If he'd called Pentagon leaders on January 6, Donald Trump could have cleared up confusion and hastened the arrival of National Guard troops to quell the Capitol riot, according to recent closed-door congressional testimony by two former leaders of the D.C. guard. Michael Brooks, the senior enlisted leader of the D.C. guard at the time of the riot, and Brigadier Gen. Aaron Dean, the adjutant general of the D.C. guard at the time, told House Administration Committee staffers that if Trump had reached out that day — which, by all accounts, he did not — he might have helped cut through the chaos amid a tangle of conflicting advice and miscommunication, Politico reports. Brooks and Dean are among four witnesses slated to testify Wednesday before a House subcommittee probing security failures that exacerbated the breach of the Capitol. All four were top advisers to William Walker, the commander of the D.C. guard on Jan. 6.
"Could the president have picked up the phone, called the secretary of defense, and said, you know, ‘What’s going on here?’ Our law enforcement is getting overrun, make this happen!’” a committee staffer asked Brooks, according to the transcript of a previously unreported March 14 interview. “I assume he could expedite an approval through the Secretary of Defense, through the Secretary of the Army,” Brooks replied. But Trump observed the riot in TV and called allies about the 2020 election, without calling any military leaders on January 6, per testimony from senior administration officials to the Jan. 6 select committee — a fact that the panel emphasized in its final report that concluded Trump was uniquely responsible for the violent Capitol attack by his supporters.