30k repeatedly.” 112 On January 5th, the NPS issued a permit for 30,000 participants for the Ellipse event.113 At no point was any permit granted for a march from the Ellipse to the Capitol. The President planned to announce that march “spontaneously.”114

At the White House, the increased crowd estimate concerned Bobby Peede, Director of Presidential Advance, who emailed White House Deputy Chief of Operations Anthony Ornato, noting that the USSS was planning on using only 12 magnetometers. Peede added that “the mag issue is a pretty major problem if the expected crowd shows up.” Secret Service documents reveal internal discussion of an initial USSS assessment that 17 magnetometers would be needed. On January 6th, only 10 magnetometers were initially assigned to the Ellipse.115

On January 5th, Chief Sund briefed the Chairperson of the Committee on House Administration (CHA), Representative Zoe Lofgren, along with numerous staff, as well as House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving. Given CHA's oversight of the Capitol Police, this was “an opportunity for the chair of the committee to hear from the security professionals on the security plan.”116 Chair Lofgren’s staff director described it as a “topline” briefing that covered various aspects of the security plan, including Chief Sund’s direction of “all hands on deck,” his focus on the prospect of counter-protesters, as well as Chair Lofgren’s concern that Members of Congress speaking at the Ellipse that day could incite protesters.117 After the briefing, the CHA staff director specifically asked about the availability of the National Guard in case it was needed. “Chief Sund said that the Guard could be activated with an emergency declaration from the [Capitol Police] board, but they are here. They are a phone call away, and if we need them, they are ready to go.”118

Speaker Pelosi did not receive a similar briefing, but her chief of staff was given a readout of Chief Sund’s briefing to Chairperson Lofgren. On that basis, as well as the assurances Chief Sund provided, the Speaker’s chief of staff said, “So I believed and the Speaker believed the security professionals were in charge of the security and they were prepared. We were told that there was a plan.”119

Although intelligence was available suggesting potential violence at the Capitol, it was not apparent exactly what President Trump would do to provoke the crowd at the January 6th Ellipse rally. Chief Sund, for example, drove into work on January 6th believing that preparations for the day’s events were sound and that there was no extraordinary risk or threat. “You know, on my way in, I called Inspector Glover with MPD just to get a read. He said he was actually parked over by the Ellipse. Asked him, Hey, how are things going over there? He said, there's big crowds, lots of people in line, but right now he wasn't seeing any concern with the folks that we had. So that was my initial take,” Sund told the Select Committee.120

Throughout the morning, Robert Engel, the special agent in charge of the President’s Secret Service detail, received updates from the event at the Ellipse. At 10:35 a.m., an update informed Engel that 20,000 attendees had been processed and outside of the magnetometers, but that there were “several thousand on the mall watching but not in line.”121 An hour later, Engel forwarded an update to White House Deputy Chief of Operations Ornato, informing him that 30,000 attendees had been processed.122

Acting Attorney General Rosen met with FBI leadership for a briefing that morning.123 He remembered this briefing, unlike previous ones, as “more of a situational update,” adding that DOJ was “going to hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”124 At 10:43 a.m., Acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue received an email from Matt Blue, Acting Chief of the Counterterrorism Section, stating “[t]here are no credible threats as of the 10:00 brief.”125 Twelve minutes later, Rosen spoke to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone via phone.126 Acting Attorney General Rosen admits that “in hindsight” no one at the Department contemplated “how bad that afternoon turned out to be.”127 Nobody in the DOJ leadership could have predicted President Trump’s actions that day.

The President’s speech at the Ellipse began just before noon. David Torres,128 head of the USSS’s Protective Intelligence Division (PID), insisted that the Secret Service was not listening to the President’s speech, however PID agents monitored the speech throughout.129 At 12:20 p.m., Faron Paramore, assistant director of Strategic Intel & Information (SII), sent an email to USSS leadership that “POTUS just said that he is going up to the U.S. Capitol to ‘watch’ the vote” and asked whether this is true. Secret Service executive Kimberly Cheatle responded “[h]e said it, but not going, to our knowledge.”130 Minutes later, the USSS PIOC warned that “Mogul just mentioned in his speech that he would accompany the protesters to the Capitol,” with a note that “DAD Torres requested this be sent for awareness.”131 At 1:14 p.m., the USSS Joint Operations Center (JOC) sent an email designating a response team to accompany the President in his march to the Capitol, “per [his] announcement” at the Ellipse. The JOC notes: “Multiple reports of armed individuals with various weapons and malicious intent. Be on your guard.”132

At 12:24 p.m., while the President was speaking, the Vice President, with his USSS detail, departed the Vice President’s Residence for the Capitol.133 After being routed to the Senate side due to the protests, the Vice President’s detail arrived at the Capitol at 12:38 p.m. and was inside the Senate Chamber at 12:54 p.m.134

Around 1 p.m., Chief Contee notified Mayor Bowser about the discovery of a pipe bomb at the Republican National Committee and of the Capitol perimeter breach.135 Within minutes, Mayor Bowser was at the Joint Operations Center with Chief Contee.136 They tried to contact Chief Sund and sent command officials to Capitol Police headquarters.137 At approximately 12:59 p.m., once the violence had begun, Chief Sund first called Deputy Chief Jeff Carroll of the MPD, which provided almost immediate reinforcements.138 Approximately 10 minutes later, MPD officers arrived at the West Front balcony to assist the USCP officers. Chief Sund’s next call was to the House and Senate Sergeants-at-Arms to request National Guard resources.139

As the violence at the Capitol escalated, DC FEMS realized that they were facing an “expanding incident with the potential for mass casualties, fires, active shooter, and hazardous materials incidents that would exceed the resources at hand.”140 As violence escalated at the West Front, non-lethal grenadiers began launching chemical munitions at the crowd.141 Around the same time, the USCP discovered a nearby truck containing firearms and Molotov cocktails,142 as well as a second explosive device at the Democratic National Headquarters at 1:07 p.m. while Vice President-elect Kamala Harris was inside. Responding to these incidents required a commitment of significant USCP resources for mitigation and to evacuate nearby buildings, preventing their deployment to the Capitol to help secure the building.

Chief Gallagher recalled that “it started to really unfold into an investigative—heavy on the investigation of let's pull up the cameras. Let's try to get an image of the pipe bombs. Let's get the images to our law enforcement partners. Let's try to play back the cameras and see if we can identify anybody that placed these pipe bombs. Let's get the owner of the vehicle, run the vehicle information for that suspicious vehicle. So we were coordinating all of that type of response that was from our Investigations Division….We also had our IICD team trying to run down as much information, working with our Investigations Division as they could, on the suspicious vehicle, the tags of the vehicle, stuff of that nature.”143 Not including those in the command center, the incidents would require the response of 34 USCP personnel, with additional assistance provided by the FBI and ATF. USCP’s senior leadership at the Command Center and in the intelligence division also divided their time between the escalating threat to their officers at the Capitol and the explosive devices elsewhere on campus.

The next update to the DOJ was at 1:17 p.m., after President Trump had finished speaking at the Ellipse. After several attempts, Acting Attorney General Rosen got in touch with Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin, who was at the Ellipse. Rosen admits he was not very concerned with the situation at the time, because “[i]t was early, but at least the initial report was: Crowd size doesn't appear to be unexpected, and the conduct so far is okay.”144 He had only watched the end of the President’s speech.145 It was early afternoon before the DOJ’s senior leadership began to realize the extent of what was occurring. Acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue remembered hearing protestors outside the Department of Justice “marching down Constitution, going from the Ellipse toward the Capitol” in the late morning, early afternoon, but wasn’t specifically monitoring the protests as “there were a million things going on.”146

At the same time, the President was pressing his request to go to the Capitol. According to Robert Engel, the head of his Secret Service detail, President Trump asked to go to the Capitol once they had gotten into the Presidential SUV.147 Engel denied the President’s request and returned to the White House.148 The Committee has significant evidence regarding this period of time.149

President Trump, nevertheless, persisted in his request to go to the Capitol. A 1:35 p.m. entry in the USSS Civil Disturbance Unit’s time log shows that the plan was to hold at the White House for the next 2 hours and then move the President to the Capitol.150 Soon after, Engel emailed USSS leadership from the West Wing to say they were “discussing options and setting expectations.”151 Minutes later, after receiving an email from USSS leadership saying that it would not be advisable for the President to go “anywhere near” the Capitol, Engel responded, “[w]e are not doing an OTR to Punch Bowl.”152

Mayor Bowser also spoke directly with Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy who informed her that they had not gotten a request for National Guard assistance from the USCP. Mayor Bowser informed Secretary McCarthy that she did not have the authority to re-direct the 340 DC National Guard troops at traffic points across the city, but that she had already deployed the DC MPD and FEMs to the Capitol. Because she and Chief Sund had not connected, Mayor Bowser concluded that the security of the Capitol was “now our responsibility” and requested National Guard assistance. At the end of this call, Mayor Bowser believed that Secretary McCarthy was “running [her request] up his chain of command.”153

USCP Chief Sund was concerned when the explosive device was discovered near RNC Headquarters but did not then believe there was a need to change the USCP’s operational posture. Minutes later, when a large group of rioters approached the outer west perimeter of the Capitol, Chief Sund raised the alarm and began to reposition his officers: “When we looked up, and I saw them approaching the officers that were standing, you know, right there on the barrier, I looked over to Chief Thomas and I said, Chad, where's our—where's CDU? Get CDU down there now.”154

The USCP timeline shows that at 12:55 p.m. all available officers were directed to the West Front of the Capitol. Then, at approximately 1:25 p.m., FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich received a report about the pipe bombs at the RNC and DNC.155 Bowdich testified that the FBI considered the possibility that the DNC and RNC bombs were possible distractions.156 At 1:28 p.m., USCP requested the AOC deliver 400 additional bike racks to the East Front to serve as protective barriers, even though rioters were using bike racks as weapons. The pipe bomb discovery at the DNC prevented the AOC from delivering them.157

Chief Gallagher was surprised that the violence had escalated so fast. “The amount of violence that immediately took place when that crowd of 30,000, 35,000, whatever the number that was estimated to come was, that did catch, I think, caught Capitol Police and all of our partners a little off guard with how violent they were and how quick they were.”158 At 1:49 p.m., DC MPD Commander Glover declared a riot on the West Front of the Capitol. “Cruiser 50, we’re going to give riot warnings. We’re going to give riot warnings. Going to try to get compliance, but this is now effectively a riot,” Commander Glover yelled into his radio. “1349 hours. Declaring it a riot,” the dispatcher responded, which allowed a change in the type of equipment the MPD could use in responding to the violence.159

While the violence continued to escalate at the Capitol, the USCP leadership focused on three things: (1) requesting support from local and Federal law enforcement agencies nearby; (2) planning for and coordinating with arriving reinforcements; and (3) protecting congressional leadership and other Members of Congress. Chief Sund was “still making other calls to other agencies for support—ATF, FBI, you name it, Secret Service.”160

Yogananda Pittman, Gallagher’s direct supervisor, told the Select Committee that she took roles that day beyond her responsibility as Assistant Chief of Police for Protective and Intelligence Operations. “So we started—so I started to take Protective Services Bureau resources, as well as the chief's staff, to set up operations adjacent to headquarters building, specifically lot 16, so that we could have a check-in procedure for those units so they could stage vehicles,” Pittman said.161 “Because like we know now, there were breaches on both sides of the buildings and these folks are inside of the Capitol. So you have to deploy them with your officers. They don't know the layout of the land. We're telling them to respond to north barricade. They don't know the north from the south.” 162

Just after 2 p.m., when the Capitol was breached, Assistant Chief Pittman turned her full attention to the protection of congressional leadership.163 Meanwhile, the USCP officers at the West Front were overwhelmed. Commander Glover praised the actions of his fellow law enforcement officers that day but also noted a lack of leadership.164 He observed that the USCP officers he encountered when walking toward the Capitol’s West Front seemed to be “very hectic and scattered, with no clear direction, … fighting for every inch on the line,” capable, but “without a whole lot of command and control.”165

When it became clear to him that securing the Capitol would require additional resources, Chief Sund requested the assistance of the DC National Guard.166 During a 2:30 p.m. call set up by HSEMA Director Rodriguez, the USCP specified the support they needed from the Guard.167 Mayor Bowser also made “two urgent requests of the President” that she communicated to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.168 One was for the National Guard’s assistance.169 The other was that the President make a statement asking “people to leave, to leave the building and to get out of the city, to stop.”170 At 2:56 p.m., Meadows told Mayor Bowser that the President “had approved the request” and was “going to make a statement.”171

At the Justice Department, it had become clear by early afternoon that the situation was rapidly deteriorating. Donoghue first became aware of the Capitol breach when he walked into Rosen’s office and saw on television that the rioters were in the Rotunda.172 Rosen turned to him and said, “[D]o you see this, do you see what's going on, can you believe this?”173

At 2:14 p.m., the Vice President’s detail had alerted Secret Service over their radio channel that the Capitol Building had been breached and that they were holding the Vice President in his Senate office.174 About 5 minutes later, the detail reported that the rioters had gained access to the second floor and that they would need to relocate the Vice President,175 despite the Vice President’s objection.176 Five to 7 minutes later, after confirming that the route was safe, the lead agent on the Vice President’s Secret Service detail reasserted the need for the Vice President to leave his Senate office.177 (At 2:24 p.m. President Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.”) At 2:25 p.m., the Vice President and his detail left for a secure location.178 Vice President Pence refused to leave the Capitol for his residence and remained in the secure Capitol location until the Senate and House floors were cleared around 7 that evening.179

At 2:29 p.m., DC MPD Commander Glover transmitted an emergency radio message: “Cruiser 50. We lost the line. We've lost the line. All MPD, pull back. All MPD, pull back up to the upper deck ASAP. All MPD, pull back to the upper deck ASAP. All MPD, come back to the upper deck. Upper deck. Cruiser 50. We've been flanked. 10-33. I repeat, 10-33 West Front of the Capitol. We have been flanked, and we've lost the line.”180 Commander Glover later told the Select Committee that a “10-33” indicates an immediate need for “emergency assistance for any officer, life or death at that moment in time. That's when that line on the north side finally just broke and we just lost it, and we kind of got overrun behind us .... [W]hen you hear that in general daily activity, it's like the radio stops and you're focused on getting to that officer, wherever they are, because you know it's that bad, that they're fighting for their life; something they're perceiving or seeing or realizing is that their life is in immediate danger.”181

Donoghue left Rosen’s office to go to the FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center (SIOC) across the street at the FBI’s Hoover Building.182 Before he left, Donoghue remembers someone at SIOC telling him “Capitol Police say they don't need help at this point, they've got it covered.”183 When Donoghue arrived at the Washington Field Office, he found FBI Deputy Director Bowdich in a conference room by himself on the phone with a senior FBI official.184 After a brief discussion, Donoghue and Bowdich agreed that they should both go to the Capitol to evaluate the situation firsthand.185 Donoghue remembered that they arrived at the assembly area on D Street.186 Donoghue called Rosen to say that he and Bowdich were going to the Capitol.187

Around this time, Bowdich says that he received a call from Senator Mark Warner, who said “[t]his is a mess, and we now have the vast majority of the Senate in one room.”188 Bowdich recalls the number being about 87 senators,189 and that he directed the FBI’s Baltimore team to “protect that room, recognizing you have almost the entire Senate in one room.”190 Bowdich also directed a SWAT team to Senator Mitch McConnell’s office, in response to a call from McConnell's staff informing him that rioters were kicking in their door. On arriving, the SWAT team found that McConnell’s staff had reached safety.191

At 3:25 p.m., Rosen spoke to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer about the ongoing crisis. A video of the call shows Senator Schumer imploring Rosen, “get the President to tell them to leave the Capitol, Mr. Attorney General, in your law enforcement responsibility. A public statement that they should all leave.” 192

As the day’s crisis unfolded, Mayor Bowser activated the DC mutual assistance compact with neighboring jurisdictions for law assistance support and spoke to the Governors of Maryland and Virginia to solicit additional National Guard support. At about 3:30 p.m., Mayor Bowser spoke to congressional leadership, including Speaker Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.193 Then, around 4 p.m., Mayor Bowser, MPD Chief Contee and Army Secretary McCarthy met in the Joint Operations Center at MPD headquarters.194 At 4:30 p.m., Mayor Bowser held a press conference with DC HSEMA Director Rodriguez as well as Secretary McCarthy.195 Mayor Bowser also declared a 6 p.m. curfew for the District.196

Vice President Pence, who remained inside the Capitol, called Acting Attorney General Rosen at 4:34 p.m. to ask what the DOJ was doing and what more the Department could do to help.197 Vice President Pence told Rosen that the situation at the Capitol seemed then to be “improving.”198 The head of his USSS security detail recalls overhearing the Vice President asking USCP Chief Sund, over the phone, whether it would be possible to “go back to finish the business of the government this evening.”199 At 4:42 p.m., the head of the Vice President’s detail emailed the USSS Office of Protective Operations that the Vice President was confirming with Chief Sund that it would “take days to sweep and reopen” the Capitol.200

Congressional leadership continued to push to return to the Capitol to continue certifying the electoral votes. Senior DOJ and FBI officials—including Rosen, Bowdich, and Donoghue—held two conference calls. Donoghue remembered that the first, at 6 p.m., was a “law enforcement-level call” with General Daniel R. Hokansen, chief of the National Guard Bureau, and focused on the role of the DC National Guard.201 The second call, at approximately 7 p.m., included Speaker Pelosi, Leader McConnell, Leader Schumer, the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, and General Milley, as well as other congressional leaders.202 During that call, FBI and other law enforcement officials on the ground provided an updated timeline for clearing the Capitol to “hopefully get in an hour later.”203

At 8:05 p.m., the U.S. Capitol Police announced that the Capitol Building was clear and that Congress could resume counting electoral votes.204 Shortly after Members returned, Donoghue left the Capitol.205

DC FEMS statistics help describe the scope of the January 6th riot at the Capitol. Over the course of the day, DC FEMS reported 22 EMS responses, 14 EMS transports, including two cardiac arrests and two critical injury transports. There were an estimated 250 injured law enforcement officers from numerous agencies.206 One hundred-fourteen USCP officers reported injuries.207 Five police officers who were at the Capitol on January 6th died in the days following the riot.

