Never-bef0re-seen video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other congressional leaders on Jan. 6, 2021 offers strikingly vivid evidence undermining former president Donald Trump’s long-debunked claim that the failure to adequately protect the Capitol from a pro-Trump mob lay not with him but with Pelosi.
Never-bef0re-seen video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other congressional leaders on Jan. 6, 2021, offers strikingly vivid evidence undermining former president Donald Trump’s long-debunked claim that the failure to adequately protect the Capitol from a pro-Trump mob lay not with him but with Pelosi.
In the video shown Thursday by the House committee investigating the attack, Pelosi is on the phone pleading with Trump administration officials for help to stop the violence and secure the Capitol as U.S. Capitol Police were overmatched by the hundreds of rioters storming the building — including some who demanded her head. Getting nowhere with the officials, she reaches out to Virginia’s governor and says she will contact the D.C. mayor.
Throughout the video, Pelosi is intent on resuming the congressional process of counting the electoral college votes for Joe Biden’s win while showing the nation that the government was still functioning despite the siege. The video was recorded by a documentary crew embedded with Pelosi and led by her daughter Alexandra.
Trump often has suggested that Pelosi failed to do her job, that the breach of the Capitol was her fault and the absence of enough security to turn back the mob of his supporters was her responsibility — not that of the commander in chief. He has falsely claimed that Pelosi rejected his order for 10,000 National Guard troops — something that never happened. The former president, in a statement posted online Friday responding to the committee, wrote, “I fully authorized” deployment of National Guard troops, but, he added falsely, the request was refused by officials who answer to Pelosi.
“Nancy Pelosi and [D.C. Mayor] Muriel Bowser didn’t do their job, they didn’t like the look of soldiers, and sadly your Committee refuses to say anything about it, because if they did, it would be clear that I did everything correctly, and that is not what the Committee wants to see,” Trump wrote.
Trump’s false claims were echoed by Republican lawmakers, including some who — according to the newly released video — were literally in the room when Pelosi and others were calling in reinforcements. On the evening of Jan. 5 Trump made an offhand comment to his acting secretary of defense about needing thousands of troops in Washington the following day. The secretary told Trump he had to formally make that request, which Trump never did.
