Donald Trump Repeats False Claim He Ordered ’10-20,000 Troops’ on Jan. 6, Despite His Own Defense Secretary Debunking

Former President Donald Trump released a statement on Tuesday attacking the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and repeated a debunked claim surrounding the attack, which has become a standard talking point on the right.

“The Unselect Committee of Political Thugs has not devoted one hour to the massive Election Fraud and Irregularities that took place in the 2020 Presidential Election, the reason that hundreds of thousands of people went to Washington on January 6th. When will they start?” Trump said in a statement released by his Save America Pac.

“The Unselects also refuse to look at why Crazy Nancy Pelosi and the Mayor of D.C. turned down from 10-20,000 troops. Why is this, I wonder?” he added.

On July 26th, the Jan. 6 Committee released a clip of testimony from Trump’s former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller saying there was no order given to have military personal ready ahead of Jan. 6 – including the National Guard.

“To remove any doubt: Not only did Donald Trump fail to contact his Secretary of Defense on January 6th (as shown in our hearing), Trump also failed to give any order prior to January 6 to deploy the military to protect the Capitol,” the committee wrote on Twitter above the clip.

To remove any doubt: Not only did Donald Trump fail to contact his Secretary of Defense on January 6th (as shown in our hearing), Trump also failed to give any order prior to January 6 to deploy the military to protect the Capitol.

Here is Secretary Miller’s testimony— pic.twitter.com/joucnUHvBB

— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) July 26, 2022

“I was never given any direction or order or knew of any plans of that nature,” Miller says in the clip.

While there have been reports of a meeting in the days prior to Jan. 6th, in which Trump raised the prospect of needing “10,000” troops in Washington, D.C. no order was given to the Pentagon.

“There was no direct, there was no order from the President,” said Miller who ran the Pentagon during Trump’s last days in office.

Trump has made this claim multiple times before and blamed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for the violence that day.

In March 2021, Trump said on Fox News:

I definitely gave the number of 10,000 National Guardsmen and [said] I think you should have 10,000 of the National Guard ready. They took that number. From what I understand, they gave it to the people at the Capitol, which is controlled by [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi. And I heard they rejected it because they didn’t think it would look good.

Trump’s claim has been repeated across the right from GOP House members to opinion hosts like Sean Hannity, who has made the claim dozens of times on air.

The Washington Post conducted a thorough fact check surrounding the claims and found them to be categorically false, noting that no issue for troops in D.C. was ever given:

Trump made an offhand remark in a meeting unrelated to the events of Jan. 6, based on an inflated expectation of the crowd that would gather that day. Moreover, when the Capitol was breached, Trump was AWOL, unengaged in the effort to end the riot and restore order.

Furthermore, if Trump had wanted troops to be present in D.C. on Jan. 6 he could have ordered the D.C. National Guard to activate, which Pelosi could not refuse. “The D.C. National Guard is the only National Guard unit, out of all of the 54 states and territories, which reports only to the President,” notes the “About Us” section on their website.