Federal and local law enforcement authorities were in possession of multiple streams of intelligence predicting violence directed at the Capitol prior to January 6th. Although some of that intelligence was fragmentary, it should have been sufficient to warrant far more vigorous preparations for the security of the joint session. The failure to sufficiently share and act upon that intelligence jeopardized the lives of the police officers defending the Capitol and everyone in it.

While the danger to the Capitol posed by an armed and angry crowd was foreseeable, the fact that the President of the United States would be the catalyst of their fury and facilitate the attack was unprecedented in American history. If we lacked the imagination to suppose that a President would incite an attack on his own Government, urging his supporters to “fight like hell,” we lack that insight no more. And the best defense against that danger will not come from law enforcement, but from an informed and active citizenry.

H. Res. 503 Section 4(a) directs the Select Committee to examine the “facts, circumstances, and causes relating to the domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol,” including the “activities of intelligence agencies, law enforcement agencies, and the Armed Forces, including with respect to intelligence collection, analysis, and dissemination and information sharing among the branches and other instrumentalities of government.” This appendix focuses on the activities of the DC National Guard in the days leading up to and on January 6, 2021.

In contrast to the National Guard units in 50 States and three territories, where deployment authority lies with the governor of those respective jurisdictions, the DC Guard falls directly under the command of the United States President. In the discussion section below, this appendix provides a narrative of the preparations for and eventual deployment of the DC Guard on January 6th, and the interaction between then-President Trump and the DC Guard in the relevant time period. It is based on the Select Committee’s interviews of 24 witnesses and review of over 37,000 pages of documents.

The approval process for the deployment of the DC National Guard is unique, unlike any of the 50 States or three territories across the country where ultimate authority rests in the hands of the governor.1 In the nation’s capital, where no governorship exists, the Guard is ultimately under the command of the President of the United States when acting in its militia capacity to support civil authorities.2 By executive order, however, President Richard Nixon delegated the President’s day-to-day control of the DC Guard to the Secretary of Defense and specified that its Commanding General should report to the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary’s designee.3 By memorandum, the Secretary of Defense, in turn, delegated day-to-day control of the DC Guard to the Secretary of the Army.4 The commander of the DC Guard reported directly to the Secretary of the Army on January 6, 2021.5

During the 2020 summer protests in response to the murder of George Floyd,6 the approval process for Guard deployment ran smoothly. “Very, very proactive,” then-Commanding General of the DC Guard William Walker said.7 Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy “really wanted us out there.”8 Secretary McCarthy, with all his authorities, was physically beside Major General Walker throughout that summer. “[H]e was with me for all of it,” Major General Walker said.9 “He came to the [A]rmory every day. He brought his staff with him.”10 As has been widely reported, a number of President Trump’s senior advisors, including Attorney General Bill Barr, resisted President Trump’s requests to deploy the Guard or other troops in various states and cities where violence had occurred or was underway.11

In the summer of 2020, nothing was being written down; it “was just all verbal back and forth.”12 That approach sped up response times. But as the DC Guard footprint grew and controversies began plaguing the operation, Secretary McCarthy came away with the lesson that deliberative and by written order beat fast and by oral command.13

“What we learned in the process was we were not capturing a lot of the information in writing in the orders process, which is fundamental, foundational because of the stress of the situation and the speed of the situation,” Secretary McCarthy said.14

While a concept of operations (“con-op”) was developed at the lower level during the summer 2020 operations, it did not require approval or input at the secretary level.15 That approach came to be seen as a mistake that should not be replicated the next time there was a civil disturbance crisis in the nation’s capital. General Walter Piatt, director of the Army staff, explained: “That’s where Secretary McCarthy put that restriction to say, I want a concept of the operation before we just send a force to do something.”16

One of the most visible and highly criticized of the summer 2020 operations was the use of low-flying helicopters that appeared to be bearing down on protesters with the aim of dispersing them. On June 1st, as Guard presence tripled overnight, the use of helicopters meant for aerial surveillance17“somehow got translated to a very competent Army officer that ‘I am to fly low and loud to deter looters,’” General Piatt said.18“[W]hat the investigation revealed was that we did not have good procedures in place to provide military support to a very serious civil disturbance ongoing. The – because – the pilot of that aircraft believed that was his mission.”19

The “embarrass[ment]”20 of the low-flying helicopter affected Secretary McCarthy. General Charles Flynn, then- deputy chief of staff for operations, plans, and training, told the Select Committee, “I know the Secretary was concerned.”21He further explained: “I’m sure that affected his thinking.”22

Secretary McCarthy became convinced that a concept of operations needed to be “explicit, tailored”23 and – most importantly – that it needed to “come from [the] top down.”24 Secretary McCarthy told his staff, “[W]hen we get a request next time, we have to be absolutely certain that we understand the mission clearly,”25 and that “no other civil authority could re-mission off that support without the approval of either the Secretary of the Army or, in certain circumstances, the Secretary of Defense.”26

In mid-June 2020, then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Secretary McCarthy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, and Major General Walker huddled to talk about what went wrong in the preceding weeks. Senior defense officials then decided they would take a “more active” role in directing the force.27 “[A]s a result, we all took a more active interest in what was happening down to the tactical level to make sure that we were, again, abiding by kind of the core principles of civil-military relations,” former Secretary Esper said.28

Major General Walker said he was not told about that shift in perspective: “[I]f the Army thought different of how we respond to civil unrest, civil disturbance, I would hope . . . they would communicate that with the guy – with the person who is going to execute that change.”29

In the words of General Milley, the summer of 2020 had been “a pretty gut-wrenching experience.”30 The Department of Defense was still recovering when it was faced with the decision of the manner and degree to which the DC Guard should provide assistance to law enforcement authorities planning, just seven months later, for the events anticipated in connection with Congressional certification of the electoral votes on January 6, 2021.

On December 19, 2020, President Trump tweeted, “Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there! Will be wild!” From that day forward, a rookie DC intelligence analyst saw a tenfold uptick in violent rhetoric targeting Congress and law enforcement.31 Right-wing groups were sharing histories of violence and some not traditionally aligned had begun coordinating their efforts. 32 The analyst’s report reached more senior DC leadership, including, eleven days later, Mayor Bowser.33 In the course of the Committee’s investigation, it received and reviewed a significant number of documents indicating that certain intelligence and law enforcement agencies understood that violence was possible or even likely on January 6th. The Committee received many of those materials from the U.S. Secret Service, but also from other agencies as well.

On Thursday, December 31, 2020, the day after the briefing, Mayor Bowser sent a letter to Major General Walker requesting Guard assistance for January 5 and 6, 2021.34 A second letter specified the District’s request as limited to two forms of assistance: crowd management at Metro stations and blocking vehicles at traffic posts.34F It did not request help with potential civil disturbance.35

General Piatt viewed the “limited request”36 as a “pretty good, tailored mission,” that was “not vague.”37 General James McConville, chief of staff of the Army, called the request appropriately “restricted”38 with “a very low military signature.”39

According to testimony by Defense Department witnesses, after a summer of perceived overreach, military leadership was grateful for the delineated parameters set by the city itself.

The substance of the request – limited to traffic and crowd control “so they could have more police officers to do police functions”40 – was not seen as narrow by District officials. “I would say it’s a specific request,” Chief of DC Police (Metropolitan Police Department (“MPD”)) Robert Contee said.41 “[L]eave the unlawful stuff, leave that to the police to deal with.”42 Mayor Bowser said: “I don't know any law enforcement person who would suggest that urban disturbances aren’t best handled by the police.”43

“Civil disturbance was not something we requested at that time. Mostly also because the vast majority of the, if not all, of the permitted protests were taking place on Federal lands,” said Director of the DC Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency Christopher Rodriguez.44 The District had no jurisdiction. “Mayor Bowser cannot make a request on behalf of the White House or on behalf of the Capitol for U.S. Capitol -- for . . . DC National Guardsmen to deploy to those two entities. She can’t,” Chief Contee said.45 At this time, it was well known that President Trump had planned a speech and rally on “Federal lands” – on the Ellipse south of the White House. It was not widely known that President Trump intended to “spontaneously” instruct the tens of thousands of supporters at that Ellipse rally to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol.46

At first, Secretary McCarthy was not sold on involving the Guard at all. Major General Walker called Secretary McCarthy “instantly when I got the letters” from the District on Thursday, December 31st, and “initially I felt I must have caught him at a bad time.”47 Secretary McCarthy recalls it being a short conversation. “I said, ‘okay, got it. Thank you.’ You want to immediately flip it so that Secretary of Defense knows that we alerted his office,” he said.48

According to Major General Walker’s account of this call, the Secretary initially stated “‘We’re not doing it,’” 49 and then left the door open for further discussion. Major General Walker explained: “‘I said, ‘Well, sir, I think you should look at it.’ And then he told me, ‘Well, we’ll talk about it, but we don’t really want to do this, because the look it would give, the military out there interfering.’ . . . He says, ‘Well, we’ll discuss it on Monday.’”50

On Sunday, January 3rd, Secretary McCarthy called Chief Contee, who had formally assumed the role of acting head of MPD just the day before.51

“I thought initially that . . . he is just calling me basically as a rubber stamp to say, . . . ‘You asked for it, you got it.’ . . . It didn’t go that way,” Chief Contee said.52 “[H]e had concerns about deploying National Guard for this event. He talked about the optics of the event, having boots on the ground. . . . And I pushed back on that.”53

In his interview with the Select Committee, Secretary McCarthy described evaluating the request on the evening of January 3rd. “I sat at home. I chewed on it,” he said.54 “You know, I'm not particularly inclined to support it, because my concern was really we didn't have a command-and-control architecture in place. We didn't really have all of the mechanisms to be successful, you know. . . . So it was a very tough decision for me.”55

Over five days, from December 31st to January 4th, District officials faced what Major General Walker called “tremendous resistance.”56

Both Chief Contee and Director Rodriguez recalled that five-day period on January 6th, when Chief Steven Sund, of the U.S. Capitol Police, was pleading for reinforcements.57 Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, “heard through the grapevine that [Secretary McCarthy] was inclined – I don't want to say inclined to disapprove, but, you know, looking at it carefully or whatever. So – but that's fine. He can do whatever he wants. I knew that I was going to honor [the mayor’s] request . . . .”58

How close those Guard assets could go to the Capitol became a sticking point. Colonel Craig Hunter, the highest-ranking commander on the ground on January 6th, said the Army “really want[ed] to go through the concept of operations to see, okay, exactly – basically Metro stop by Metro stop, intersection by intersection, to see where will Guardsmen be exactly, you know, how close are you to the Capitol . . . .”59 He said an initial request by MPD to post Guard troops at the South Capitol Metro station – like all other Metro stations – was denied.60 In conference calls that “went back and forth,”61 Major General Walker was told, “There was a concern about being too close, military uniforms too close to the Capitol.”62

Major General Walker had a different perspective. He saw his people as “citizen soldiers,” “your neighbors that are going to come to your aid and rescue when you need us,”63 – not traditional boots on the ground. “[T]hat’s where, to me, the vest came in. This was the National Guard, not the Army,” he said.64

Military authorities determined that a geographical boundary would have to be established as a condition of approving the Guard’s deployment to assist MPD. No servicemember could go east of Ninth Street. It wasn’t made explicit to District officials, but they all knew what lay east. “[T]he Capitol is east,” Chief Contee said.65 “[I]f you move them anywhere east of Ninth Street, they will be close to the Capitol. That was certainly the way I understood it.”66

Director Rodriguez worried “that it constrained our ability to react quickly if the situation got out of hand.”67 Without the limitation, the District fully intended to post its resources farther east: “[W]e couldn't get as close to the Capitol as could have been helpful,” Mayor Bowser said.68 “[W]e would have had a broader traffic box.”69

Both Acting Secretary Miller and Secretary McCarthy were sensitive to the sight of troops near the site of the Congressional certification of electoral votes, because of President Trump’s previous expression of interest in using Federal troops in civilian situations. Again, Attorney General Barr and other members of the Trump Administration had resisted President Trump’s desire to deploy such troops. Secretary Esper said it “tended to be the case . . . that the President was inclined to use the military,” contrary to longstanding principles of reserving the armed forces as a last resort.70

According to his testimony, Acting Secretary Miller’s express first priority – after being installed with just two months left in the Trump administration – was “to make every effort to return the Department of Defense to a nonpoliticized entity,” because previously, “the Department was being showcased too much.”71 In testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform on May 12, 2021, he cited “fears that the President would invoke the Insurrection Act to politicize the military in an antidemocratic manner” as shaping his thinking.72 “No such thing was going to occur on my watch,” he wrote,73 later adding that “if I would have put troops on Capitol Hill” before the attack and without a request from civil authorities, “that would have been seen as extremely provocative, if not supporting this crazy narrative that the military was going to try to overturn the election.”74

Secretary McCarthy felt similar pressure. He had been taken aback when – as he was walking down the Pentagon’s hallways – “one of the most seasoned reporters” asked him whether the Army was planning to seize ballot boxes.75 It was “an incredibly tense period,” according to Secretary McCarthy.76 As our investigation has demonstrated, President Trump had considered proposals from Lt. General (ret.) Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, and others that troops be utilized to seize ballot boxes in certain parts of the country.

On December 18, 2020 – the same day as the contentious White House meeting with Flynn and others, – Secretary McCarthy issued a statement, “mirror[ing] what General Milley said about a month before,”77 reiterating that “There is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election.”78 Given the heat of the rhetoric, he thought, “[I]f we don't say anything, it's going to scare people.”79 Secretary McCarthy told the Select Committee he thought he would be fired after publicly stating that the military would not assist in a coup.80 General McConville, who signed the statement alongside Secretary McCarthy’s signature,81 linked their words directly to the Ninth Street limitation: “[T]here was no plan to put any military anywhere near the Capitol because of what we had said, the military has no role in determining the outcome of elections.”82

On January 1st, Executive Officer to Secretary McCarthy Colonel John Lubas wrote in an internal email that the Secretary “wants to clearly communicate that this request is NOT from the White House.”83 The email noted that the Secretary wanted to “aggressively message” that the request had come from District officials, not the President.84

“We wanted everybody to know that, because it would create confusion and even more tension of having soldiers on the street without a request and that they be near the Capitol with certification of an election, a contested election,” Secretary McCarthy said.85

On January 3, 2021, 10 former Secretaries of Defense, including the recently fired, former Secretary Esper, published a joint op-ed warning that “[i]nvolving the military in election disputes would cross into dangerous territory.”86 Secretary McCarthy had himself worked for five of the 10 secretaries.87 “I know all these [men],” he said.88 “[T]hey were – everyone was telling us, be very conscious of your actions and how you -- you know, what you're going to do that day. So we wanted to know where every soldier was by street corner.”89

Was Secretary McCarthy concerned that President Trump might use the military to cling to power? “There was a lot of talk in the lead-up about martial law . . . and the employment of forces, and you know, that was something that we were all, you know, conscious of.”90 Our investigation suggests that those civilian and military officials who had considerable experience working directly with President Trump had genuine concerns about whether he would attempt to use the military to change the election results. Again, at this time, there is no evidence the Department of Defense understood exactly what President Trump and his associates planned for January 6th.

