Mayor Bowser was struck when—right before the press briefing that Monday, January 4th—the mayor asked the Capitol Police representative, "[W]here does your perimeter start? [And h]e gets up out of the room, calls somebody. And the next thing I know he can't participate in the conference."[106] She elaborated: "[T]hat should have been like a trigger to me. Like these people, they don't want to answer questions about their preparation."[107]
On the morning of January 3rd, Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund approached two of the members of the Capitol Police Board and purportedly requested—but concededly did not push for—Guard resources for the Capitol.[108] According to Chief Sund, in a minutes long meeting in the office of House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving, Irving told Chief Sund he did not like the optics of asking for the Guard in advance and that the intelligence did not support it.[109] Chief Sund said he did not push back on either point.[110] In fact, he agreed that his reading of the intelligence—despite a forewarning put out by his own intelligence unit that "Congress was itself the target" on January 6th[111]—did not call for Guard support,[112] only that having more personnel on his perimeter would make him "more comfortable."[113] Irving suggested he talk to the Senate Sergeant at Arms, and then-chairman of the Capitol Police Board, Michael Stenger.[114] According to Irving, Stenger, in a meeting in his office, asked Chief Sund to reach out to the Guard and find out, if an emergency called for it, "how many people can [the commanding general] give us and how quickly can he give us those people?"[115] Chief Sund said he took their responses to mean "no," despite conceding that he was never told "you cannot have the National Guard" or anything to that effect.[116] "It was 100 percent a denial," he maintained.[117]
Irving recalled the matter coming up on a three-way phone conference during which "the consensus was that we didn't need" the Guard.[118] He did not consider it a request.[119] On the call, Chief Sund noted that the District planned to use the servicemembers to staff intersections, but the Capitol grounds had few of those, and it would not relieve many officers if they were used in a similar fashion.[120] "It was a combination of operationally the chief didn't feel that they would add much to his plan, and the intelligence really didn't speak for anything that we felt would justify the need for them," Irving said.[121] Irving doesn't recall taking the "optics" into consideration.[122] According to Irving, the conversation ended the same way Chief Sund said it had: "Why don't you just tell them to be on standby?" Stenger suggested.[123] It was never brought up again.[124]
The discussion about the use of the Guard remained within the Capitol Police Board and did not reach congressional leadership, including the Speaker of the House. That was normal. "[F]rom a tactical perspective, we would make decisions without the input from congressional leadership,"
