OPINION:
In a fascinating turn of events, former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund last week delivered some shocking comments about what happened on Jan. 6, 2021.
Mr. Sund sat down with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, but the interview never made the air. Thanks to the website The National Pulse, however, the interview has been resurrected and brought into the limelight.
“Everything seems like a cover-up,” Mr. Sund said in the interview. “Now, I’m not one to believe in conspiracy theories, but when you piece together the information and intelligence available to them, it becomes watered down. I wasn’t receiving any intelligence, and there was no support from the National Guard when our very own Capitol was under attack for a staggering 71 minutes.”
An angry Mr. Sund continued: “If people were reporting the intelligence correctly if I was allowed to do my job as the chief … we wouldn’t be here. This didn’t have to happen. Everything appears to be a cover-up,” he said, adding: “I’m a little p——- off.”
According to The National Pulse, Mr. Sund made these revealing statements on Mr. Carlson’s new show, “Tucker Carlson Today,” only to have the interview buried by Fox News.
Mr. Sund also said that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark A. Milley and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, were aware of the events that took place on Jan. 6 but failed to communicate them, ultimately covering up the ordeal.
Mr. Carlson told Mr. Sund, “It sounds like they were hiding the intelligence.”
Mr. Sund claimed that he was denied National Guard troops for hours during the attack.
“You’re in a fight, a fight for a couple of minutes wears you out,” he said. “Let me tell you, it wears you out.”
Mr. Sund says he made the request for National Guard troops at approximately 1 p.m. on Jan. 6. But he says he didn’t hear back until 71 minutes later. It took more than three hours after Mr. Sund’s request for 1,100 National Guard troops to be mobilized, according to a report by NPR.
Then-President Donald Trump allegedly made no effort to deploy the National Guard and instead spoke at a rally in Washington on the day of the riot.
Then-Vice President Mike Pence was the one who attempted to order the deployment of the National Guard, according to a report by the Military Times.
Mr. Sund criticized government officials for not delivering intelligence on the attack to the people who needed it. He believed that the officials knew in advance that the riot would happen.
Weeks before the attack, Mr. Trump mentioned that a protest would occur on Jan. 6, 2021, that he said would be “wild.”
“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Mr. Trump tweeted on Dec. 19, 2020. “Be there, will be wild!”
Mr. Carlson, who was fired by Fox News in April, teased the interview with Mr. Sund in an appearance on Russell Brand’s podcast earlier this month, explaining why it was never broadcast.
“Then I interviewed the chief of the Capitol Police, Steven Sund, in an interview that was never aired on Fox, by the way. I was fired before it could air. … But Steven Sund was totally nonpolitical. … I mean this was not some right-wing activist, he was the chief of Capitol Police on January 6, and he said, ’Oh, yeah, that crowd was filled with federal agents,’” Mr. Carlson told Mr. Brand.
But the current head of the Capitol Police took issue with Mr. Sund’s comments.
“Last night an opinion program aired commentary that was filled with offensive and misleading conclusions about the January 6th attack,” Thomas Manger, chief of the Capitol Police, said in a letter to the department obtained by CBS News. “The opinion program never reached out to the department to provide accurate context.”
Chief Manger criticized Mr. Carlson for falsely claiming that Capitol Police officers helped the mob of Trump supporters and acted as “tour guides,” calling the accusations “outrageous and false.”
“I don’t have to remind you how outnumbered our officers were on January 6,” he wrote. “Those officers did their best to use de-escalation tactics to try to talk rioters into getting each other to leave the building.”
Who knows what’s real? But know this: With Mr. Trump to go on trial — not once, but several times — we’re about to find out.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on X, formerly known as Twitter, @josephcurl.
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