By Monday, January 4th, with Secretary McCarthy now backing the operation, Acting Secretary Miller was briefed. He told the Select Committee that he “made the decision right there to honor the request.”91 That approval came with strings attached. The role of the DC Guard would be spelled out and tightly circumscribed in a memorandum that, as characterized by General Milley, was “very strict on the use of the military.”92 It decreed that without the Acting Secretary’s “subsequent, personal authorization,” the Guard would not be issued batons, helmets, or body armor; could not interact physically with protestors, except in self-defense; and that the Quick Reaction Force (QRF) – 40 servicemembers staged in case of an emergency at Joint Base Andrews in Prince George’s County, Maryland – could be deployed only as a last resort.93

Above the tactical level, changes in the mission of the Guard had to be approved by the Secretary of the Army and, in some cases – in order to “interact physically with protestors” or be issued batons92F – required running further up the chain to the Secretary of Defense.94

To District officials, that seemed new – and unnecessary. “[The Secretary told us,] if you send them to any other kind of mission, that has to get approval from me. And I just think that those were unnecessary restrictions . . .” Chief Contee said.95

What the QRF would be called upon to do, even in the case of an emergency, is a matter of debate. The letter and memorandum do not expressly note whether the QRF could be used to support the original mission of the Guard – traffic and crowd control – or a new mission helping contain sudden and out-of-hand civil disturbance.96 The DC Guard official put in charge of the QRF for January 5th and 6th, Lieutenant Colonel David Reinke, said he had not been given much guidance as to their role.97

The Army and the DC Guard appear to have had different understandings. “[T]he intent of the quick reaction force was really to send these troops over to help if they had a problem at one of the traffic command posts,” General McConville said.98 “There never was an intent for a quick reaction force to go to the Capitol . . . . ”99 According to Army officials, without a con-op and a formal change in mission, the QRF could do traffic control and no more.

That was not how others imagined an emergency unit would or should operate. According to Major General Walker, “a quick reaction force, something's happening; do I have time to find you and call you and ask you?”100 He called the preapproval language “highly unusual,”101 particularly as their name “already implied that it's a last resort,”102 their intended purpose was if “[u]nexpectedly, you have a spontaneous unrest,”103 and if “I need to write a concept of operations for a quick reaction force? They're no longer quick. It's just a reaction force.”104

It wasn’t clear to everyone involved in planning for the events anticipated on January 6th that all agencies, including the Capitol Police, were deploying all their resources ahead of that day. “We had had issues understanding, getting the full picture of U.S. Capitol Police's operational posture and what their planning was,” Director Rodriguez said.105

Mayor Bowser was struck when – right before the press briefing that Monday, January 4th – the mayor asked the Capitol Police representative, “[W]here does your perimeter start? [And h]e gets up out of the room, calls somebody. And the next thing I know he can’t participate in the conference.”106 She elaborated: “[T]hat should have been like a trigger to me. Like these people, they don't want to answer questions about their preparation.”107

On the morning of January 3rd, Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund approached two of the members of the Capitol Police Board and purportedly requested – but concededly did not push for106F – Guard resources for the Capitol.108 According to Chief Sund, in a minutes long meeting in the office of House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving, Irving told Chief Sund he did not like the optics of asking for the Guard in advance and that the intelligence did not support it.109 Chief Sund said he did not push back on either point.110 In fact, he agreed that his reading of the intelligence – despite a forewarning put out by his own intelligence unit that “Congress was itself the target” on January 6th111 – did not call for Guard support,112 only that having more personnel on his perimeter would make him “more comfortable.”113 Irving suggested he talk to the Senate Sergeant at Arms, and then-chairman of the Capitol Police Board, Michael Stenger.114 According to Irving, Stenger, in a meeting in his office, asked Chief Sund to reach out to the Guard and find out, if an emergency called for it, “how many people can [the commanding general] give us and how quickly can he give us those people?”115 Chief Sund said he took their responses to mean “no,” despite conceding that he was never told “you cannot have the National Guard” or anything to that effect.116 “It was 100 percent a denial,” he maintained.117

Irving recalled the matter coming up on a three-way phone conference during which “the consensus was that we didn’t need” the Guard.118 He did not consider it a request.119 On the call, Chief Sund noted that the District planned to use the servicemembers to staff intersections, but the Capitol grounds had few of those, and it would not relieve many officers if they were used in a similar fashion.120 “It was a combination of operationally the chief didn't feel that they would add much to his plan, and the intelligence really didn't speak for anything that we felt would justify the need for them,” Irving said.121 Irving doesn’t recall taking the “optics” into consideration.122 According to Irving, the conversation ended the same way Chief Sund said it had: “Why don't you just tell them to be on standby?” Stenger suggested.123 It was never brought up again.124

The discussion about the use of the Guard remained within the Capitol Police Board and did not reach congressional leadership, including the Speaker of the House. That was normal. “[F]rom a tactical perspective, we would make decisions without the input from congressional leadership,” Irving said.125 “I always felt that I had full authority to implement security decisions as I deemed appropriate.”126 In fact, when the three men briefed congressional leaders on January 5th, Chief Sund conveyed the same optimistic outlook as he had with Major General Walker: “[We told them] we felt we were prepared based on the information we had, yes,” he said.127

To keep these exchanges in perspective, we note again that we are aware of no evidence that these individuals were privy to President Trump’s plans to instruct tens of thousands of his supporters to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol to help “take back” their country. Nor were they aware of how President Trump would suggest to his followers that Vice President Pence had the authority to change the outcome of the election, or how President Trump would behave in the hours that followed. Certain members of Congress, including those who met at the White House on December 21, 2020, may have had considerably more insight into President Trump’s planning, but the Committee has no information suggesting that any of those members alerted the Capitol Police or other authorities of President Trump’s plans.

Guard reinforcements could draw from a pool of three groups already activated for the day: (1) the 40 members making up the QRF, staged in Maryland;128 (2) the 90 members at the traffic control points, 24 at the Metro stations, and four as part of the command staff distributed throughout the city – but no farther east than Ninth Street – for a total of 118 representing the first shift;129 and (3) the second shift of another 118 members,130 preparing at the Armory in Southeast Washington, D.C, for a 3:00 p.m. shift takeover.131 The Armory also housed a command-and-control squad that handled logistics at about 52 members strong, in addition to a Civil Support Team of about 20 members.132 That gave Colonel Hunter a maximum limit of 348 activated servicemembers, eight more than the allotted 340 – nearly all of whom reported directly to him on January 6th.133

The QRF was most prepared for responding to sudden and escalating civil unrest. At Joint Base Andrews, they were provisioned with full riot-control kits,134 including a helmet with a face shield already attached, protective vest, shin guards, knee guards, shield, and baton.135 The head of the QRF – himself provided little guidance on the contours of his mission – had his squad train for civil disturbance on January 5th and the morning of the 6th as they waited.136 Not only had they trained, but they trained together, as a unit – a benefit military officials all agreed is ideal. Army leadership, all the way up to Secretary McCarthy,137 had no idea that Lt. Col. Reinke had taken these initiatives. Secretary McCarthy agreed that had he known of their civil disturbance preparation, “it could have” affected the speed with which approval was ultimately given for their deployment.138

As to the second group of available resources – the servicemembers stationed at traffic control points since the early morning of January 6th – Army leadership held misconceptions about what equipment was available to them. Secretary McCarthy had agreed that some gear – expressly not batons – could remain stowed away in vehicle trunks.139 Colonel Hunter had his troops put the gear into a white box truck instead and designated a rally point for the truck that would be central to all traffic control points.140 On the night of January 5th, in anticipation of January 6th, Colonel Hunter had his troops move the civil disturbance gear – including the prohibited batons – into the individual vehicles themselves.141 Captain Tarp, the head of the second shift, agreed that they were told to load the equipment into their vehicles “on the down low. Done so it wasn’t visible, so it wouldn’t look like we were escalating [our] role.”142

The commanding general of the DC Guard was aware that the troops had all they needed in their trunks and – in the case of an emergency – would not need to return to the Armory to get it: “They already had it,” Major General Walker said.143

But Army leadership did not know that. Although General Piatt said “We never asked, like, what was actually – I have no knowledge of what they [actually] had in” the vehicles,144 the guidance from Secretary McCarthy’s letter led him to believe that “weapons, ammunition, batons, shields, kneepads, other protection that we may be asked to do for civil disturbance, that was not [there] -- because they were specifically told they would not participate in that mission . . . .”145 Secretary McCarthy said, “The only thing I authorized General Walker to do was their ballistic helmets and body armor in the vehicle, not their shields or their riot batons.”146 He figured his orders had been followed.147 When asked why he was not aware of the moves the Guard had made, Secretary McCarthy said, “I mean, I made a mistake. I think a local unit commander was anticipating more than what potentially we were prepared for.”148

DC Guard leadership understood that loading this equipment flouted direct orders. “I wasn’t going to have my soldiers unprepared,” Major General Walker said.149 The prohibition on batons, in particular, had been sent 54 minutes after the Guard had already begun their traffic control shifts on the morning of January 5th.150

The third group of available resources – the servicemembers awaiting at the Armory to take over as the second shift at the traffic control points – had equipment accessible to them at headquarters. Captain Tarp did note that it took time to ensure that the Armory equipment was in working order: repairing straps that were broken, wiping off dirt on the shields because “they were the same from the George Floyd protests,” and affixing the helmet to the shields, which took upwards of 20 to 30 minutes.151 In the three different locations where the Guard was stationed as the Capitol was being breached, all servicemembers had access to full civil disturbance gear right there with them.

Outside of the QRF, which had recently returned from two days of training together, there is debate as to how ready the rest of the Guard was to engage in civil disturbance response on January 6th. The notion that the military is not primed or naturally skilled to deal with civil disturbance appears to stand in tension with National Guard traditions, training, and doctrine. “They were not missioned, tasked, organized, equipped to do civil disturbance operations,” General Flynn said.152 Although General Piatt conceded that “[a]ll soldiers are trained in civil disturbance,” he maintained that on “that day we were not postured to do civil disturbance operations.”153

Major General Walker – who pointed out that the DC Guard shield, on Guard troop uniforms, features the Capitol building itself: “Protect the Capitol. That’s why Thomas Jefferson created it”154 – called civil disturbance “foundational” to what they do.155

On January 5th, as he led his forces in traffic control, Colonel Hunter did not observe activity that raised concerns.156 But by the next morning – as thousands of out-of-towners invited by President Trump descended on the nation’s capital – that all changed. “I could see like the Proud Boys,” he said.157 “I could see different people with Kevlars on, with bulletproof vests on. You know, they're all kitted up and they're wearing different patches and colors. And I said, ‘Well, this crowd is definitely different . . . .’”158 This, of course, was an indication of the potential for violence in the hours that followed.

Colonel Hunter, sitting at the intersection of 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, saw crowds flowing past him and his soldiers toward the Capitol – walking as one, chanting as one. “Hey, is it that way to the Capitol? Where’s the Capitol?” some asked.159 Colonel Hunter got in his car and began writing an update report.160

He was interrupted by a soldier who had been watching CNN on his phone: “Hey, sir, I think there’s been shots fired at the Capitol.”161 It was then that Colonel Hunter began to put a plan in place for the redeployment of the Guard. “So at that point in my mind I said, ‘Okay, then they will be requesting the DC National Guard now, so we have to move.”162 The time was 2:12 p.m.163

The first thing he did was designate a rally point for DC Guard reinforcements.164 Over the radio, he relayed the rally point to all 118 members currently spread across the city doing traffic control, and one by one, in order by their points, they called in to acknowledge where they would go once approval came down.165 At 2:17 p.m., he called Lt. Col. Reinke, the head of the 40-strong QRF, and ordered his subordinate to “have all of your guys put their gear on and get on the bus.”166 “In my mind, this is about to happen really fast,” he said.167 “As soon as I make one call, I will get clearance to go and support. The United States Capitol was breached. I mean, this is unheard of.”168 Accordingly, he advised Lt. Col. Reinke that, “[W]e will be getting a call soon.”169

He next tried to find the incident command post. He ran into the Assistant MPD Chief Jeffery Carroll, piled into a car and, sirens flipped on, sped off to U.S. Capitol Police headquarters.170

Once there, they got into the elevator, and “before the doors even closed,” Assistant Chief Carroll asked him, “How many do you have coming right now?”171 Colonel Hunter said, “I’m working on it. I need to make some calls, but we are – we’re coming . . . . And I said, as soon as I start making these calls, I’m going to have so many National Guardsmen just flooding this way. I just need to have the location, have the plan set, be ready to receive them.”172

No later than 2:50 p.m., Colonel Hunter had confirmed with Lt. Col. Reinke that the QRF was on the bus and ready.173 The highest-ranking Guard official on the ground had sorted out all of the details and linked up with the law enforcement agencies that would lead them in support. At least 135 National Guard servicemembers – the 40 QRF members already in gear and on the bus and the 90 at traffic control posts awaiting word, with gear in their trunks to be donned at the rally point, along with four command staff plus Colonel Hunter himself – were ready to go. At 3:10 p.m., Colonel Hunter felt it was time to tell his superiors all that he had done and hopefully get fast approval.174

At the Capitol, MPD Chief Contee was on the West Front, himself inhaling chemical agents – “you can smell it before you see it, felt it in my throat”175 – as officers tried to resist rioters beating back the perimeter, having reached the stage built for the Inauguration set for two weeks later. “[T]he gas stuff and the spray, the mist that’s in the air, I mean, it’s real,” he said.176 “I'm trying to talk to the Mayor to give her a situational update, and the city administrator -- I've got them both on the line. I’m coughing, trying to explain what's going on.”177 Chief Contee cut through the crowds of people around the Capitol to meet the mayor at MPD headquarters.178

Chief Sund said he reached out to House Sergeant at Arms Irving at 12:57 or 12:58 p.m., and told him, “We are getting overrun on the West Front by thousands. We need the National Guard now.”179 Irving recalled the call coming before a break in the electoral certification session just short of 1:30 p.m. and that the Chief said “that conditions were deteriorating outside and he might be making a request for the National Guard.”180 Although Irving was firm in his stance that only the Capitol Police Board had the authority to request National Guard assistance, he nonetheless sought out the chief of staff to the Speaker to inform her of the impending request.181 He did not need her to sign off, but “[a]ny change in security posture, given the time, I would give them a heads-up.”182

The Speaker’s chief of staff “immediately scribbled down a note” and went over to inform the Speaker – who was in the chair presiding over the floor debate on the Arizona objections – about the request for the National Guard183 “Absolutely. Go,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.184 Later, as they were evacuating the floor to an undisclosed location, the Speaker asked her, “Is the National Guard coming?”185 The Speaker’s chief of staff said, “Yes, we asked them.”186

Irving said the formal request for Guard assistance came in a call after 2 p.m. from Chief Sund “and, of course, we said absolutely.”187 Chief Sund said he had made the request in that earlier 12:57 or 12:58 call and had been waiting for 71 minutes.188 “I hung up the phone. I yelled across the command center, [‘M]ark the time, 2:10, I finally got approval from the Capitol Police Board for the use of the National Guard,’” Chief Sund said.189

At around 2:30 p.m., Director Rodriguez patched Chief Contee – and a largely silent Mayor Bowser listening in190 – into the conference call with Chief Sund and Major General Walker, who brought in General Piatt.191 Major General Walker ordered his aide-de-camp on his second day on the job, Lt. Timothy Nick, to take handwritten notes of the call and the rest of the day.192

