The National Guard would protect those supporting President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows wrote in an email, according to details in a new report from the Jan. 6 Select Committee, the Washington Examiner reported on Monday.
“The National Guard would be present to ‘protect pro-Trump people’ and that many more would be available on standby,” Meadows said in an email to an unidentified person the day before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Meadows’ email was one of many details released in a report by the Jan. 6 Select Committee, which is scheduled on Monday to vote on advancing contempt of Congress charges against Meadows.
Although the context for the email is unclear, it is apparently part of the puzzle the Jan. 6 committee is trying to figure out for the National Guard’s slow response to violence at the Capitol that day and conflicting timelines about their efforts from the Pentagon and National Guard leadership, Politico reported.
The committee is investigating whether Trump had a part in the three-hour delay between the Capitol Police’s urgent request for National Guard support and their arrival at the Capitol.
Meadows’ email also appears to align with testimony from former Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, who said that Trump told him on Jan. 3 to “do whatever was necessary to protect the demonstrators that were executing their constitutionally protected rights.”
The committee also states that Meadows “received text messages and emails regarding apparent efforts to encourage Republican legislators in certain states to send alternate slates of electors to Congress, a plan which one member of Congress acknowledged was ‘highly controversial’ and to which Meadows responded, ‘I love it,'” according to the Washington Examiner.
The report also said that Meadows “exchanged text messages with, and provided guidance to, an organizer of the Jan. 6th rally on the Ellipse after the organizer told him that ‘[t]hings have gotten crazy, and I desperately need some direction.'”
Meadows is currently suing both
