What contemporaneous communications between Capitol Police and Pentagon leaders document requests for Guard assistance on Jan. 6?
Executive summary
Chief Steven Sund made repeated, contemporaneous oral requests for National Guard assistance during a chaotic conference call at about 2:26 p.m. on Jan. 6, a plea that Pentagon timelines and later testimony show was followed by hours of coordination, approvals and miscommunication before Guard troops were authorized to move [1] [2] [3]. Official timelines, committee releases and testimony document multiple points of contact between Capitol Police, D.C. officials and senior Defense Department leaders, but they also record conflicting accounts about who asked what, when, and whether “optics” or procedural approvals delayed action [4] [5] [6].
1. The 2:26 p.m. conference call: an urgent, verbal plea captured in multiple accounts
Multiple contemporaneous accounts and later reports describe Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund telling a conference call that he was “making urgent, urgent, immediate request for National Guard assistance” and asking for “boots on the ground” as rioters breached the Capitol, a statement recorded in Pentagon and news timelines [1] [2] [7]. The call included D.C. leaders, Metropolitan Police, the D.C. National Guard commander and a patch-in from the Office of the Secretary of the Army; General Walter Piatt and others noted that Pentagon approval would be required for Guard troops to step onto Capitol grounds, a procedural point raised during the same exchange [2] [3].
2. Written and pre-event requests: Mayor Bowser and pre-planning communications
Separate from Sund’s frantic on-scene calls, Mayor Muriel Bowser had sought Guard support days earlier for traffic and crowd management and sent written requests to the Army and Pentagon; those documented requests are part of the official timeline that led the Pentagon to prepare forces already present in the region [4] [3] [8]. The Pentagon timeline and later DoD documents show a distinction between the District’s written request for limited support and the Capitol Police’s on-the-ground request for immediate, armed assistance, which complicated the approval chain because the D.C. Guard answers to federal command [3] [8].
3. Pentagon responses, restrictions and the “optics” controversy in contemporaneous transcripts
Pentagon planning documents and later released transcripts show senior Defense officials discussing restrictions on DCNG movement, equipment and mission parameters, and some internal records and committee briefings indicate “optics” concerns were raised as part of deliberations about deploying troops to the Capitol that day [3] [5]. Pentagon officials have denied using the word “optics” in real-time deliberations, and several senior military witnesses later testified they did not advise against deployment for that reason, creating a dispute between contemporaneous transcripts and later public statements [9] [5].
4. Orders, approvals and a critical miscommunication that slowed movement
DoD timelines, after-action reports and later press reconstructions document a chain of approvals—from the Secretary of the Army to the acting Defense Secretary and legal advisers—during which the D.C. Guard prepared to move but waited for formal authorization; investigative reporting and testimony characterize what occurred as a miscommunication between Secretary Miller and Secretary McCarthy that left commanders with different understandings of whether troops were “a go” and contributed to a multi-hour delay [3] [6] [10]. William Walker, then-commander of the D.C. Guard, testified that he received urgent requests from Sund and repeatedly sought authorization to deploy but was constrained by the requirement for explicit Pentagon approval [11] [7].
5. Conflicting accounts, partisan narratives and limits of contemporaneous documentary evidence
Congressional, Pentagon and press records document many contemporaneous calls and written requests, yet they also reveal conflicting recollections: Army internal reports claim certain exchanges took place that some D.C. Guard leaders later said “never happened,” and partisan committee releases have used the same contemporaneous documents to reach different conclusions about delay and culpability, reflecting competing agendas in the public record [12] [5] [13]. The assembled sources document the key contemporaneous communications—Sund’s 2:26 p.m. plea, Mayor Bowser’s written requests, and the layers of Pentagon calls and approvals—but they also demonstrate that debates over wording, authority and intent remain contested and that some asserted details go beyond what the cited documents unambiguously prove [1] [3] [6].
Conclusion
The contemporaneous record shows explicit, repeated requests from Capitol Police for National Guard assistance—most notably Sund’s urgent plea during the 2:26 p.m. call—followed by hours of Pentagon deliberations, written requests from the District, and miscommunications among senior Defense leaders that delayed deployment; however, disagreements among eyewitness testimony, internal Army reports, DoD transcripts and partisan committee statements mean the documents establish the fact of urgent requests and delayed authorization but leave unresolved tensions about why the process unfolded as it did [1] [3] [6] [5].