On the line at the Pentagon – gathered around the speaker of the Secretary of the Army’s desk phone – were General Piatt, General McConville, and Secretary McCarthy.193 According to Secretary McCarthy, it was during the call that he learned the Capitol had been breached,194 watching it unfold in real time on television.195 He didn’t recall hearing Chief Sund’s voice on the call, but said “we were trying to get … what we call the operational sight picture. What is going on? How big is the crowd? How violent is the crowd? . . . They started laying out really the – just how bad it was.”196 Secretary McCarthy resolved to run to the office of Acting Secretary of Defense Miller, leaving behind instructions to General Piatt to “find out the requirements,” as he was “going to get the authority.”197 “[W]e go zipping down there,” General McConville said.198 As they were leaving, General Flynn showed up.199

General Flynn said, “when I came by the phone,” he “heard voices screaming on the end.”200 He called the tones of their voices as “chaotic”201 and that “[y]ou couldn’t tell who was talking sometimes.”202 Chief Sund was pleading for help. “I want to say he even used the word, like, ‘I am pleading,’” Chief Contee said.203 Col. Matthews, listening in beside Major General Walker, said of Chief Sund: “His voice was cracking. He was almost crying.”204

According to Chief Contee, the reaction to his pleas was “tepid.”205 “It was a very sluggish response,” Chief Contee said.206 “I remember just, you know, with all that was going on, not hearing a ‘yes,’ you know, just . . . what I would in my mind qualify as, like, excuses and not decisive action. . . I was hearing, like, all the reasons, you know, why we shouldn't be doing this.”207 Director Rodriguez called it a “kind of bureaucratic” response in the midst of “a rapidly evolving situation where literally the Capitol was being overrun.”208 He added: “I don't want to use the word disinterested, but more just, ‘let’s just hold on. Let’s just wait. Let’s just kind of calm down for a second while literally Rome is burning.’”209

For his part, General Flynn depicted General Piatt – the main interlocutor – as “the calming voice in an otherwise chaotic situation.”210 General McConville agreed: “I talked to some of my staff, and they said that General Piatt did an incredible job. He was like the -- you know, in a very calm [voice], just saying, ‘let’s just settle . . . .’”211

But Major General Walker said he “just couldn't believe nobody was saying: ‘Hey, go.’”212 He asked the generals on the other line, “‘Aren't you watching the news? Can't you see what's going on? We need to get there.’ And [I was] cognizant of the fact that I'm talking to senior . . . people, but I could see what was happening . . . .”213 Chief Sund was “perplexed” and “dumbfounded.”214 “It wasn’t what I expected of, yeah, the cavalry's coming. It was a bunch of, round-the-house, oh, hey, let’s do this, let’s do that,” he said.215 “I was borderline getting pretty pissed off.”216

Many participants on the call say General Piatt’s stated concern was the optics of sending troops to the site of a democratic process.

“[T]he infamous talk about optics. That came up again. There was talk about boots on the ground again. You know, that's not good optics, having boots on the ground,” Chief Contee said.217 He recalled how Secretary McCarthy had vocalized the same hesitance during the five-day deliberation preceding January 6th.218

Director Rodriguez believed General Piatt replied to the request by saying, “[W]e don’t like the optics of having military personnel at the Capitol against peaceful protesters.”219

He recalls Chief Contee replying bluntly, “[W]ell, they're not peaceful anymore.”220

Major General Walker heard one of the Army generals say it “wouldn’t be their best military advice or guidance to suggest to the Secretary that we have uniformed presence at the Capitol.”221 He added: “They were concerned about how it would look, the optics.”222 Chief Sund heard the general use the word twice.223 “General Piatt said – and I will never forget this – ‘Yeah, I don't know. I'm concerned about the optics of the National Guard standing a line with the Capitol in the background,’” Chief Sund said.224 “[M]y officers are getting beaten, and they're worried about the optics of the National Guard.”225

Although General Piatt denies explicitly using the word “optics” – “I don't recall ever saying that word on that phone call, because at the time it just wasn't important”226 – he agreed that he said use of the Guard was “not my best military judgment or my best military advice.”227 He said he “made a couple of suggestions that were not well-received,”228 including “if there was any other facility where we could go and relieve police. . . I think they took that as I was saying no, because they immediately came back and said, you’re denying our request.”229

General McConville – who wasn’t present at the time – said he talked to people in the room about the use of the word “optics,” and “some people said, ‘No, it wasn’t said.’ And then some people said it was said.”230 Nonetheless, the sentiment behind it should not be a particularly controversial one, according to General McConville. “People like to use optics – I'm going to stay away because that's a political term in my eyes. But what type of signature do you want on the streets in Washington, DC? Do you want a police signature? Do you want a military signature? Do you want a Federal signature?” he said.231 “[T]hat creates a reaction from the American people, and we need to think our way through that . . .”232

On the call, talk of needing a plan – the so-called con-op that had been a lesson learned from the summer – emerged. “[A]fter the optics, . . . then it was, you know, they wanted, like, specific information. There was something they were talking about, like, mission and . . . what exactly they're going to be doing when they get there,” Chief Contee said.233 Before running off, Secretary McCarthy had instructed General McConville to put together a plan: “My charter, my direction from him is to get a plan. We’re gonna support; I just wanted to get something to support with.”234 But he acknowledged the impression nonetheless remained that he was “denying or pushing back.”235

That impression was made explicit: “They said three times to me clearly, ‘You’re denying my request,’” General Piatt said.236

Chief Contee interrupted “Chief Sund mid-sentence” and said, “Wait a minute. Hold up. Let me make sure that I understand this correctly . . . [A]re you asking for support from the National Guard at the U.S. Capitol?”237

Chief Sund said, “Yes.”238

Chief Contee then addressed the Army generals: “‘Are you guys honoring his request?’ I asked them that. And they didn't say ‘no,’ but they also didn't say ‘yes.’”239 Chief Sund recalled it the same way.240

General Piatt said he was “clear in my response, ‘I don't have any authority to deny or approve. The Secretary is getting approval.’”241

“[T]he third time when they said, ‘You're denying our request,’ they also said, ‘And we're going to go to the media,’” General Piatt said.242 “[W]e were desperate. Everyone was desperate. So I’m not angry at that, but I just knew it wasn’t helpful, so we told that to Secretary McCarthy.”243

As for the threat to go public, Major General Walker said, “I remember that very clearly.”244 According to him, after the generals would not say yes or no, “Chief Contee says: ‘I’m going to call the mayor and ask her to have a press conference saying that the Army is not going to allow the DC Guard to come and support.’”245 General Piatt reportedly replied, “Please don't do that. I don't have the authority to authorize the National Guard to go. So please don't do that. Please don't hold the press conference.”246 Chief Contee doesn’t recall saying that.247 Mayor Bowser doesn’t know if she was still on the line when the remark was made, but “it was certainly going to be something that I would do.”248

In the end, “the call sort of ended very abruptly, . . . .”249 The DC head of homeland security and emergency management left the call thinking “that help was not coming, and -- at least [not] from the National Guard.”250 That was Chief Sund’s belief, too. “[I]f a general says his troops are not coming, his troops aren't coming,” he said.251

Before the call ended, General Flynn set up a video-conferencing bridge. General Piatt explained to the Select Committee that this was meant “to get the principals and the team together to start making a plan.”252 But Major General Walker – under whom “it was actually written . . . would maintain control of National Guard forces”253 – said he was not privy to any planning while on the call.

“We were just told to hold,” he said.254

How long did Major General Walker hold?

“Three hours and 19 minutes,” he said.255

Major General Walker told the Select Committee regarding what occurred during this time. “[W]e all thought, it’s in a minute, we're going to be told to go, in a minute. Then 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, then 15 minutes. We kept thinking, any minute now, somebody is going to say ‘go,’” he said.256 “And then an hour went by, then more time went by . . . . But we never thought it would take that long.”257 Col. Matthews confirmed that there were periods on the call when no one was talking.258 At times, there was talk of securing buildings other than the Capitol.259 He called the open channel essentially “a general officer chat line.”260

What did Major General Walker think was happening in those 3 hours and 19 minutes?

“Delay.”261

Vice President Mike Pence called several times to check in on the delayed response of the Guard. President Trump did not.

Vice President Pence called Acting Secretary Miller at least two times.262 “He was very animated, and he issued very explicit, very direct, unambiguous orders. There was no question about that,” General Milley said.263 “And he said, ‘Get the National Guard down here. Get them down here now, and clear the Capitol.’ You know, and this is the Vice President of the United States. And there was other forceful language.’”264

Acting Secretary Miller clarified that “he did not order me,” as “he’s not in the chain of command,” but he considered the talk with the Vice President “[h]yper professional” and “[v]ery focused,” in which the secretary “highlighted that District of Columbia National Guard . . . was activated, and we were throwing every asset we could marshal to support law enforcement.”265

In contrast, according to General Milley, Chief of Staff Meadows called and said, “‘We have to kill the narrative that the Vice President is making all the decisions. We need to establish the narrative, you know, that the President is still in charge and that things are steady or stable,’ or words to that effect. I immediately interpreted that as politics, politics, politics.”266

President Trump himself did not call. As reports of Departments of Defense denials and delay were echoing in the media, no high-level Defense official – including Secretaries Miller267 and McCarthy268 – received a call from him that day.269 At the time, General Milley thought that was “absolutely . . . highly unusual.”270

“[Y]ou're the Commander in Chief. You've got an assault going on on the Capitol of the United States of America, and there's nothing? No call? Nothing? Zero?” he said.271 “I grew up in an organization where commanders are responsible and take charge and they see situations unfolding and they issue orders and take charge.”272

On January 3rd, at the end of a national security meeting concerning a foreign threat, the President asked “in passing” about January 6th preparations.273 Acting Secretary Miller informed him they would be fulfilling Mayor Bowser’s request for DC Guard support.274 From then on, if not earlier, the secretary “felt like I had all the authorities I needed and did not need to discuss anything with the President regarding authorities.”275 The conversation lasted all of 30 seconds to a minute.276 Secretary Miller testified that he never received any order at any time from President Trump to deploy the National Guard on January 6th. “There was no direct -- there was no order from the President,” he said.277

On January 5th, as demonstrators rallied in support of the President, Acting Secretary Miller received a call from the commander-in-chief.278 The President asked him if he was watching the events on television.279 The secretary told him he had caught some of the coverage.280

Unprompted, President Trump then said, “You’re going to need 10,000 people” the following day, as in troops.281 An email sent by Chief of Staff Meadows on January 5th explicitly noted that the DC Guard would be on hand to “protect pro Trump people.”282 The President and his staff appeared to be aware of the likelihood of violence on the day the election certification of his loss was slated to transpire. This communication from President Trump contemplated that the Guard could support and secure the safety of Trump supporters, not protect the Capitol. At that time, Secretary Miller apparently had no information on what President Trump planned for January 6th.

Acting Secretary Miller thought the 10,000 number was astronomical – “we expected 35,000 protesters . . . [and] even if there were more protesters than expected, [we thought] that local law enforcement could handle it”283 – but, again, this was “no order from the President,” just “President Trump banter that you all are familiar with.”284

While the Army and the District engaged in the “heated”285 2:30 p.m. phone call, Secretary McCarthy was hurrying down the Pentagon hallways to Acting Secretary Miller’s office. General Milley had been summoned there before Secretary McCarthy arrived with General McConville in tow,286 “running down the hall, and he was actually winded when he showed up . . . ”287

The next half hour was spent in “a quick, rapid fire meeting, [with] lots of quick questions.”288 Secretary McCarthy – out of breath – said he started by saying, “We've got to go. We've got to get something -- we've got to put every capability we can up there.”289 The response he received was, “They were all kind of, like, ‘Slow down. What's going on?’ They wanted to get a sense of the situation.”290 Secretary McCarthy said it took about 15 to 20 minutes to “relay this,” “laying out what I thought we needed to do.”291

By 3:04 p.m., Acting Secretary Miller said he approved deployment of the DC Guard to assist law enforcement at the Capitol at that time.292 Acting Secretary Miller did not understand why Major General Walker – if he felt the exigency demanded it – did not deploy troops as soon as his 3 p.m. order allowed it. “Why didn’t he launch them? I'd love to know,” he said.293

Secretary McCarthy agreed “that’s where we may have talked past each other in his office,” because Secretary McCarthy thought he “had the authority as the Secretary of the Army” to conduct a mission analysis and send troops at his discretion, not that of Major General Walker.294

Major General Walker himself understood he had to wait for approval from Secretary McCarthy to deploy his forces. But as he waited on that video call for hours, he did strongly consider sending them anyway. He turned to his lawyer and said, “Hey, you know what? You know, we’re going to go, and I'm just going to shoulder the responsibility.”295 According to Major General Walker, his lawyer responded, “What if you get sued?”296 Colonel Mathews, that lawyer, “told him not to do that. Just hold on.”297 The Guard officials located with Major General Walker at the Armory all say he seriously contemplated aloud the possibility of breaking with the chain of command.

“Should we just deploy now and resign tomorrow?” was how Lieutenant Nick recalled Major General Walker bluntly putting it.298

“I would have done just that,” Major General Walker said, “but not for those two letters”299 from his superiors curtailing Guard redeployment.300

The man who signed one of the letters, however – himself a former member of the DC Guard301 – now says Major General Walker should have moved forward regardless of whether he had proper authorization.

“I've launched QRF without approval more than once,” Acting Secretary Miller said.302 “If you’re the person on the ground in the Army, and you realize that there’s something that is unpredictable or unexpected and you have the ability to influence it, the culture, the training, the education, the expectation of you, the American people, is that you will execute and do what you can, even if it costs you your job.”303

After authorization at 3:04 p.m., Secretary McCarthy said he gave Major General Walker a call. He told him to “[m]obilize the entire Guard, bring everybody in. . . . And I said, you know, move the QRF to the armory and get as many people as you can to the armory and configure them in a minimum of riot gear and batons. And then we’re going to do a mission analysis of what we need to do with the police . . . .”304 Major General Walker “categorically denies” that any such call took place.305 In fact, Major General Walker said the two men did not talk at all until much later that night.306 “Here’s the bottom line. The Secretary was unavailable to me, and he never called me,” Major General Walker said.307

Beginning around 3:00 p.m., 25 minutes of Secretary McCarthy’s time was spent reassuring members of Congress that the Guard was indeed coming,308 although he had not yet conveyed the order. That was time unspent on facilitating their actual coming. In addition to the alleged threat on the 2:30 p.m. call, a media tweet had gone out at 2:55 p.m. declaring that the Department of Defense had denied requests for Guard support.309

By 3:45 p.m., Secretary McCarthy was done with his calls and – after picking up some things from his office – headed down to the MPD headquarters to draft a con-op beside law enforcement.310 Secretary McCarthy arrived at 4:10 p.m.311

While he was waiting, Colonel Hunter decided he would keep the first shift handling traffic control out at their posts in case they were needed for re-mission by the MPD, relying instead only on the QRF and the second shift at the Armory to respond to the Capitol.312 Those servicemembers ended up manning their traffic control posts up to 20 hours straight.313 Army leadership never found out that the servicemembers at the traffic control posts didn’t end up responding to the Capitol that night, incorrectly crediting some of the Guard’s delay that day to their travel time.314

By 3:50 p.m., the QRF had arrived at the Armory, bringing their own equipment, given no new information upon making the extra pit stop there instead of the Capitol.315 They were ready to go, steeped in “a lot of nerves.”316 The second shift of servicemembers originally missioned for traffic control had been told as early as 2:30 p.m. to expect a switch in mission to handling civil disturbance.317 They rushed to gear up and prepare, but it was a lot of “hurry up and wait.”318 Not long afterward, “we’re all ready. Now we’re all donned. So go sit on the bleachers and wait. . . We were in a tight holding pattern until the time to deploy.”319

At around the same time, at 3:49 p.m., Speaker Pelosi is heard in video footage from that day urging Acting Secretary Miller to hurry.

“Just pretend for a moment this was the Pentagon or the White House or some other entity that was under siege,” she told him over the phone while she – and the rest of the Congressional leadership – were huddled in a secure location.320 “Just get them there!”321

When Secretary McCarthy arrived at MPD headquarters, he joined Chief Contee, his Army Operations Director Brigadier General Chris LaNeve, and Assistant Chief Carroll by phone.322

In the next 20 minutes, Secretary McCarthy developed a con-op.

