Inside Liz Cheney’s Coordinated Effort To Prevent Troop Deployment Before Jan. 6

Federalist:
Days before the Capitol riot provoked a years-long effort to impeach, prosecute, and politically malign former President Donald Trump, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney coordinated efforts to deter the very actions she now claims haunt the former president.

Cheney has blamed Trump for not ordering the National Guard to defend the Capitol complex, even though multiple sources confirm that he authorized their deployment days prior to the Jan. 6 rally at the White House and riot at the Capitol. Security officials in charge of the Capitol declined to call up troops to protect it, government records show.

Yet Cheney herself seems to have orchestrated opposition to use of the military to quell election-related unrest, allegedly organizing a Washington Post op-ed on Jan. 3, 2021, signed by every living former defense secretary.

“All 10 living former defense secretaries: Involving the military in election disputes would cross into dangerous territory,” the headline read. It went on to threaten any military official who thought any use of the military might be a good idea. “Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic,” the op-ed warned.

The op-ed was allegedly organized by Cheney, whose father was secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush before serving as President George W. Bush’s vice president. Eric Edelman, a national security adviser to Dick Cheney, told the New Yorker the Wyoming lawmaker “was the one who generated” the piece for the Post.

Now Rep. Cheney has adopted Trump’s supposed inaction on the National Guard as a primary line of attack. On “Fox News Sunday,” Cheney again depicted Trump as an apathetic leader who dismissed pleas to deploy the National Guard while the Capitol was under siege.

“There are several witnesses who say they met with President Trump on January 4th,” said Bret Baier, “and he offered some 20,000 National Guardsmen to protect the Capitol building on January 6th but the offer was rejected. Is that true?”

“His own acting secretary of defense says that’s not true,” Cheney said, highlighting committee testimony from former Acting Secretary Christopher Miller who told the panel Trump made no order to deploy the National Guard. “So the notion that somehow he issued an order is not consistent with the facts.”

Except the president did issue authorization for D.C. leaders to call up the National Guard for pre-emptive reinforcements days before the Capitol riot. While Mayor Muriel Bowser took limited advantage of the extra troops, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s sergeant at arms rejected or stonewalled the offer six times, according to former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund. Pelosi’s office was reportedly concerned the guard’s deployment was bad “optics” after having spent the prior summer decrying the use of federal law enforcement to put down left-wing insurrections. more