Who should have sent help prior to 1/6 roit

1. Who legally and practically could have sent help

The D.C. National Guard and other National Guard units under the Department of Defense chain of command were the primary proximate force available to augment the Capitol Police, and the Defense Secretary and acting Pentagon officials had the authority to activate them for D.C. support; nearby state troopers and Virginia Guard elements were also mobilizable by their governors for mutual aid ^{[1] [2]}.

2. Offers, requests and the actual flow of decisions

DoD officials say they twice offered National Guard deployments to Capitol authorities in the days before January 6 and that a January 4 activation for limited, unarmed D.C. Guard troops was approved, but restrictions — including a prohibition on deploying Guard members with weapons, helmets, body armor or riot control agents without the acting Army secretary’s personal approval — limited readiness; Congress and other local officials also sought assistance after the breach, and state-level support (Virginia troopers) was coordinated at the mayor’s request later that afternoon ^{[1] [2]}.

3. Intelligence, warnings and missed preparations

Federal law enforcement and intelligence products had warned of an elevated threat from domestic violent extremists tied to the post-election environment, and prosecutors later presented evidence of organized calls to travel armed to D.C., which made pre-deployment of reinforcements a foreseeable option; records and timelines produced to oversight bodies show conflicting, sometimes delayed communications across DHS, DoD, Capitol Police and the FBI about who knew what and when — a breakdown that left perimeter security and equipment choices inadequate ^{[4] [5] [3]}.

4. Command failures, constraints, and contested responsibility

Capitol Police leadership acknowledged not planning for an attack of that scale and deployed without standard riot gear under orders from leadership, while the acting Defense Secretary’s January 4 memo explicitly limited Guard capabilities absent his signoff; these management and policy constraints — coupled with later disputes over whether presidential authorization would have changed response timing — created a situation where multiple layers bore responsibility for not pre-positioning stronger protection ^{[6] [1] [7]}.

5. Political narratives, revisionism and alternative claims

After the fact, competing narratives have tried to pin responsibility on specific figures — for example, claims that Speaker Pelosi or Capitol staff rejected help are described by fact-checkers and reporting as inaccurate or misleading, and the White House’s subsequent attempts to recast the timeline have been criticized as revisionist; oversight reports and the January 6 committee emphasize the role of then‑President Trump’s actions and rhetoric in creating the environment for the attack, while Defence officials and others dispute how much a single call would have altered the Guard’s pace of deployment ^{[7] [8] [9]}.

6. Bottom line — who should have sent help prior to Jan. 6

Practically and legally, the Department of Defense (via an unencumbered D.C. National Guard activation) should have mobilized and pre‑staged adequately equipped Guard troops and coordinated closely with Capitol Police and local law enforcement before the attack; at minimum, clearer, faster acceptance of DoD offers and removal of the equipment restrictions imposed on Guard deployments would have provided a stronger immediate response, and Capitol Police leadership should have requested and accepted those reinforcements earlier given credible warnings — responsibility for the failure therefore sits across DoD policy choices, Capitol Police preparedness decisions, and the broader White House and command environment that resisted or delayed fuller mobilization ^{[1] [6] [3] [4]}.