As Secretary McCarthy had decided after the summer, crafting a strategy was his job – “I was doing it with the Mayor, the police chief, and the deputy director of the FBI, my counterparts, and then ultimately wanted to understand what our role would be, the conditions” – and afterward, “we turned to [Major General Walker] to work the tactical details for that.”323

But Major General Walker said, “If I need you to tell me how to execute a civil disturbance mission,” he “[s]hould relieve me. Should fire me.”324

It wasn’t until later, post-January 6th, that Major General Walker said he found out that Secretary McCarthy, his boss, had been putting together a con-op – without him. “Then later they said they had to put together a plan for me to execute . . . which I found kind of disturbing,” Major General Walker said.325 “You're coming up with a plan without me being involved in the plan?”326

General McConville agreed that “usually[,] the Secretary of Army is not developing concepts for the employment, but because of the situation that wasn’t done,” so the secretary had to fill in the gap.327 That, of course – given the preparations Colonel Hunter had laid out hours earlier – was not true. But Secretary McCarthy did not know that.328

He said Major General Walker never told him about how Colonel Hunter had prepared and that it was his responsibility to tell him.329 “I don't talk to troop lead commanders, no,” he said.330

Ultimately, no plan from Army leaders – strategic or tactical – made it to the troops.

“[I]f they came up with a plan, they never shared it with us,” Major General Walker said.331 “They claim they were putting a plan together. That’s what took so long. I never saw a plan from the Department of Defense or the Department of the Army.”332

Colonel Hunter agreed that “[n]o one ever told me, because I already had the plan there, and no one ever informed me that there was a different plan or a different [con-op].”333 He said to the extent a “hasty plan” was put into action on January 6th, it was his: “I created the concept of operation.”334 He added: “The [plan] that was actually used as far as which lot they would come into, who would meet them at the lot, and then who would lead them over to the Capitol. That was between myself and MPD and Capitol Police.”335

After hours of wait, Major General Walker said, “The plan was executed just like we said it would be [from the start], get to the Capitol, take direction from the ranking police officers there . . . to help restore order.”336 Colonel Hunter passed the details of his hasty plan onto Lt. Col. Reinke – the highest ranking officer at the rally point – letting him know, “Hey, when you pull into this lot, they will meet you there. This is who is – you know, you’re going with these personnel,” exactly what Secretary McCarthy had just spent 20 minutes putting together.337

Although Lt. Col. Reinke said his QRF servicemembers were given rules of engagement before arriving at the rally point, he was not told more than report to Capitol Police and supplement and assist them.338

Captain Tarp, outranked by Lt. Col. Reinke but in charge of the second shift, was merely told by Brigadier General Ryan: “‘You need to act like there’s a fire now. You’re going to [the] Capitol.’ Those were his directions.”339

After an hour and a half spent in calls, travel, and making plans, Secretary McCarthy was prepared to green light the deployment of the Guard at 4:35 p.m. But miscommunication led to another half-hour delay.

Secretary McCarthy relayed the “go” order to Major General Walker – with his subordinate Brigadier General LaNeve serving as the intermediary – in a conversation Major General Walker said never happened.

According to Secretary McCarthy, Brigadier General LaNeve “wasn’t a junior aide.”340 In his role, “he can speak, once given the authority, delegated authority to speak as the Sec Army . . . ”341 He said that the one-star general “was standing next to me,”342 and General Piatt said that it was generally “not uncommon” for him to ask his staff to “transmit [the] communication from the Secretary to General Walker.”343

For his part, Brigadier General LaNeve denies that he himself conveyed the “go”’ order.344 He said he spoke with Major General Walker first at 4:25 p.m. to tell him that his forces should, “Get on the bus, do not leave.”345 On a second call at 4:35 p.m., Brigadier General LaNeve said he overheard Secretary McCarthy himself convey the “go” order to Major General Walker: He said something “to the effect of ‘You’re approved to provide support.’”346 Secretary McCarthy, on his part, said he never spoke a word.347

Brigadier General LaNeve said the secretary then again handed him the phone to convey the details of “where to go and what officer to meet up with.”348 Those two details would be the full extent of the “con-op” allegedly communicated to Major General Walker.349 He even recalled Major General Walker saying, “Roger,” to acknowledge the plan.350 But, Brigadier General LaNeve said, there was “mass confusion in that room,” and he agreed that “[t]here were huge communications problems.”351

Major General Walker said there was no such call, nor any like it.352 He said he remained on the video conference line the whole time “with everybody else,” he said.353 He said he would not have taken an order from Brigadier General LaNeve anyhow. “[W]hy would I ever take directions from General LaNeve? Anybody? Brigadier General LaNeve, one-star,” Major General Walker said.354 “I mean, he’s not a peer, it wouldn’t be somebody that would convey that type of message to me. . . So my thinking wouldn’t have been that he would have been speaking on behalf of the Secretary.”355

Although his staff confirms they didn’t see him field a call from Secretary McCarthy or Brigadier General LaNeve,356 including never seeing him leave their conference room,357 Major General Walker’s own note taker appears to have jotted down at 4:37 p.m. the following: “advised to sent [sic] 150 to establish D st / 1st outer perimeter, General LaNeve,” beside what appears to be his phone number.358 That address is the rally point Secretary McCarthy had asked General LaNeve to convey, the same one Colonel Hunter and law enforcement had already chosen earlier. Major General Walker said, “the only way [Lt. Nick] could have got it was listening to the VTC, which I was on.”359 He further said, “I never saw General LaNeve on the [video teleconference] . . . I didn’t hear General LaNeve’s voice.”360 Lt. Nick said he had it penned at much later – at 5:09 p.m. – “as the time they received the orders” to deploy.361

Major General Walker certainly did not act as if he had been given authority until, fortuitously, General McConville – who had heard about the 4:35 p.m. call – walked by the teleconference screen and was “surprised” to see the commanding general sitting idly at 5:09 p.m.362

Major General Walker agreed the first time he heard he had the authority was from the lips of the general: “General McConville came back into the call and said, Hey, you’re a go.”363

Lt. Col. Reinke’s QRF and Captain Tarp’s second shift got on the bus at 5:10 p.m.364 They left at 5:15 p.m.365 Lt. Col. Reinke said they didn’t arrive at the Capitol Police parking lot until 5:55 p.m.,366 although official timing from the Army and Department of Defense put their arrival time at 5:40 p.m. and from the DC Guard at 5:20 p.m.367 At the earliest, the troops arrived in the vicinity of the Capitol grounds at 5:29 p.m., when Lt. Col. Reinke texted Colonel Hunter: “Apparently we pulled into the wrong lot, trying to reroute to LOT 16 now.”368 He said they sat around for 20 minutes once they arrived, and then were sworn in, before relieving an entire line of officers.369 Captain Tarp said they remained idle for 45 minutes waiting for Capitol Police to come “bus by bus to swear-in the officers. It was a long wait. Frustrating – we’re sitting a mile from where we[’re] going.”370

Captain Tarp said, “By the time we got there, we were just holding back the people who remained past the curfew.”371 The height of the riot had passed.

Colonel Hunter estimated that – had his preparations been approved – the DC Guard could have arrived as early as an hour and a half earlier than they did.

“Within one hour, I'd say I could’ve had 135. So the [about 40] coming from Joint Base Andrews, if they would’ve headed directly to me at the Capitol, and then the 90 I had on the street and the 4 that were -- including myself,” he said.372 “[S]o I arrived at the Capitol at 3:10. So, if I would’ve recalled everyone by 3:30, 3:40, we could've been -- had gear on and walking towards the Capitol.”373

He further stated: “I would give them another hour. So by 4:40 I should've had at least 250 coming from the Armory . . . That includes the second shift as well as full-timers.”374

Presented with the plans Colonel Hunter had set in motion and the easy accessibility of their equipment, neither of which he had known about at the time, Secretary McCarthy conceded “you could have shaved minutes,”375 and the speed of deployment “could have” been pushed up, but “[i]t depends.”376

When the Guard finally arrived at the Capitol, “pretty much all the other fighting, per se, had stopped on the Capitol complex,” according to Robert Glover, head of the MPD Special Operations Division.377 Then-Inspector Glover received the Guard troops when they arrived.378 “[T]he bus just kind of showed up. It was my decision at that point, looking at their numbers and their capabilities at that moment in time and what was the most pressing activity – and that was to make the arrests,” he said.379 He had them create a secure “prisoner cordon” where they could stand guard as arrested individuals waited transport to jail.380 “They were the freshest personnel that we had at that moment in time. And, again, they didn't have any significant numbers to really do much else at that moment in time either,” he said.381 “[T]heir orders were basically, support us in whatever we told them to do . . . ”382

Secretary McCarthy said that it was possible that DOD and DC National Guard leaders had simply not been coordinating their planning.383 He acknowledged that “a lot of things were probably missed. It was tremendously confusing,”384 and “that makes for a messy response.”385

No one within the Department of Defense, Army, or Guard leveled accusations of an intentional delay. “I didn't see anybody trying to throw sand in the gearbox and slow things down,” General Milley said.386

Major General Walker said the Army’s reluctance to approve National Guard assistance to the Mayor during the planning for the anticipated January 6th events continued through January 6th itself.387 “I don’t know where the decision paralysis came from, but it was clearly there. The decision paralysis, decision avoidance,” he said.388

Former President Trump’s eagerness to engage the U.S. military to play a visible role in addressing domestic unrest during the late spring and summer of 2020 does appear to have prompted senior military leadership to take precautions, in preparing for the joint session, against the possibility that the DC Guard might be ordered to deploy for an improper purpose. Those precautions seem to have been prudential as much as legal in nature.

What that entailed in the unprecedented circumstances of the January 6th attack on the Capitol is, however, harder to accept: a 3 hour and 19 minute lag-time in making a relatively small, but riot-trained and highly capable military unit available to conduct one of its statutory support missions.

While the delay seems unnecessary and unacceptable, it was the byproduct of military processes, institutional caution, and a revised deployment approval process. We have no evidence that the delay was intentional. Likewise, it appears that none of the individuals involved understood what President Trump planned for January 6th, and how he would behave during the violence. Imperfect inter-government and intra-military communications as the January 6th rally morphed, with President Trump’s active encouragement, into a full-blown riot at the Capitol also help explain the time it took to deploy Guard troops to the Capitol after their assistance there was requested and approved. Post-hoc evaluation of real-time communications during an unprecedented and evolving crisis and limited tactical intelligence, nevertheless, carries the risk of a precision that was unrealistic at the time. It is also clear from testimony provided to the Select Committee that DoD and DC National Guard leaders have differing perspectives that are not reconcilable regarding the timing of deployment authorization.

Where the DC Guard’s deployment on January 6th is concerned, then, the “lessons learned” at this juncture include: careful evaluation on the basis of limited information may take time; statutorily constrained intergovernmental requests for assistance and multi-level approval processes are complex and may be time-consuming; any visible military presence in the domestic setting is circumscribed by law and triggers considerable, constitutionally-driven sensitivities; and crisis communications are often imperfect, especially in unforeseen and rapidly evolving situations.

This appendix will consider the extent to which President Trump’s Campaign and related entities raised an unprecedented amount of political donations using inflammatory messaging alleging that the 2020 U.S. Presidential election was fraudulent or stolen. It will review what tools and methods were used to produce, transmit and optimize these fundraising solicitations; who drafted and approved the messaging and what they knew about the accuracy of the messaging; who ultimately benefitted from these donations; and the impact of these messages on their recipients.

The Select Committee’s investigation demonstrates that President Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud—the Big Lie—served a dual purpose, forming the foundation of his attempts to overturn the 2020 Presidential election and launching a fundraising effort to fund the former President’s other endeavors and to enrich his associates—the Big Rip-off.

The false election fraud narrative embedded in fundraising emails and text messages amplified the Big Lie by perpetuating a belief that the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump and effectuated the Big Rip-off by misleading donors into thinking their donations could alter the election results.

At the same time, the Big Lie helped President Trump and the Republican National Committee (RNC) raise more than $250 million after the election, much of it from small-dollar donors who were promised their money would “Stop the Steal.”

Despite what they told their supporters, however, most of their money was not used to stop any purported steal—it was diverted to accomplish the Big Rip-off. Millions of dollars that were raised ostensibly for “election defense” and “fighting voter fraud” were not spent that way at all.

Moreover, the Select Committee’s investigation shows that the RNC knew that President Trump’s claims about winning the election were baseless and that post-election donations would not help him secure an additional term in office. Yet, both the Trump Campaign and the RNC decided to continue fundraising after the election, a decision that would have come from President Trump himself.

In short, President Trump and his Campaign ripped off supporters by raising more than $250 million by claiming they wanted to fight fraud they knew did not exist and to challenge an election they knew he lost.

As detailed below, the Trump Campaign misled the American public and President Trump’s donors on how they planned to use, and did use, the donated funds while bombarding supporters with hundreds of emails, as many as twenty-five emails per day, stating the election had been stolen. In those emails, they used inflammatory language accusing Democrats of trying to “steal the election,” encouraged supporters to join the “Trump army”; “Defend” the election: and to “fight back” over, and over, and over again.1 They sent these emails out because they knew they were effective at raising money.2 This was made possible by the creation of a fundraising machine powered jointly by the Trump Campaign and the RNC.

During the 2020 election cycle, President Trump operated a structure under which the Trump reelection campaign and the RNC merged programs and raised money jointly through the Trump Make America Great Again Committee (internally referred to by its acronym TMAGAC, which RNC officials pronounced “T-Magic”).3 TMAGAC was focused on raising money online through small-dollar donations.4 Tim Murtaugh, the Trump Campaign’s communications director, described the TMAGAC fundraising operation as “an entity unto itself within the campaign.”5

The individual charged with leading the digital operation in 2020 was Gary Coby.6 Coby first started working with the RNC in 2016 even before President Trump became the nominee.7 Coby explained that, as digital director, his role during the 2020 Presidential election cycle was to “oversee the digital operation.”8 Similarly, senior staffers at the Trump Campaign and the RNC all made clear that Coby was the individual in charge of the TMAGAC digital team.9 Both high-level staffers at the Trump Campaign and at the RNC confirmed that Coby had the trust of Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law.10

Coby explained that during the 2020 Presidential election cycle, the TMAGAC digital team was a “big team with multiple organizations and vendor teams all working together as one, that include[d] RNC staff, [Donald J. Trump for President] staff, [and] maybe a half dozen vendor teams.”11 The RNC digital team, a subset of the TMAGAC digital team, was led operationally by Kevin Zambrano, Chief Digital Officer at the RNC. In 2020, members of the digital staff of both the RNC and Trump Campaign merged in an office building in Arlington, Virginia, with some suites jointly hosting RNC and Trump Campaign staff on the digital team, and other suites hosting third-party companies, such as Opn Sesame and Direct Persuasion.12 Thereafter, Zambrano assisted Coby in managing the TMAGAC digital team.13 Zambrano explained, “The majority of the staff was at the RNC doing both RNC and TMAGAC work.”14 This work was focused squarely on fundraising.15

The RNC digital team included Austin Boedigheimer, who, starting in January 2019, was the RNC’s digital deputy director16 and technically served as Zambrano’s deputy.17 In reality, Boedigheimer reported to both Zambrano and Coby.18 Boedigheimer also led the TMAGAC digital fundraising team, which was comprised of all online fundraising efforts, including fundraising emails and text messages.19 At the end of the 2020 cycle, that team had 20 or 30 people within smaller teams, such as the copy team, the text message team, the data team, the advertising team, and the graphics team.20

The RNC digital team also included a team of copywriters, who were responsible for writing the fundraising emails and text messages to solicit small-dollar donations through TMAGAC.21 These copywriters reported to Hanna Allred, the RNC’s Chief Copywriter.22 By mid-2020, there were three copywriters who reported to Allred: Alex Murglin,23 Ethan Katz,24 and Alex Blinkoff.25 Blinkoff and Katz worked in that role from June 2020 until they were fired approximately three weeks after the 2020 election, while Murglin remains a copywriter at the RNC.

