Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., admitted that she should have had the National Guard "prepare for more" leading up to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, saying, "I take responsibility."
Pelosi's comments were recorded that day as she was being ferried to safety at Fort McNair amid the Capitol Hill riots. The recording, captured by Pelosi's daughter and documentarian Alexandra Pelosi, was released Monday by the House Oversight Committee.
"You're going to ask me, in the middle of the thing when they've already breached the inaugural stuff, 'Should we call ... the National Guard?'" Pelosi asked her chief of staff Terri McCullough while they rode in an SUV. "Why weren't the National Guard there to begin with? ...
"And I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more," Nancy Pelosi said in the 42-second video, requested by congressional investigators from HBO, Politico reported.
The clip — part of 45 minutes of footage from that day — recorded by Alexandra Pelosi was not released during the probe by the House select committee investigating Jan. 6, run by Democrats. HBO released the footage after a request from the House Administration's subcommittee, according to Politico.
While Pelosi and Democrats have blamed then-President Donald Trump for not ordering the National Guard to the Capitol to quell the riots, House Republicans released a report in December 2022 saying, in part, that Pelosi and Democratic leadership were more concerned about "optics" in the aftermath of Black Lives Matters protests in 2020 than they were about beefing up security at the Capitol ahead of Jan. 6.
That was reiterated privately and in public hearings with the current Jan. 6 subcommittee. Senior Army officials told of being hamstrung from responding to the riots over "optics" of deploying the Guard, according to the Politico report.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.