When contemplating the January 6th riot, there are only two possibilities as to why it happened. One is that the angry mob became frenzied by inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda from multiple provocative sources and organically attacked the Capitol. It’s either that, or it was a purposeful part of a massive conspiracy to halt the vote counting in Congress, engineered by people at high levels of government and the military. In other words, it was an attempted coup. It’s not exaggerating to say that.
The first is much easier to believe, and the second much harder to prove.
New ass-covering has come to light lately, however, that add intrigue to the second narrative.
Ass-covering is not a new phenomenon for the armed services; it happens all the time.
The Flynns, Charles in particular, are in the news again. Now as you probably know, Charles Flynn is under scrutiny for delaying the National Guard response when the riot kicked off. Today, it was reported that his version of events that he submitted to the Select Committee on the 6th contained egregious lies. The Army’s on record saying Flynn was not in the loop regarding response. That was untrue, according to this new memo.
When Capitol Police begged for backup at 2:30, Flynn and and another associate denied the request, saying that “the optics of having uniformed military personnel deployed to the U.S. Capitol would not be good”. That’s a pretty strong statement. That would suggest a lot-that no one in law enforcement or even the fucking NSA had any clue that there was going to be an attack on the seat of government in the lead-up to that day. Somebody should have heard some chatter if it was going to be an organized effort and plans should have been made to respond with an appropriate show of deterrence. Unless of course that was simply their cover for denying the assistance. Instead, Guardsmen were sent to take over Capitol Police duties so they could be deployed to the building. That’s about the extent of the response. Well prepared troops were ready, too and, Flynn denied that to the Select Committee.
In addition, Flynn swears this “optics” discussion ever took place. Colonel Earl Matthews characterizes it as a “willful deception of Congress”.
The fuckery goes a little deeper. The blame for the inaction was placed squarely on the shoulders of General William Walker, who apparently was told twice by higher ups to deploy. This is also asserted to be untrue-then Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy was unreachable that afternoon. An official memo was drafted stating that Walker was to blame for the delay, and that Flynn and Co. did their due diligence. This too, according to Walker’s lawyer, is nothing but a “revisionist tract worthy of the best Stalinist or North Korea propagandist.”
Did Charles Flynn really believe these demonstrations were going to be full of nothing but “peaceful protestors”? Is that why he chose to do nothing? Given his brother’s proclivity for proto-fascism, it’s not hard to construct a narrative that they shared the same political views and he had no problem whatsoever with halting the democratic process using the power and influence he wielded. This could simply be garden variety military CYA, too. But it’s not wise to mislead Congress just to evade culpability. Flynn might be about to learn that.