Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund said Monday that the since-disbanded Select Committee on Jan. 6 interviewed him only once during Democrats’ two-year investigation.
Speaking on the D.C. radio station WMAL, Sund said J6 investigators’ interest was limited to a single six-hour Zoom interview, “and it was clear they wanted to get as far away as possible from any institutional failures that occurred that day or anything that put any kind of fingerprints on congressional leadership.”
The ex-police chief also told the radio station that he desperately pleaded for policymakers to deploy the National Guard on the day of the riot. The House sergeant at arms took 71 minutes to approve the dispatching of additional Guard troops while the Capitol was attacked, Sund said.
Sund encountered resistance from the Pentagon next, where officials cited concerns about “optics” if National Guard troops were sent to the Capitol. House leadership also complained about the “optics” of Guard reinforcements pre-emptively stationed in the run-up to Jan. 6, Sund added.
“Even when we’re in the middle of battle, I’m being told, ‘No, they’re concerned about optics,'” Sund said. “But they’re sending resources to the generals’ homes to protect their homes.”
Sund’s radio appearance corroborates Federalist reporting on Friday that then-President Donald Trump called for 10,000 National Guard troops to offer additional security at the Capitol in the run-up to Jan. 6. The Trump White House, however, was frustrated by then-Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller’s slow deployment of the troops.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney, who served as vice chair of the Democrats’ Jan. 6 committee, discouraged any use of the military in the run-up to the electoral count, with an op-ed she organized of former defense secretaries. The J6 committee also concealed testimony from Trump White House Deputy Chief of Staff Anthony Ornato, who told lawmakers about the president’s demands to increase security at the Capitol ahead of mass demonstrations.
Last summer, Sund told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the New Jersey State Police arrived to reinforce officers at the Capitol before the National Guard.
“New Jersey State Police [had] beat them to the Capitol,” Sund said.
Sund also said the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI hid intelligence about the riot from the Capitol Police.
“Coming into it,” Sund said, police received “absolutely zero” of the “intelligence that we know now existed talking about attacking the Capitol, killing my police officers, attacking members of Congress, and killing members of Congress.”
“None of that was included in the intelligence coming up,” Sund said. “We now know FBI, DHS was swimming in that intelligence. We also know now that the military seemed to have some very concerning intelligence as well.”
Nor was the head of Capitol Police made aware of federal informants in the crowd at the riot, calling the lack of disclosure, “concerning.”
[READ: 7 Revelations From Ex-Capitol Police Chief That Explode Democrats’ Jan. 6 Narrative]
