Army J6 Whistleblower Testifies That Pentagon Delayed National

By Neil W. McCabe | Red State | April 17, 2024

An Army whistleblower has told RedState why he is speaking out about the actual decisions and actions by three Army generals in the Pentagon on January 6, 2021. Those decisions delayed the District of Columbia National Guard from responding to Capitol Hill protesters for roughly three hours, he’ll testify at Wednesday’s congressional hearing.

“I was motivated because I love the United States Army,” said Col. Earl G. Matthews, an Army JAG who is testifying to the Committee on House Administration’s Oversight Subcommittee. Along with his testimony, the committee will hear from Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Brooks, the DCNG’s senior enlisted advisor; Capt. Timothy Nick, a DCNG aide-de-camp; and Brig. Aaron Dean, the DCNG adjutant general.

All of the men were eyewitnesses to how the Pentagon delayed the National Guard’s J6 response, said Matthews, who on that day was the senior legal advisor to D.C. National Guard Commanding General Maj. Gen. William J. Walker.

“I love the army with every fiber in my body,” he said. “I’m in my 25th year of military service. Service, to me as an officer in the United States Army, to me, it has been the realization of a boyhood dream.”

A Capitol Hill source said the subcommittee, led by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R.-GA), is focused on what went wrong after President Donald J. Trump approved mobilizing the District of Columbia National Guard to support local law enforcement Jan. 3, 2021.

Loudermilk’s hearing is a natural companion to Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX)’s investigation into how military and national security personnel are organized against Trump at Georgetown University, which was covered in “In Georgetown Preservation Letter, Rep. Sessions Targets Rosa Brooks, Mary McCord, Military Officials.”

The day after Trump gave the green light, Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller sent a memorandum to Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, giving him the authority to support local law enforcement through the Defense Support of Civil Authorities regime.

When McCarthy sent Walker his own Jan. 5, 2021, memorandum, the Army secretary placed two extraordinary restrictions on the National Guard. First, he withheld Walker’s permission to order the quick reaction force. Second, he required the DCNG to submit a detailed plan before asking his permission to act.

The three generals who delayed the DCNG’s J6 deployment were Army Staff Director Lt. Gen. Walter A. Piatt, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations Lt. Gen. Charles A. Flynn, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley, Matthews said.

Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund called Walker, the DCNG’s commanding general, at 1:49 p.m., asking for support, and the Capitol was breached at 2:12 p.m.

At issue is how the D.C. National Guard, which performed admirably during the 2020 summer disturbances, was kept away during the tumult that day. This continues to cloud President Donald J. Trump’s reputation.

Miller approved sending the National Guard to Capitol Hill at or around 3 p.m., but interference from the generals and others kept the Guardsmen from reporting to the Capitol grounds until just before 6 p.m.—after New Jersey State Police troopers arrived.

The colonel said Piatt and Flynn expressed concerns about the optics of Guardsmen deploying to the Capitol, which they denied to Pentagon investigators and in congressional testimony.

Matthews said Piatt was a stranger to the truth when he testified that on J6, he was on a 2:30 p.m. conference call with Walker, district officials, Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy.

On that call, Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy ordered Walker to prepare the guard’s quick reaction force—but to hold the QRF back at the D.C. Armory, less than two miles from the Capitol, until McCarthy gained permission for the deployment.

In fact, McCarthy was not on that phone call. On that call, the multiple participants did hear Piatt say it was his best military opinion to McCarthy that the National Guard did not mobilize to the Capitol at all, the colonel said.

Flynn also told participants on the call that he was concerned about optics.

“The extent of General Flynn’s duplicity is such that he claims in sworn testimony, not to [have been on] a telephone conference call which multiple people have sworn that he was,” he said.

“Flynn was an active participant on the call from its beginning to its conclusion,” he said. “I was on the 2:30 p.m. call and spoke to both Piatt and Flynn personally.”

Flynn, the brother of retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, has repeatedly denied being on that call, but Matthews said a staff attorney assigned to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol told him that the J6 Committee knew Flynn was unfaithful to the truth, but they excused his lack of candor because the focus was on targeting Trump.

“I’ve never seen senior leaders lie about any compunction as brazenly as generals Piatt and Flynn, and yet we had senior leaders in the Department of Defense and Army leadership who wanted to protect them and promote them,” Matthews said.

Piatt, Flynn, and McCarthy all had strong personal ties to Milley, and their concern for optics and about Trump staging a coup was the direct result of Milley’s rhetoric about President Trump as an enemy of democracy, whom he feared would use the National Guard to seize power outside the Constitution, the colonel said.

Milley routinely tied Trump to Hitler and the Nazi party, Matthews said.

“He spoke of the Gospel of the Fuhrer, comparing the President of the United States elected by millions of Americans to the leader of Nazi Germany,” he said.

He said Milley would also say he was looking out for an event that would give Trump the excuse to suspend the Constitution.

“He talked about a Reichstag moment,” the colonel said. Soon after Adolf Hitler took power in Germany, there was a Feb. 27, 1933, fire at Germany’s parliament building, the Reichstag. Hitler, the elected chancellor, suspended civil liberties and began his dictatorship.

“Milley was suggesting that the president himself would do something such today, did this [without] any basis,” he said.

“Trump had never violated, never asked anybody in the military to violate the law, so, to me, it was outrageous,” he said.

Milley, who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was a senior military officer, and he curryed favor with Trump before he became chairman, he said.

“This man was our senior military leader. He was talking openly to subordinates and colleagues about this, which had to impact their thinking about the president and undermine their understanding of command,” he said.

“I don’t mix politics with my military service,” he said. “But, I’ll say this: You got senior leaders in the army within trust, the commander and chief.”

Matthews said after Milley turned on Trump, he poisoned the loyalty due the commander-in-chief.

“They were inspired by, led by, they were affected by the talk of the chairman,” he said.

“President Trump never asked anyone to do anything illegal.”