Subcommittee on Oversight Ranking Member Torres Opening Remarks at D.C. National Guard Hearing
Washington, D.C. —Subcommittee on Oversight Ranking Member Norma Torres (D-C.A.) delivered the following opening remarks at a hearing on the D.C. National Guard response on January 6th:
“Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
“And thank you to our witnesses for being here today and for your service to our nation, particularly on January 6th.
“You sacrifice your time to protect us, and we owe you a debt of gratitude.
“We are here today discussing the delayed National Guard response to the Capitol for one reason and one reason only: Donald Trump dispatched an armed mob to try to overturn the election he knew he lost.
“And for three hours and 19 minutes as that violent mob assaulted law enforcement and hunted for members of Congress and the Vice President who they were trying to hang the National Guard was forced to wait and wait and wait.
“All because of the chaos at the Pentagon caused by the Commander in Chief and the fear that he would involve the military in domestic political affairs. A big no-no we teach worldwide to emerging countries.
“This was a Commander in Chief who as the riot unfolded, didn't call his acting Secretary of Defense or Secretary of the Army to ask why the National Guard was missing. Where were they?
“A Commander in Chief who after he learned someone was shot, didn't care. He didn't call the National Guard directly.
“A Commander in Chief whose aides and family partied and danced as the mob prepared to overturn the Capitol.
“A Commander in Chief who sat in his dining room watching it all unfold on TV like it was an action movie with an ending favorable to him.
“How did we get here?
“Let me tell you.
“In response to the June 2020 demonstrations responding to the murder of George Floyd, President Trump said he would ‘deploy the United States military’ to put down the protest and even asked Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, why the military couldn't just, ‘shoot the protestors in the legs or something.’
“Secretary Esper found the President's comments so disturbing he held a press conference saying he opposed invoking the Insurrection Act.
“Then in December, as Trump continued to spread conspiracy theories supported by members of this Congress sitting here today about the election being stolen, talk of invoking the Insurrection Act reached a boiling point.
“It got so bad that his own Secretary of the Army and the Army Chief of Staff, a four-star general, issue a joint statement saying, ‘There is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election.’
“And as our top military leaders worry, the President would declare martial law, the rest of the national security apparatus was in total disarray.
“People were getting fired or resigning left and right. Everyone remembers that right?
“And with only 71 days left in his term, Trump terminated the Secretary of Defense and replaced him with an Acting Secretary of Defense who was completely, completely over his head.
“Contrary to attempts to rewrite history the January 6th Select Committee conducted more than two dozen interviews and reviewed over 37,000 pages of documents related to the National Guard and dedicated 46 pages of its final report to this issue.
“The Select Committee found that the chaos led to an ill-equipped Acting Secretary of Defense, issuing an unclear order to the Secretary of the Army, an order so unclear that it was interpreted differently by the Acting Secretary of Defense, the Army Chief of Staff, and the Secretary of the Army.
“Three people, three different interpretations. It's all there in the Select Committee's final report and the dozens of relevant transcripts available online.
“Adding to the chaos, these top Army officials exercise extreme caution and imposed unprecedented restrictions on when and how to deploy the guard on January 6th.
“This was the direct result of the President's decision to involve the military in domestic affairs.
“To our witnesses, I am so sorry.
“I am so sorry that Trump's Defense Department and Army leadership failed you and they failed us on January 6th.
“You should never have been forced to sit on your hands while we were lying on our stomachs, planning to use a pen in our purses as a weapon to defend ourselves against the mob that was sent here to kill us by the President of the United States of America.
“We were preparing to die.
“I yield back.”
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