Although the TMAGAC team consisted of both Trump Campaign and RNC staffers, TMAGAC operated as one entity working towards one goal – raising as much money as possible.26

The copywriting process worked like an assembly line, where different individuals performed a task and passed on the work product to someone else, including for internal approval.27 To generate content for fundraising communications, Allred explained, the copywriting fundraising team was “watching the messaging coming out of the committee [RNC] and the campaign and from the President himself and what his family was talking about.”28 For example, in a November 2020 email, Boedigheimer stated to Allred, “Good to include lines like [‘]we need the resources to make sure they don’t try to steal this election. We saw what happened on election night, we can’t let them take the senate too.[’]”29

It was evident that the copywriters “would draft a lot of the content based on... what the President was saying.”30 And there was no mistaking it, President Trump “was providing us [the copywriters] with a lot of content online.”31 Allred said Boedigheimer was encouraging her to use this language because it would cause President Trump’s supporters to donate by “giving a purpose to their donation”32 and that they used this repeatedly because it worked.33 Boedigheimer did not dispute this, and reaffirmed that such language had been successful at fundraising.34

Further, the emails that were signed by President Trump or “Team Trump” were intentionally drafted to capture President Trump’s voice, tone and messaging.35 Boedigheimer explained, “[President Trump] obviously has a very aggressive[,] excitable tone, and we would try to incorporate that in our messaging as well.”36 The goal was to make the millions of recipients of aggressive, hyperbolic fundraising emails believe that the emails were coming from President Trump himself. In Zambrano’s words, the purpose was to give recipients “red meat.”37

Draft emails were submitted for approval to a designated group that handled approvals of all TMAGAC fundraising copy (the “Approvals Group”).38 Boedigheimer retained responsibility for ensuring that TMAGAC’s fundraising copy was approved before being sent to the public.39

The Approvals Group consisted of three sets of stakeholders from the RNC and the Trump Campaign,40 and included a variety of other interested staffers, including Zambrano, Boedigheimer, and Allred.41 TMAGAC’s fundraising copy could not be sent without approval from the legal, communications and research departments.42

After election day, a small group of staffers in the Approvals Group actively reviewed and approved the numerous fundraising emails and text messages that spread false election fraud claims. These staffers included:

• RNC Legal: Justin Reimer, RNC Chief Counsel43 and Jenna Kirsch, RNC Associate Counsel44
  Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Cassie Docksey, (Aug. 25, 2022), p. 10; Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Michael Ahrens, (Sep. 1, 2022), pp. 9-10.
  Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Cassie Docksey, (Aug. 25, 2022), p. 10.
• RNC Communications: Cassie Docksey, Deputy Communications Director45
  Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Cassie Docksey, (Aug. 25, 2022), p. 6 (“And then that’s also where I started doing some of the approval for the fundraising emails, the small-dollar fundraising emails.”); Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Michael Ahrens, (Sep. 1, 2022), p. 8 (“To the best of my recollection, that was primarily Cassie Docksey, Mike Reed, who handled approvals on that content.”).
• RNC Research: Michael Reed, Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications46
  Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Michael Reed, (July 20, 2022), p. 7 (“I had a role in approv[ing] them [the TMAGAC fundraising emails], yes.”).
• Trump Campaign Legal: Alex Cannon, Deputy General Counsel47
  Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Alexander Cannon, (Apr. 13, 2022), p. 138.
• Trump Campaign Communications and Research: Zach Parkinson, Deputy Director of Communications and Director of Research48
  '

  Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of A. Zachary Parkinson, (May 18, 2022), p. 80 (“There would be -I don't know if my team members were routinely getting those emails as well or if they were just being directed to me, but we were participants in them.”); Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Hanna Allred, (Mar. 30, 2022), pp. 45-46 (“I know from the Trump Campaign, I remember Zach Parkinson was someone who responded. I was never sure if he was from research or comms, or maybe he did both, I'm not entirely sure, but he would typically, if something was wrong, like, inaccurate, he would flag it.”).

Boedigheimer, as head of the fundraising team handling the drafting and propagation of fundraising messaging, told the Select Committee his understanding of the role the three components of the Approvals Group (legal, communications, and research) performed when reviewing emails and text messages.

Regarding legal, Boedigheimer explained that he understood Alex Cannon’s role, as the Trump Campaign’s Deputy General Counsel, was to review the emails from a “legal perspective” by “essentially making sure that there’s no legal issues with the content.”49

Regarding communications, Boedigheimer stated that the communications staffers in the Approvals Group were reviewing the content and “[m]aking sure that it’s on message and good from a comms perspective.”50

Lastly, Boedigheimer explained that the research team was “looking for . . . things that are inaccurate.”51

Although Boedigheimer provided only a vague explanation of the role of the Approvals Group, he emphasized that he had to “trust that the research, the comms, and the legal team are going to do their processes to make sure it’s [the TMAGAC fundraising copy was] accurate.”52 He further noted, “[I]t was the approval chain[’]s job to see what the accuracy of the email is and whether it’s true or not. . . . We were sending information and then leaning on our approval chain to make sure that it’s accurate.”53

The Select Committee’s investigation revealed that the Approvals Group did not operate that way, however. The Select Committee interviewed members of the Approvals Group handling the communications, research, and legal functions and confirmed that members of the Approvals Group typically engaged only in cursory reviews of the fundraising messages and did not review substantive claims of election fraud for accuracy.

Zach Parkinson, the Trump Campaign’s Deputy Director of Communications and Research Director, represented the Trump Campaign’s communications and research functions in the Approvals Group. Parkinson made clear, “Generally, our role when it came to fundraising emails and texts was to approve them for the communications team.”54 Parkinson noted that that he was typically the person who weighed in on behalf of the Trump Campaign’s communications and research team.55 He added, “we would review them for messaging consistency, sometimes we would review them for factual accuracy, and then we would provide the communications approval for those.”56

Parkinson clarified that the scope of review for “factual accuracy” was limited. Specifically, his review of fundraising emails and text messages for accuracy was limited to questions concerning items such as time and location.57

Critically, Parkinson did not review statements regarding election fraud in the fundraising copy for accuracy because “most political text messages and fundraising emails are political rhetoric, and so a lot of them don’t necessarily require fact checking.”58 He added that “political rhetoric,” such as “Democrats are trying to steal the election,” was not something he and his team were “necessarily tasked to say no to.”59 Parkinson made clear that he thought the legal department, namely Alex Cannon, would handle reviewing for accuracy, noting “I deferred to the legal team on the legitimacy and the ability to substantiate claims that were made that were put through these approvals and whether or not we could, again, substantiate them or they were in line with our legal efforts.”60 Parkinson, as the head of the research team, the very campaign team meant to fact-check and ensure accuracy in the Trump Campaign’s statements, said he was “simply looking for messaging consistency.”61 Whether Democrats were engaged in fraud to steal the election was a “political argument” to Parkinson, which he did not review for accuracy.62

Like Parkinson, Michael Reed, then the RNC’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications, was not reviewing the TMAGAC emails about election fraud for broader accuracy. Notably, Reed could not recall a single email that he researched to do a fact-check or follow up on to see if claims contained in the email were, in fact, true.63

Boedigheimer and the copywriters believed the research staffers were looking for messages that they believed were inaccurate, but they were doing no such thing.

Alex Cannon, the Trump Campaign’s legal representative in the Approvals Group, was no different – the TMAGAC fundraisers thought he was doing far more than he was in fact doing. The Select Committee received a November 4, 2020, email from Nathan Groth, counsel for the Trump Campaign, to Alex Cannon. This email reflected that Cannon was not tasked with substantively reviewing fundraising emails like Boedigheimer thought. Groth wrote to Cannon, “Matt [Morgan, Trump Campaign’s General Counsel] has instructed me to hand off all compliance matters, including approvals, to you.”64 Cannon confirmed, “I saw myself as doing exactly what I was instructed to do here, which is do what Nathan had previously been doing. So it’s this. It’s compliance issues like disclaimers and typos.”65 Therefore, when Cannon received emails that included claims such as “the Democrats are trying to steal the election,” he viewed reviewing the veracity of this statement as “outside the purview of what [he] was tasked.”66 When asked, Cannon stated that he did not know who was tasked with ensuring that fundraising emails were true and accurate.67

Boedigheimer, and other members of the digital fundraising team he led, claimed to see the Approvals Group as a guardrail of sorts in the fundraising effort to protect from the dissemination of false messaging about the election, but the Approvals Group served no such role. The very staffers in the Approvals Group repeatedly told the Select Committee that they did not review the claims about election fraud to confirm whether they were even true.

When all was said and done, no one in the Trump Campaign claimed to be responsible for confirming the accuracy of President Trump’s words, or other allegations of election fraud, before they were blasted to millions of Americans.68

Thus, after the election, the TMAGAC team drafted emails filled with inflammatory and unfounded claims, and the members of the Approvals Group tasked with fact checking these claims did no such thing – effectively, President Trump’s claims were treated as true and blasted to millions of people with little to no scrutiny by those tasked with ensuring accuracy. This process was a fertile ground for the Big Lie to spread through hundreds of emails and text messages.

Boedigheimer spoke with Coby and Zambrano often about how much money TMAGAC was raising, and they provided feedback regarding fundraising goals.69 Trump Campaign leadership was fully aware of post-election fundraising totals. According to Coby, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner “had the most interest in the digital program” and “would just check in on [fundraising] results,” and routinely received updates regarding fundraising from Coby.70 Coby also made clear that Kushner was heavily involved in the Campaign’s budget process71 and that he updated Kushner on TMAGAC’s post-election fundraising totals.72

The Select Committee received documents confirming Kushner’s involvement. For example, on November 8, 2020, Kushner requested that a daily tracker be created showing the Trump Campaign’s financial position from election day forward.73 In an email, Kushner noted that the tracker would allow the Campaign to consider its cash flow ahead of the creation of “a new entity for POTUS[’s] other political activities.”74 Just days after the election, and after the Campaign had three of its four best fundraising days ever on November 4th, 5th, and 6th,75 Kushner was preparing for the launch of President Trump’s new leadership PAC, Save America. Kushner stated that he needed this new daily tracker because the Trump Campaign was going to continue fundraising post-election.76 Kushner continued to receive these detailed daily trackers, which included Save America’s fundraising hauls, through at least December 2020.77

Heading into election night of the 2020 Presidential race, as Americans across the country waited in line to vote on election day, the Trump Campaign and the RNC were planning what they would tell the American public about the results in the upcoming days. On election day, Boedigheimer and Darren Centinello, a Trump Campaign staffer, discussed the three message options that the Trump Campaign had on the table.78

The first option was to send out copy claiming President Trump had won the 2020 election. But the Campaign knew this message was false, and Boedigheimer told Centinello that he could not get this messaging approved yet.79 The Trump Campaign’s second option was an email stating they were still waiting on the election results. This message would have been the truth. The Campaign rejected this option.

Instead, the Trump Campaign chose a third option. Boedigheimer confirmed that TMAGAC fundraisers had received approval for copy claiming that the Democrats are going to “try to steal the election” before election night.80

Zambrano confirmed that it would not surprise him that TMAGAC was immediately claiming that Democrats were trying to steal the election, because President Trump has been pushing that message.81 Zambrano added, “That was the President’s phrasing in the messaging that the team was sourcing from.”82 Importantly, Boedigheimer confirmed that the TMAGAC copywriting team did not base its use of the “trying to steal” language on any awareness of actual fraud.83

Both the Trump Campaign and the RNC directed TMAGAC to continue fundraising after the election.84 Justin Clark, the deputy campaign manager, explained that the decision to continue fundraising after the election would have come from President Trump himself.85

Starting after the election and until January 6th, the Trump Campaign, along with the RNC, sent millions of emails to their supporters, with messaging such as claiming that the election was “RIGGED.”86 The Trump Campaign viewed the TMAGAC emails as another avenue to get out President Trump’s post-election messaging about the alleged fraud.87 These emails used false claims of voter fraud to create a sense of urgency that the election was being stolen. The Trump Campaign and the RNC told their supporters that their donations could stop Democrats from “trying to steal the election.” They consistently encouraged donors to give money to continue “uncovering” fraud that had not occurred. These emails were sent out after being reviewed and approved by the Approvals Group.88

The TMAGAC fundraisers used inflammatory language and false election fraud claims after the election because it was both effective at fundraising and accurately captured President Trump’s ongoing tone and messaging.89 When the digital fundraising team drafted emails claiming, for example, that “Democrats are trying to steal the election,” they did not bother to confirm whether or not those inflammatory statements were true, and instead they merely took President Trump’s words and made an effective fundraising email.90 As Zambrano stated, “the President issuing statements or tweets would be the genesis of the copy that would then go into the approval process for edits, for checks. That is why the approval process worked.”91 President Trump was the source of the lies. Not only was President Trump’s fundraising driven by his daily deluge of lies about the election, but these lies were also able to go unchallenged before being spread because TMAGAC had an ineffective process when it came to scrutinizing and correcting those lies.

The TMAGAC fundraising machine continued to churn out hundreds of fundraising emails and text messages regardless of external developments. For example, Zambrano said that, after former Vice President Biden was widely declared the winner of the election, TMAGAC’s fundraising efforts moved ahead the same way they had previously,92 even though he “would say it wasn’t looking good” as soon as one week after the election.93

A number of individuals and entities associated with the TMAGAC fundraising campaign raised concerns about the dangerous and inflammatory language used in the emails issued for this campaign.

Evidence obtained by the Select Committee shows that the RNC knew that President Trump’s claims about winning the election were baseless and that additional donations would not help him secure an additional term in office. They walked as close to the line as they dared—making several changes to fundraising copy that seemingly protected the RNC from legal exposure while still spreading and relying on President Trump’s known lies and misrepresentations.

The Select Committee did not interview a member of the RNC legal team due to concerns surrounding attorney-client privilege, but the Select Committee nonetheless got insight into their role from documents produced by Campaign and RNC staff, as well as interviews with staffers. As detailed below, the RNC lawyers were the only individuals who even attempted to walk back the fundraising emails.

Allred and Katz both received direction from the RNC’s lawyers shortly after the election to not say “steal the election” and instead were told to use “try to steal the election.”94 Allred also recalled that, at some point, the RNC legal team directed the copywriters not to use the term “rigged.”95

After the media called the election for former Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday, November 7, 2020, the RNC began to quietly pull back from definitive language about President Trump having won the election and instead used language of insinuation. For example, on November 10, 2020, Justin Reimer, RNC’s then-chief counsel, revised a fundraising email sent to the Approvals Group to remove the sentence that “Joe Biden should not wrongfully claim the office of the President.”96 Instead, Reimer indicated the email should read, “Joe Biden does not get to decide when this election ends. Only LEGAL ballots must be counted and verified.”97 Both Alex Cannon and Zach Parkinson signed off on Reimer’s edits.98

On November 11, 2020, Reimer again revised a fundraising email sent to the Approvals Group. This time, he revised a claim that, “President Trump won this election by a lot” to instead state that “President Trump got 71 MILLION LEGAL votes.”99 Once again Cannon and Parkinson signed off on Reimer’s edits.100

Also on November 11, 2020, Jenna Kirsch, associate counsel at the RNC, revised a fundraising email sent to the Approvals Group to, among other things, remove the request “to step up and contribute to our critical Election Defense Fund so that we can DEFEND the Election and secure FOUR MORE YEARS.”101 Instead of “secure FOUR MORE YEARS,” Kirsch’s revised version stated a contribution would “finish the fight.”102 Once again Cannon and Parkinson signed off on these edits for the Trump Campaign. 103 Regarding the change to finish the fight, Zambrano conceded, “I would say this a substantive change from the legal department.”104 Kirsch made numerous edits like this, in which she removed assertions about “four more years.”105 Such edits continued into late November 2020.

Further, Boedigheimer stated that he took questions to RNC legal in the post-election period about TMAGAC fundraisers using the “steal the election” language.106 The RNC was clearly aware that President Trump’s claims regarding the election were not true and tried to have it both ways.

The private split between the RNC and the Trump Campaign became even more pronounced when President Trump decided to double down on his false election fraud claims and chose Rudolph Giuliani to lead his legal efforts to overturn the election.107 On November 19, 2020, Giuliani held a press conference at the RNC’s headquarters in which he falsely suggested that the Biden Campaign orchestrated an elaborate nationwide voter-fraud scheme.108 Cassie Docksey, a senior RNC staffer at the time, recalled that she spoke that day with Michael Ahrens, then the RNC’s communications director, about the diverging from the Trump Campaign.109 Ahrens told her that the RNC would no longer automatically amplify or replicate statements from the Trump Campaign or President Trump’s legal team.110 Docksey understood Ahrens to be relaying a decision made at the most senior levels of the RNC.111

Ahrens asserted that the RNC was unwilling to adopt the wide-ranging, baseless assertions President Trump’s legal team was making and quietly decided to focus its communication strategy elsewhere.112 Distancing the RNC from President Trump’s false statements was a “regular course of the job before the election,” and it “carried through after the election,” in relation to President Trump’s false claims about the election.113 Starting at or before the November 19, 2020, press conference, the RNC senior leadership was in agreement that they would not claim that President Trump had won the election,114 although the RNC “frequently” had to have internal discussions about President Trump’s false statements about the election.115

According to Michael Reed, then the RNC's deputy chief of staff for communications, “there were conversations amongst [RNC] legal and comms and digital to ensure that anything that was being written by the digital team based off of something President Trump or the Campaign said was something we all were more comfortable with.”116 RNC Chairwoman McDaniel was a part of these conversations.117

RNC leadership knew that President Trump was lying to the American people. Yet, they did nothing to publicly distance themselves from his efforts to overturn the election. The RNC’s response was merely to tinker around the edges of the fundraising copy but never to fundamentally challenge the one message that remained present in TMAGAC’s post-election fundraising copy – President Trump’s Big Lie.

