Did the House or Capitol Police formally request National Guard support prior to Jan. 6, and who authorized or denied it?

1. The precise form of the pre-event requests: informal, not a DOD-authorization request

Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund and other USCP officials discussed needing guard support and asked the House and Senate sergeants at arms for authority to bring the National Guard onto the Capitol, but Defense Department timelines and independent fact-checking stress that Capitol Police did not submit a formal written request to the DOD for National Guard troops prior to the riot; offers from the military existed but a formal USCP-to-DoD deployment request was not on file before the attack ^{[1] [4]}.

2. Who the Capitol Police asked and what they were told

According to USCP timelines and Sund’s testimony, Sund sought permission from House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving and Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger to allow Guard assistance and was rebuffed; the sergeants instead directed Sund to coordinate with D.C. National Guard leadership and General Walker, which effectively left the decision path outside of a simple USCP-to-DoD request ^{[4] [5]}.

3. Mayor Bowser’s written requests and limited pre-event approvals

Separately, Mayor Muriel Bowser submitted written requests to the D.C. National Guard for support for January 5–6, which Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller approved on January 4 for a tailored, unarmed traffic-and-crowd-management mission, with limits on how many troops could be deployed at any time; that approval was based on the District’s written request rather than a USCP-initiated deployment order ^{[2] [6]}.

4. The timeline of approvals, denials, and who authorized deployment on Jan. 6

On January 6, Defense Department timelines show the Army Secretary and Acting Secretary of Defense authorized a Quick Reaction Force and later approved DC National Guard movements after requests from local civil authorities (including Bowser) and amid consultations with the Joint Chiefs and legal advisors; USCP leaders and some witnesses contend that pleas for more immediate Guard help were denied or delayed by the sergeants at arms and by DoD officials who required additional approvals, while DoD officials maintain they were prepared to deploy but were constrained by the chain-of-command and legal considerations ^{[3] [1] [5]}.

5. Disputed claims and areas of conflicting testimony

There are competing narratives: some Trump administration figures later claimed the President authorized large Guard deployments in advance, a claim for which no contemporaneous record exists and which fact-checkers and the congressional report found unsubstantiated; conversely, Sund and other Capitol officials maintain they were denied authorization multiple times, which is corroborated by their testimony and timelines though DoD officials emphasize offers and a complicated approval process rather than a simple refusal ^{[7] [1] [5]}.

6. Why process and “optics” mattered — and how that shaped outcomes

Key decisionmakers repeatedly invoked legal limits, chain-of-command concerns, and worries about the “optics” of troops at the Capitol, with the House and Senate sergeants at arms reportedly reluctant to have formal emergency declarations that would visibly station troops beforehand; those considerations contributed to routing requests through multiple offices and delayed a straightforward DoD authorization tied directly to a USCP request ^{[1] [4]}.

7. What the record does and does not definitively show

Documentary evidence shows Mayor Bowser’s written requests and subsequent limited DOD approvals, USCP oral requests to sergeants at arms that were not converted into a DOD deployment order before the breach, and a chaotic approval timeline on January 6 when Guard units were mobilized — but the record does not show a formal, written Capitol Police request to the Department of Defense for a large pre-positioning of National Guard troops prior to the attack ^{[2] [3] [1]}.