The January 6 committee released the testimony of former Pentagon chief Chris Miller, who disputed former President Donald Trump‘s claims of deploying the National Guard to the US Capitol before it was raided by his supporters. 

Trump previously claimed that he ordered thousands of National Guard troops to be mobilised before the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington DC. The former President said he had anticipated “that the crowd was going to be very large”, which is why he requested Miller to sanction the troops.

However, Miller said he received no such request, according to the testimony released by the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riots. 

“We obviously had plans for activating more folks, but that was not anything more than contingency planning”, Miller told the committee. He added, “There was no official message traffic or anything of that nature.”

A similar claim was made by General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Keith Kellogg, the National Security Adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence.

Greg Jacob, the top aide for the Vice President, testified that Pence did not wish to leave the US Capitol complex when the riots were underway. Instead, he contacted Miller and requested for backup from the National Guard.

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Pence “did not want to take any chance that the world would see the Vice President of the United States fleeing the United States Capitol,” his top counsel Greg Jacob testified. “He was determined that we would complete the work that we had set out to do that day.”

The January 6 committee had its eighth and last public hearing for the summer. Chairman Bennie Thompson has said the committee will continue its work, with more hearings in September, as it prepares its reports on the insurrection.