In the end, multiple senior RNC staffers approved fundraising emails raising questions about the election results even though they did not know of any evidence about fraud impacting the winner of the 2020 Presidential election. For example, Cassie Docksey stated that she was not aware of any fraud that impacted the results of the Presidential election.118 Ahrens conceded that “there was not evidence that we [the RNC] had seen that he [President Trump] won the election, that Biden had not won the election.”119

Similarly, Justin Clark was “not aware of [fraudulent activity . . . to like defraud voters] by an individual or an entity that would have [changed the outcome of an election].”120 Alex Cannon “did not find or see, in [his] limited ability as one individual. . . evidence that would be sufficient within the time period to change any sort of election results in any of the States.”121

Nonetheless, the RNC and the Trump Campaign continued to send out hundreds of emails, spreading the Big Lie to and fundraising off of millions of supporters. Even though the RNC had closely held reservations about repeating the most extreme and unsupportable claims of fraud, the RNC stayed the course with a coordinated, single fundraising plan with the Trump Campaign. The RNC privately and quietly softened the most blatantly egregious claims written by its own copywriters but publicly stood shoulder to shoulder with President Trump and his Big Lie.

This is clearly evidenced by multiple TMAGAC emails in late December 2020 that asserted that former Vice President Joe Biden would be an “illegitimate President” when he took office. 122 These emails came after December 14, 2020, the day electors from each State met to cast their votes for President and Vice President. These emails came after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made it clear that he accepted the electoral college’s certification of Biden’s victory. These emails came after President Trump and his allies had lost all but one lawsuit challenging the election.123 None of this made a difference to TMAGAC. When asked why TMAGAC would repeatedly send these emails stating that former Vice President Biden would be an illegitimate President, Hanna Allred, the chief copywriter, stated that it would be because the emails were “effective” for fundraising.124

Alex Cannon was so bothered by the emails he was reviewing as a member of the Approvals Group that he took his concerns to Justin Clark, the campaign’s deputy campaign manager. Cannon explained that he had discussions with Clark about the problematic tone of the post-election TMAGAC emails and noted to Clark that the emails “seemed a little over the top to [him].”125 Cannon raised those concerns because, after spending weeks researching which fraud claims were verifiable and which were not, Cannon saw that the TMAGAC emails were inconsistent with the fact that systemic fraud did not exist.126 Cannon also recalled that he may have expressed concern to Matt Morgan, the campaign’s general counsel, regarding the difference between claims of election fraud made in the TMAGAC fundraising emails and his conclusion that there was not fraud that impacted the election results.127 Cannon was not aware of any actions taken to address the concerns he had with this inconsistency.128

Justin Clark could not recall whether he looked at any fundraising emails after Cannon raised these concerns or whether Cannon spoke to Gary Coby about the substance of the fundraising emails. 129

In the days after the election, one junior copywriter presented senior Campaign staffers with a template for a more honest approach. Shortly after election night, Coby led a meeting of the entire Trump digital team, which included individuals from the Campaign, the RNC, Opn Sesame, Direct Persuasion, and others. In that meeting, as Coby addressed the staff and expressed that the digital team would continue to work, Ethan Katz, an RNC staffer in his early twenties, rose to ask a question:130 How were staffers supposed to tell voters that the Trump Campaign wanted to keep counting votes in Arizona but stop counting votes in other States (like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Michigan)?131

Katz said that Coby provided an answer without substance, which caused Katz to reiterate his question. His question made clear that the Campaign’s position was wildly inconsistent.132 Allred and Boedigheimer corroborated that Katz confronted leadership.133

Katz also recalled that, shortly after the election, Allred directed him to write an email declaring that President Trump had won the State of Pennsylvania before anyone had called Pennsylvania for either party.134 Katz believed the Trump Campaign wanted to send this email out to preempt a potential call that was likely to be in former Vice President Biden’s favor.135 He refused to write the email. Allred was stunned, and instead assigned it to another copywriter.136 Allred confirmed that Katz expressed discomfort at writing such an email and that she relied on another copywriter.137 On November 4, 2020, the Trump Campaign sent out an email preemptively and falsely declaring that President Trump won Pennsylvania.138

Katz was fired approximately three weeks after the election.139 In an interview with the Select Committee, when Allred was asked why Katz, her direct report, was fired, she explained that she was not sure why because TMAGAC was raising more money than ever after the election, but that the decision was not hers to make.140

The Trump Campaign knew that emails that the Approvals Group had blessed were being rejected by another email service provider. After the election, the Trump Campaign attempted to expand the reach of their false voter fraud emails. The Trump Campaign formed a company named DataPier, owned by Cannon and Sean Dollman.141 DataPier hired an outside company named Iterable to deliver its emails.142 Cannon tried to send “toned-down RNC emails,” through Iterable, but they still had to be “further toned [] down through [an] iterative process[.]”143 For example, on November 7, 2020, Seth Charles, who was then Iterable’s principal email deliverability and industry relations manager, said that there was an issue with the TMAGAC copy and offered line edits.144 Two days later, Charles recommended to the Trump Campaign staffers that they look for “modified copy there [from TMAGAC emails] to be a little less threatening.”145 Charles claimed that some TMAGAC copy “obviously insinuates the so far unsubstantiated theory of voter fraud, as well as contributions and legal actions will result in some sort of different outcome.”146

But Salesforce, TMAGAC’s original email service provider, continued sending millions of Trump Campaign emails up until January 6th.

The Trump Campaign knew that emails that the Approvals Group had blessed were being rejected by Iterable. However, the RNC continued to send millions of Trump Campaign emails through Salesforce, TMAGAC’s original email service provider, up until January 6th. Evidence uncovered by the Select Committee shows that there were internal concerns at Salesforce regarding the content of the TMAGAC emails.

The Select Committee interviewed an individual (“J. Doe”) who worked at Salesforce during the post-election period during which TMAGAC was sending out the fundraising emails concerning false election fraud claims.147 Doe worked for Salesforce’s privacy and abuse management team, colloquially known as the abuse desk.148 An abuse desk is responsible for preventing fraud and abuse emanating from the provider’s user or subscriber network.

Doe indicated to the Select Committee that, as soon as early 2020, they recalled issues arising with the RNC’s use of Salesforce’s services and that a “deluge of abuse would’ve started in June-ish.”149 Doe noted that Salesforce received a high number of complaints regarding the RNC’s actions, which would have been primarily the fundraising efforts of TMAGAC.150 In the latter half of 2020, Doe noticed that the emails coming from the RNC’s account included more and more violent and inflammatory rhetoric in violation of Salesforce’s Master Service Agreement (“MSA”) with the RNC, which prohibited the use of violent content.151 Doe stated that, near the time of the election, they contacted senior individuals at Salesforce to highlight the “increasingly concerning” emails coming from the RNC’s account.152 Doe explained that senior individuals at Salesforce effectively ignored their emails about TMAGAC’s inflammatory emails153 and Salesforce ignored the terms of the MSA and permitted the RNC to continue to use its account in this problematic manner.154 Doe said, “Salesforce very obviously didn’t care about anti-abuse.”155

Ultimately, the Trump Campaign and the RNC let the Big Lie spread because they were making hundreds of millions of dollars from President Trump’s supporters who believed that lie. The Big Rip-off needed the Big Lie to motivate unsuspecting individuals to donate their money to a lost cause, and it worked.

The Trump Campaign and the RNC had three of their largest fundraising days of the 2020 election cycle immediately after the election.156 Together, the Trump Campaign and the RNC raised more than one hundred million dollars in three days, telling people they were raising the money for the “Official Election Defense Fund.” According to the TMAGAC fundraising pitches, the Trump Campaign and RNC team had created a so-called “Official Election Defense Fund” to help pay for legal challenges to the election results.157 But there was no “Official Election Defense Fund” – it was simply “a marketing tactic.”158 The TMAGAC fundraisers did not know where the donated money was actually going.159 The TMAGAC copywriting team simply took the lies that President Trump told them about the need to raise money to overturn the election results and put them into emails to his supporters.

The false claims of election fraud and the “Official Election Defense Fund” were so successful President Trump and his allies raised more than $250 million after the election.160 However, the Trump Campaign was raising too much money to spend solely on their legal efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The Trump Campaign continued to publicly state the election had been stolen by “the Left,” while behind closed doors they prepared a new plan to spend their supporters’ money.

On November 9, 2020, President Trump created a separate leadership PAC called Save America that allowed him to keep millions of dollars raised after the election and spend it with very few restrictions in the future. Jared Kushner worked with Alex Cannon, Deputy General Counsel for the Trump Campaign, in creating the entity.161 Prior to the formation of Save America, any money raised by the Trump Campaign could effectively only be spent on recount and election-contest related expenses, and to pay off campaign debt.162 But now the money raised into Save America could allow President Trump to pay for his personal expenses, such as travel or hotel stays. After Save America was formed, it was added to the TMAGAC joint fundraising agreement with the RNC, and the percentage of the proceeds allocated to the Trump Campaign began to flow to Save America.163

Importantly, Save America, as a leadership PAC, was not even legally permitted to pay for recount and election-contest related expenses in excess of the Federal Election Campaign Act (“FECA”) limit of $5,000.164 Save America never hit that limit in 2020, as it spent no money on recount and election-contest related expenses.165

Several reporters noticed the switch and contacted the Campaign asking about the “bait and switch” and the “misleading” nature of the emails. One reporter said directly: “it’s misleading to raise money for a committee marked on the website as an ‘election defense fund’ if it’s going to a leadership PAC.”166 Another reporter asked, “Why is the campaign telling its supporters they are contributing toward an ‘Election Defense Fund’ if only a small percentage of those funds are actually going toward funding legal efforts?” and “How can the campaign justify directing 75% of contributions intended for a 2020 legal fund toward the President’s political action committee?”167

The Trump Campaign came up with a messaging plan about this tactic, which President Trump personally approved.168 Tim Murtaugh, the Trump Campaign’s communications director, repeatedly asked Justin Clark, the deputy campaign manager, whether they should respond to the reporters.169 When Murtaugh flagged that the communications team was not responding to the reporters, Justin Clark said, “Good. Don’t.”170

The Trump Campaign spent the money on President Trump, giving donations to his associates, and keeping it for himself in Save America. Hundreds of millions of dollars that were raised to go towards “election defense” and “fighting voter fraud” were not spent that way at all. To the contrary, most of the funds remain unspent, and millions have been paid to companies that are known affiliates of President Trump, or payments to entities associated with former Trump administration officials. Since the election, former Trump officials who are still working for President Trump’s PACs, and are publicly receiving salaries as FEC-reported “payroll,” are also associated with these companies.

For example, from July 2021 to the present, Save America has been paying approximately $9,700 per month to Dan Scavino,171 a political adviser who served in the Trump administration as White House Deputy Chief of Staff.172 Save America was also paying $20,000 per month to an entity called Hudson Digital LLC. Hudson Digital LLC was registered in Delaware twenty days after the attack on the Capitol, on January 26, 2021,173 and began receiving payments from Save America on the day it was registered.174 Hudson Digital LLC has received payments totaling over $420,000, all described as “Digital consulting.”175 No website or any other information or mention of Hudson Digital LLC could be found online.176 Though Hudson Digital LLC is registered as a Delaware company, the FEC Schedule B listing traces back to an address belonging to Dan and Catherine Scavino. 177

Nick Luna, President Trump’s former personal assistant and “body man,” was being paid from April 2021 to December 2021 approximately $12,000 per month by Save America for “payroll.”178 The Make America Great Again PAC (MAGA PAC) – formerly the authorized committee of President Trump’s reelection campaign, Donald J. Trump for President – paid $20,000 per month to a limited liability corporation called Red State Partners LLC from April 2021 through October 2021, and Save America paid Red State Partners LLC $20,000 in February 2022.179 The company was registered in Delaware on March 11, 2021180 and has received a total of $170,000.181 Though it is registered in Delaware, disclosures filed with the Federal Election Committee (FEC) list Red State Partners at an address in Miami, Florida, that is an address for Nick Luna and his wife, Cassidy Dumbauld.182

Further, Vince Haley, Taylor Swindle, and Ross Worthington are corporate officers of a company known as Pericles LLC.183 Haley is a former policy advisor to President Trump,184 Swindle is the Chief Financial Officer for Gingrich 360185 , and Ross Worthington is the former White House speechwriter186 who wrote the speech President Trump delivered on the Ellipse on January 6th.187 Pericles LLC was registered on January 27, 2021,188 the day after Scavino’s Hudson Digital LLC, and, since then, has received payments from Save America totaling at least $352,700.189

Another former speechwriter for President Trump, Robert Gabriel, Jr., has also been receiving payments from Save America. Gabriel was involved in writing the speech President Trump delivered on the White House Ellipse on January 6th, and specifically told the speechwriters, including Worthington, to reinsert previously removed incendiary lines about Vice President Pence into the speech.190 This direction came after Vice President Pence told President Trump that he would not try to change the outcome of the election.191 In September 2021, Gabriel formed called Gabriel Strategies LLC,192 which began receiving payments from Save America the following month.193 Since October 2021, Save America has paid Gabriel Strategies LLC at least $167,674.00.194 For both Pericles and Gabriel Strategies, the description of the payments is always for “consulting” in political strategy or communications, and some payments are purported to include travel expenses.

Through October 2022, Save America has paid nearly $100,000 in “strategy consulting” payments to Herve Pierre Braillard,195 a fashion designer who has been dressing Melania Trump for years.196

From January 2021 to June 2022, Save America has also reported over $2.1 million in “legal consulting.” Many firms perform different kinds of practice, but more than 67% of those funds went to law firms that are representing witnesses involved in the Select Committee’s investigation who were subpoenaed or invited to testify.

Additionally, Save America has reported other expenditures, like:

• $1,000,000 donation to America First Policy Institute, home to several former Trump officials and witnesses subpoenaed to testify before the Committee.197
  Schedule B (FEC Form 3x) Itemized Disbursements by Save America, (July 31, 2021), available at https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?202107319465699856.
• $1,000,000 donation to Conservative Partnership Institute, a conservative nonprofit organization where Mark Meadows is a senior partner.198
  Schedule B (FEC Form 3x) Itemized Disbursements by Save America, (May 5, 2022), available at https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?202205059502664847.
• More than $10.6 million to Event Strategies, Inc., the preferred staging company for President Trump that staged the January 6th rally.199
  FEC Reported Disbursements to Event Strategies Inc by Save America, (last accessed on Nov. 10, 2022) available at https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?data_type=processed&committee_id=C00762591&recipient_name=event+strategies+inc.
• More than $327,000 in payments to the Trump Hotel Collection and Mar-A-Lago Club since the 2020 election.200
  FEC Reported Disbursements to Trump Hotel and Mar-A-Lago by Save America, (last accessed on Nov. 10, 2022) available at https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?data_type=processed&committee_id=C00762591&recipient_name=mar-a-lago&recipient_name=trump+hotel.
• An “event sponsorship fee” of $165,937.50 to American Conservative Union201, the Chairman of which is Matt Schlapp. Schlapp and his wife have offered to pay the legal fees of witnesses called to testify before the January 6th Committee and have extensive ties with former President Trump.
  Schedule B (FEC Form 3x) Itemized Disbursements by Save America, (June 15, 2022), available at https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?202206159514906341.
• A little over $140,000 to National Public Affairs, LLC202, a consulting company started by former Trump Campaign Manager Bill Stepien and Deputy Campaign Manager Justin Clark.203 Stepien testified that he knew the claims of voter fraud were false, that he didn’t think what was happening was necessarily honest, and that he was “stepping away from the Trump Campaign.”204 However, he continues to work and receive hundreds of thousands of dollars consulting for President Trump and several other congressional candidates who continue to spread false voter fraud claims related to the 2020 election.205
  FEC Reported Disbursements to National Public Affairs by Save America, (last accessed on Nov. 10, 2022) available at https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?data_type=processed&committee_id=C00762591&recipient_name=National+Public+Affairs.
  “Meet Our Team,” National Public Affairs, (last accessed on Nov. 10, 2022), available at https://natpublicaffairs.com/.
  Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of William Stepien, (Feb. 10, 2022), p. 174.
  FEC disclosures show that other than Save America, National Public Affairs LLC received payments from only three other organizations since 2021. All three are campaigns for election deniers, Kelly Tshibaka (AK-Senate), Jason Smith (MO-08), and Harriet Hageman (WY-AL). See FEC Reported Disbursements to National Public Affairs LLC since 2021, (last accessed on Nov. 10, 2022), available at https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?data_type=processed&recipient_name=national+public+affairs+llc&min_date=01%2F01%2F2021.

