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Sund contradicts Pelosi on troops for January 6

  |   By Polling+ Staff

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 06: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sanitizes the gavel after Vice President Mike Pence walked off the dais during a joint session of Congress to certify the 2020 Electoral College results on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. Congress held a joint session today to ratify President-elect Joe Biden's 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump. A group of Republican senators said they would reject the Electoral College votes of several states unless Congress appointed a commission to audit the election results. (Photo by Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images)

“Pelosi is never going to go for that.”

Thus writes Steven Sund, the former Chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, of a conversation with then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House Sergeant of Arms, Paul Irving.

Yet Breitbart reports on Pelosi’s recent conversation with Jonathan Karl of ABC on Trump’s statement that he had offered the use of National Guard troops to protect the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Pelosi specifically says Trump turned down a request from both she and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer for troops to protect the Capitol. https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2023/09/17/pelosi-on-trump-blaming-her-for-january-6-there-is-a-sickness-there/

Sund specifically says otherwise in his book, https://www.amazon.com/s?k=stephen+sund+courage+under+fire&crid=2Q8ERWXP6QICG&sprefix=Stephen+Su%2Caps%2C128&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_1_10Courage Under Fire: Under Siege and Outnumbered 58 to 1 on January 6.

He writes that security on the Hill “is far too often looked at from a political perspective rather than from a purely security-oriented one.”

He also says that there was a denial – from Pelosi’s Sergeant of Arms Irving – “of my initial request for the National Guard on January 3.” The reason for the denial, he was told, were “optics.” Says Sund: “This preoccupation with ‘optics’ arose from the House leadership’s concern over the look of ‘storm troopers’ on campus.”  The “House leadership”, of course, is a reference to Pelosi.

In fact, on January 6 itself, with the riot underway, Sund writes that:

“I faced a seventy-one-minute delay waiting for the House and Senate sergeants at arms to approve my urgent pleas for National Guard support. When I first called Irving at 12:58 p.m. to request National Guard, he stated, ‘I will run it up the chain and get right back to you.’ The ultimate decision maker in Irving’s chain of command was the Speaker of the House. Irving was seen with Pelosi in the House Chambers minutes after I first called him.” He goes on to say flatly that the reason for the delays in getting the National Guard were because of Pelosi.

And mysteriously? He ends his book by saying:

“…Pelosi and Irving’s texts and emails are reportedly sealed and off-limits to investigations.”

Hmmmm.