(NewsNation) — Former Vice President Mike Pence was “very animated” and delivered “very direct” orders to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark A. Milley to send the military and National Guard to the Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to testimony by Milley.
Milley told the Jan. 6 investigative committee that he spoke to Pence two or three times on the phone while a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to keep former President Donald Trump in power.
Milley said Pence gave him “unambiguous” orders to send the military to the Capitol, an order Trump himself would not give.
Pence “was very animated, very direct, very firm, and (told) Secretary Miller, ‘Get the military there, get the Guard down here, put down this situation, etc.,’” Milley told the Jan. 6 investigators.
As rioters entered the capitol and clashed with police, Trump made no phone calls to any governmental body “to instruct that the Capitol be defended,” Rep. Liz Cheney, R-WY. said at Thursday night’s investigative committee hearing.
The committee findings allege Trump sat by, refusing to call off the mob or call in military aid, while thousands of protesters violently clashed with Capitol police who were guarding the capitol.
Pence, who had refused Trump’s directive to help him overturn the results of the election that morning, was the one who made a desperate call for military aid while Trump sat idle, reportedly watching TV in the dining room next to the Oval Office while the riot occurred.
Milley said Trump’s staff, specifically Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, attempted to politicize this move by Pence in a conversation between the two.
Meadows “said, ‘We have to kill the narrative that the vice president is making all the decisions. We need to establish the narrative that the president is still in charge and that things are steady or stable’ or words to that effect,” Milley told investigators. “I immediately interpreted that as ‘politics, politics, politics, politics.’ Red flag for me personally, no action. But I remember it distinctly.”
Milley’s testimony was revealed by the Jan. 6 investigative committee, which is comprised of seven Democrats and two Republicans, during the committee’s first public hearing Thursday night.