As described above, the Trump Campaign, after paying off its general election debt, raised millions of dollars that flowed into a segregated recount account (“Recount Account”) by encouraging donors to help pay for legal challenges to the election results. Pursuant to the FECA, the Trump Campaign could only spend these funds on a few limited purposes (e.g., for actual recounts and election-contest expenses or, in the case of surplus funds, donations to charitable organizations or transferring the funds to a national party committee’s separate, segregated account for election recounts).206

Justin Clark told the Select Committee that he understood that, “[a]fter election day, . . . you can raise money for a recount and to pay off debt,”207 and that “[t]he money going into the campaign, principal campaign committee, at that point, [after the election] was dead money. It couldn’t be spent on things.”208 Alex Cannon agreed.209 That’s why, after the election, the Trump Campaign set up the Recount Account—“a segregated restricted account [held] by the campaign”210 —and raised money for the Recount Account through TMAGAC.211

In February 2021, the Trump Campaign was converted into MAGA PAC.212 In March 2021, MAGA PAC began disclosing on required FEC forms that it was paying millions of dollars to an eDiscovery vendor called 2M Document Management & Imaging LLC (“2M Management”) for what MAGA PAC described as “recount” and “Recount: Research Consulting.”213

Although the MAGA PAC reported that 2M Management was being paid for recount-related expenses, 2M Management was primarily processing and reviewing documents slated to be produced by the National Archives and Records Administration in response to subpoenas from (1) the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis (“Covid Subcommittee”) and (2) the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack.214

From just March 2021 to May 2021, MAGA PAC paid 2M Management almost $1 million from the Recount Account to review documents related solely to the Covid Subcommittee215 Alex Cannon confirmed that he understood these payments to 2M Management came from the Recount Account.216 Federal campaign finance law requires committees to accurately report information related to expenditures, including the purpose of payments. FEC regulations provide that the “purpose” be described in relevant reports through a brief statement of why the disbursement was made and must be sufficiently specific to make the purpose of the disbursement clear.217

Between the election and January 6th, the Trump Campaign sent out hundreds of emails urging President Trump’s supporters to “fight the Liberal MOB” and “join the Trump army.” Users on the same extreme social media platforms used to plan the attack on the Capitol repeatedly shared the “Official Election Defense Fund” donation links in the week following election day.218 Links to donate were often accompanied by mentions of voter fraud and calls to save the country, mirroring the language of the fundraising emails and the countless discussions being held by the President’s supporters of coming to Washington, DC, on January 6th to “Stop the steal.”219

On January 6th, while President Trump was speaking at the Ellipse rally and directing his supporters to march to the Capitol, his Campaign was also sending fundraising emails inflaming people to “fight back.” One email stated, “100 Members of Congress…. Join them in the FIGHT to DEFEND the Election…. This is our last line of defense.”220 Another email stated, “TODAY will be a historic day in our Nation’s history. Congress will either certify, or object to, the Election results. Every single Patriot from across the Country must step up RIGHT NOW if we’re going to successfully DEFEND the integrity of this Election.”221 A third email stated, “TODAY. This is our LAST CHANCE… The stakes have NEVER been higher. President Trump needs YOU to make a statement and publicly stand with him and FIGHT BACK.”222

Thirty minutes after the last fundraising email was sent, the Capitol was breached. It was then and only then that TMAGAC fundraisers decided to stop sending emails containing baseless claims of election fraud.223 Boedigheimer explained, “And at some point during that time, I don’t know if it was right then, if it was a little after, maybe a little before, but either Gary or Kevin kind of directed us to stop sending fundraising messages out.”224 Cannon stated, “[O]n January 6th, Gary called me and said, [‘]are you seeing what’s happening? I’m obviously turning everything off.[’]”225

After raising $250 million dollars on false voter fraud claims, mostly from small-dollar donors, President Trump did not spend it on fighting an election he knew he lost. Instead, a significant portion of the money was deposited into the Save America account and not used for the purposes the Campaign claimed it would be. President Trump got a war chest with millions of dollars, and the American people were left with the U.S. Capitol under attack.

There is evidence suggesting that numerous defendants charged with violations related to the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol and others present on the Capitol grounds that day were motivated by false claims about the election.226

Further, J. Doe, the Salesforce employee interviewed by the Select Committee, provided insight into the action that Salesforce took after the attack. Doe explained that after they became aware of the ongoing attack, they (Doe) took unilateral action to block the RNC’s ability to send emails through Salesforce’s platform.227 Doe noted that the shutdown lasted until January 11, 2021, when senior Salesforce leadership directed Doe to remove the block from RNC’s Salesforce account.228 Doe stated that Salesforce leadership told Doe that Salesforce would now begin reviewing RNC’s email campaigns to “make sure this doesn’t happen again.”229

In the weeks after the 2020 election leading up to January 6, 2021, President Trump’s Campaign and his allies sent his supporters a barrage of emails and text messages pushing lies about a stolen election and asking for contributions to challenge the outcome of the election. In reality, the funds raised went primarily towards paying down the Trump Campaign’s outstanding 2020 debt, financing President Trump’s newly created Save America PAC, and raising money for the RNC.

Overall, only a small amount of the contributions ever went to President Trump’s recount account or were otherwise obviously used in connection with post-election recounts or litigation. As President Trump used the Big Lie as a weapon to attack the legitimacy of the 2020 election, his Campaign used that same Big Lie to raise millions of dollars based on false claims and unkept promises.

Not only did President Trump lie to his supporters about the election, but he also ripped them off.

In the wake of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, President Donald J. Trump and his apologists attempted to blame his loss on foreign interference. They falsely claimed that foreign- manufactured voting machines had been manipulated so that votes cast for Trump were instead recorded as votes for Joseph R. Biden, Jr. 1 No one has ever, either at the time or since, offered any evidence to support Trump’s assertion. On the contrary, ample evidence collected by the Intelligence Community (IC) and reviewed by the Select Committee disproves those claims.

That is not to say foreign actors made no attempt to influence the American political climate during and after the 2020 Presidential election. This appendix evaluates the role foreign influence played in the circumstances surrounding the insurrection.2

In its postmortem assessment of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, the Intelligence Community comprehensively examined two types of foreign meddling: interference and influence. The distinction between the two is critical in evaluating President Trump’s repeated public assertions that there had been massive and widespread “fraud” that had the effect of “stealing” the election for then-candidate Biden.

For its analytic purposes, the Intelligence Community defines election interference as “a subset of election influence activities targeted at the technical aspects of the election, including voter registration, casting and counting ballots, or reporting results.”3 That definition notes that election interference is a subset of election influence, which the Intelligence Community defines to include “overt and covert efforts by foreign governments or actors acting as agents of, or on behalf of, foreign governments intended to affect directly or indirectly a US election – including candidates, political parties, voters or their preferences, or political processes.”4

The Intelligence Community’s Assessment (ICA) found no factual basis for any allegation of technical interference with the 2020 U.S. election: “We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to interfere in the 2020 US elections by altering any technical aspect of the voting process, including voter registration, ballot casting, vote tabulation, or reporting results.”5 Put simply, allegations that foreign powers rigged voting machines and swapped ballots were false and unsupported.

Although there is no evidence of foreign technical interference in the 2020 election, there is evidence of foreign influence. Specifically, the Intelligence Community’s Assessment concluded that “Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US.”6 The two Intelligence Community analytic conclusions about the 2020 U.S. Presidential election—that there was evidence of foreign influence, but not foreign interference—are completely consistent.

The 2020 U.S. elections saw an increase in the number of foreign state and non-state entities that attempted to influence the U.S. electorate. The U.S. Intelligence Community suggests, as a possible explanation, that more such foreign entities “may view influence operations as important tools for projecting power abroad.”7 More ascertainably, “[t]he growth of internet and social media use means foreign actors are more able to reach US audiences directly, while the tools for doing so are becoming more accessible.” 8

The United States’ principal foreign adversaries—Russia, China, and Iran—all of them autocracies, engage, to varying degrees, in disguised efforts to influence U.S. public opinion. 9 In the context of these overarching efforts, 10 U.S. elections offer special opportunities.

For Russia, “[e]lections … often serve as an opportune target. But attacks on elections are typically just one part of ongoing, multi-pronged operations.” 11 The U.S. Intelligence Community’s definitive post-election assessment of foreign influence activities during the 2020 Presidential election concluded that Russia was deeply engaged in disinformation activities intended to influence the outcome by supporting President Trump while disparaging then- candidate Biden; Iran also engaged in efforts to influence the election’s outcome, but unlike Russia, did not actively promote any candidate; and that China considered opportunities to influence the election’s outcome, but ultimately decided that potential costs outweighed any foreseeable benefits.12 Both Russia and Iran worked to undermine the American public’s confidence in U.S. democratic processes and to deepen socio-political divisions in the United States.13

Russian malign disinformation efforts are both strategic in scope and opportunistic in nature. They aim to corrode the power and appeal of the U.S. democratic processes, worsen U.S. domestic divisions, and weaken America at home and abroad. The Intelligence Community’s February 2022 unclassified “Annual Threat Assessment” puts this sustained Russian threat in a nutshell:

Russia presents one of the most serious foreign influence threats to the United States, using its intelligence services, proxies, and wide-ranging influence tools to try to divide Western alliances, and increase its sway around the world, while attempting to undermine U.S. global standing, amplify discord inside the United States, and influence U.S. voters and decisionmaking.14

Foreign adversaries’ influence campaigns routinely push disinformation to U.S. audiences. Elections offer an important forum for Russia and other U.S. adversaries to seek to deepen divisions within American society through disinformation campaigns. 15 The Intelligence Community projects that both Russia and China will, for the foreseeable future, continue to press their disinformation campaigns attempting to undermine the U.S. population’s confidence in their government and society.16 Russia certainly did so in the period following the election and preceding the January 6th attack.

The disinformation spread by Russia and its messengers during that time was not, however, entirely original. The Intelligence Community Assessment found that Russia’s disinformation engine borrowed President Trump’s own words to achieve its goals:

Russian online influence actors generally promoted former President Trump and his commentary, including repeating his political messaging on the election results; the presidential campaign; debates; the impeachment inquiry; and, as the election neared, US domestic crises.17

Indeed, President Trump’s messaging during and after the 2020 election was reflected in Russian influence efforts at the time. In September of 2020, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis warned that Russia was engaged in pre-election activity targeting the U.S. democratic process.18 The bulletin advised that “Russia is likely to continue amplifying criticisms of vote-by-mail and shifting voting processes amidst the COVID–19 pandemic to undermine public trust in the electoral process.”19

Deliberately spreading disinformation to discredit a U.S. election was not new to Russia’s influence arsenal. In the judgment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, it is a tactic Russia was prepared to deploy after the 2016 U.S. Presidential election:

Even after the [2020] election, Russian online influence actors continued to promote narratives questioning the election results and disparaging President Biden and the Democratic Party. These efforts parallel plans Moscow had in place in 2016 to discredit a potential incoming Clinton administration, but which it scrapped after former President Trump’s victory.20

Russian influence efforts in the 2016 and 2020 elections, while distinct in their particulars, shared some similarities. Historically, Russia has engaged in near-industrial scale online influence efforts.21 The Intelligence Community Assessment states that in 2020, Russia again relied on internet trolls to amplify divisive content aimed at American audiences:

The Kremlin-linked influence organization Project Lakhta and its Lakhta Internet Research (LIR) troll farm—commonly referred to by its former moniker Internet Research Agency (IRA)—amplified controversial domestic issues. LIR used social media personas, news websites, and US persons to deliver tailored content to subsets of the US population. LIR established short-lived troll farms that used unwitting third-country nationals in Ghana, Mexico, and Nigeria to propagate these US-focused narratives....22

The threats posed by Russia’s influence efforts are not new, nor are they diminishing. The latest unclassified Intelligence Community Annual Threat Assessment throws this into sharp relief:

Moscow has conducted influence operations against U.S. elections for decades, including as recently as the 2020 presidential election. We assess that it probably will try to strengthen ties to U.S. persons in the media and politics in hopes of developing vectors for future influence operations.23

Tech-enabled or not, if ever there was a “people business,” foreign influence is it. People working on behalf of a foreign government—foreign government officials, their agents, and proxies—work to influence, directly or indirectly, a target audience in another country—its officials and citizens at large. Most who are engaged in those efforts act overtly: ambassadors, consuls general, government delegations and so forth. Their foreign influence efforts are not, however, focused on philanthropy or foreign aid. Moreover, the perspectives they seek to embed in their target audiences may be intentionally and materially inaccurate, propagandistic, or driven by unstated motives. In such instances, foreign influence may amount to injecting foreign disinformation into the U.S. media ecosystem for re-branding and onward transmission to an American audience.24

Foreign state adversaries of the United States generally disguise their efforts to influence U.S. audiences, particularly when they seek to influence U.S. voters’ views in the run-up to an election. Among the many ways of concealing the foreign-state origin or sponsorship of such a message is to use unattributable proxies—“cut-outs”—or fully independent ideological allies in the United States as messaging organs. A cooperative American messenger—a proxy for the foreign government itself—may be needed to make the foreign-origin message congenial to the target American audience.

Malign foreign influencers, including foreign governments, used an additional such masking tool during the Trump administration: amplifying U.S.-originated messages so that they reached a broader audience. These influencers often took advantage of the algorithms by which social media platforms bring congenial messages and other information to users whose views are likely to be similar or compatible.

Shortly after the January 6th attack, the National Intelligence Council summarized the scope and significance of Russia’s use of proxies in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election:

A key element of Moscow’s strategy this election cycle was its use of proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence narratives—including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden—to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration.25

The success of the proxy depends on shielding its foreign sponsorship. For that reason, it can be difficult or impossible to determine conclusively whether someone parroting a foreign government adversary’s point of view to a U.S. audience is that government’s controlled proxy or a volunteer taking full advantage of U.S. First Amendment freedoms.

U.S. adversaries use anti-American propaganda and disinformation to advance their strategic foreign policy objectives. They aim to corrode U.S. influence abroad while diluting U.S. citizens’ trust in their democratic institutions and processes. They hope to deepen and sharpen the sociopolitical divisions in American society.26 In doing so, foreign adversaries hope not only to limit U.S. ability to influence the policy choices of other foreign states, but also to help immunize their own populations against the attractions of American-style democracy.

That matters, as Russia and other adversaries of the United States well know. If the United States has long demonstrated such a globally effective cultural power to attract, its corrosion must be a primary strategic objective of Russia or any other of the United States’ principal adversaries. Accordingly, over the next 20 years, the Intelligence Community expects that “China and Russia probably will try to continue targeting domestic audiences in the United States and Europe, promoting narratives about Western decline and overreach.”27 The January 6th attack played into their hands.

With President Trump in the White House, Russia benefited from a powerful American messenger creating and spreading damaging disinformation it could amplify. The Intelligence Community’s comprehensive March 2021 assessment noted that throughout the 2020 Federal election cycle, “Russian online influence actors generally promoted former President Trump and his commentary....”28

President Trump’s relentless propagation of the Big Lie damaged American democracy from within and made it more vulnerable to attack from abroad. His actions did not go unnoticed by America’s adversaries, who seized on the opportunity to damage the United States. According to the Intelligence Community’s March 2021 assessment, “[e]ven after the election, Russian online influence actors continued to promote narratives questioning the election results. . . .”29 What President Trump was saying was, in sum, exactly what the Russian government wanted said—but he was doing it on his own initiative and from the trappings of the Oval Office.