Something stinks about the Pentagon and the January 6th Capitol attack
Pentagon officials can’t get their stories straight about the January 6th insurrection. First, their excuses for taking three and a half hours to send help during the attack on the Capitol. To preface, D.C. is not a state so the President functions as commander in chief – like governors of other states – and assigns control of the Pentagon to the Defense Secretary and the Army secretary.
Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy claimed the Pentagon hesitated to send help on January 6th because after the June 2020 events, “we had to put much tighter limits of these types of activities.” He was referring to limits Congress put on use of military forces after the Pentagon’s overly aggressive response to June 2020 protests over racial discrimination and police violence when uniformed D.C. Guard members forcibly cleared crowds and flew a helicopter dangerously low over protestors.
Then, Pentagon officials claimed their inaction during the January 6th insurrection was due to inadequate planning, blaming Capitol Police and D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) for not requesting assistance beforehand. Rep Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) countered that even though the insurrection was planned, in advance, in plain sight on social media, and the FBI and DOJ have a duty to warn of domestic terrorist threats, the Pentagon claimed to be unprepared.
Perhaps the foulest excuse came from former Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense Christopher C. Miller, (who was required to sign off on dispatching D.C. Guard members after the sudden firing of Mark Esper), when he testified in May 2021 that he wanted to avoid a deadly 1970 Kent State University style shooting.
Second, the Army falsely denied that three-star Army Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn attended a tense call with agencies pleading for the D.C. National Guard to intervene in the deadly attack of the Capitol. Days later, Charles Flynn himself admitted that he had, “entered the room after the call began and departed prior to the call ending,” believing a decision was imminent from the Army Secretary McCarthy. Charles Flynn is the brother of Michael Flynn, who in December 2017, pleaded guilty of lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador during the transition from the Obama administration to the Trump administration. Michael Flynn had not yet been sentenced and served no jail time when Trump issued him a pardon in November 2020. On January 5th Michael Flynn met with insurrectionists who were preparing to attack the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. On June 4, 2021, Charles Flynn was promoted to four-star general.
So, three questions come to mind: Why did the Pentagon keep changing its story about its response to the insurrection? Why did the Army deny Charles Flynn attended the phone call? Why was Charles Flynn promoted to four-star general? The answers to the first two questions are anyone’s guess. For the third, Trump’s November 2020 nomination for Charles Flynn’s promotion was confirmed by the Senate in December 2020. It all stinks.
Chicago native Lorraine Evanoff earned her degree in French from DePaul University then became a Certified Financial Manager. She worked as a finance exec in film production for seven years in Paris, then in Silicon Valley during the dot-com era, and later for various Hollywood production companies, notably as CFO of National Lampoon. She is currently living in Los Angeles with her husband.