A former prime lawyer for the D.C. Nationwide Guard has accused Military officers of retaliating towards him for asserting to Congress that two prime Military officers lied about why deployment of the Guard was delayed in the course of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, in keeping with a grievance filed with the Protection Division and obtained by The New York Occasions.
Col. Earl Matthews, who beforehand served within the Trump administration and was the highest lawyer for the D.C. Guard in the course of the Jan. 6 assault, stated within the grievance that he was retaliated towards after he accused two generals in a report back to Congress of creating false statements concerning the delayed deployment, a problem that has produced a number of and infrequently conflicting accounts.
“It’s textbook whistle-blower retaliation. I wrote that memo as a result of I noticed actual wrongdoing,” Colonel Matthews stated in his first interview for the reason that incident. “I like the USA Military. To me, that is about Military values.”
A duplicate of the 37-page whistle-blower reprisal grievance was filed with the Pentagon’s inspector common in October, two months earlier than the third anniversary of the assault on Congress by a pro-Trump mob in search of to halt certification of President Biden’s 2020 election victory.
It underscores what number of questions stay about points of the federal government and regulation enforcement response to the lethal assault on the Capitol.
On the heart of this specific dispute is a still-simmering feud contained in the navy over who’s guilty for the greater than four-hour delay in deploying the Nationwide Guard because the rioters battled their method into the Capitol, assaulting dozens of law enforcement officials alongside the best way and endangering members of Congress, their staffs and others working within the constructing.
Colonel Matthews, who was concerned in key conferences concerning the Guard deployment, stated he initially gave his account of what occurred to Congress in 2021 after he noticed prime Military officers attempt to downplay their function within the delay.
Specifically, Colonel Matthews stated he was infuriated by a report he stated was overseen by Lt. Gen. Walter E. Piatt of the Military that he described as a “deceptive, factually flawed and revisionist recitation of occasions” that he considered as shifting the blame for the delay onto D.C. Nationwide Guard management. He was additionally angered by what he considered as a defective report from the Protection Division’s inspector common that relied on a few of the identical materials.
Colonel Matthews drafted a 36-page memo that he submitted to the Home Jan. 6 committee, accusing Basic Piatt and Gen. Charles Flynn of being “absolute and unmitigated liars” of their testimony earlier than Congress.
In fall of 2022, the Biden White Home denied Basic Piatt a promotion after Colonel Matthews raised considerations about his testimony.
Not lengthy after, Colonel Matthews stated, he confronted retaliation.
In February 2023, Colonel Matthews, who at that time was assigned to the Military Battle Faculty as a part of the Military Reserve, stated he was falsely accused of unprofessional conduct. He stated he was additionally listed as an individual of concern who would possibly attempt to disrupt a navy convention in Virginia being attended by Basic Piatt and was escorted out of a resort internet hosting the seminar by safety personnel.
Colonel Matthews stated he was additionally denied consideration for promotion, regardless of having been chosen by a promotion board for brigadier common.
Within the interview, Colonel Matthews stated he didn’t consider Basic Piatt ordered or knew concerning the retaliation and blamed lower-ranking officers on the Military Battle Faculty. A kind of officers acknowledged that Colonel Matthews’s “broadly publicized assaults on Military senior leaders in relation to the Jan. 6 riot” factored into his perception that Colonel Matthews must be faraway from his place, in keeping with the grievance.
The grievance was filed with the Pentagon’s inspector common by the legal professionals Andrew Bakaj and Mark Zaid via the group Whistleblower Help. It stated that along with costing Colonel Matthews cash within the type of forgone wage and pension, the alleged retaliation imposed “grievous reputational hurt, important private embarrassment and public humiliation.”
Colonel Matthews is asking that the inspector common advocate he be slated for task to brigadier common and that those that retaliated towards him be reprimanded and punished.
He additionally desires any false or deceptive testimony concerning the Nationwide Guard delay to be corrected within the congressional document.
Because the riot unfolded on Jan. 6, Basic Flynn, who commanded the U.S. Military Pacific, and Basic Piatt, the director of the Military employees, have been concerned in a cellphone name with police leaders wherein Military officers apprehensive aloud concerning the “optics” of sending within the Guard, in keeping with congressional testimony by the commander of the D.C. Nationwide Guard.
Basic Flynn is the brother of Michael T. Flynn, a former Military common who was President Donald J. Trump’s first, short-lived nationwide safety adviser. Michael Flynn later took an energetic function in making an attempt to overturn the 2020 election and urged Mr. Trump to make use of the equipment of presidency to grab voting machines.
Charles Flynn informed Congress he had not participated within the name however merely overheard parts of it when he entered the room. He stated he had not heard any dialogue of political issues with regard to sending within the Guard.
“I didn’t use the phrase ‘optics,’ nor did I hear the phrase used in the course of the name on Jan. 6, 2021,” he stated.
However Colonel Matthews known as these feedback by Basic Flynn “outright perjury” and stated he “unmistakably heard him say that optics of a Nationwide Guard presence on Capitol Hill was a problem for him.”
Colonel Matthews listed a sequence of different discrepancies with the testimony by Basic Piatt and Basic Flynn.
Colonel Matthews identified that Basic Flynn gave contradictory testimony in several venues. That included claiming to the Home Oversight Committee {that a} group below his path “instantly labored” to start to deploy the Guard to the Capitol, though he later informed the Jan. 6 Committee such actions weren’t in his purview.
An Military spokesman has defended the lads, calling them “open, trustworthy and thorough of their sworn testimony with Congress and D.O.D. investigators” and saying the navy stands by “all testimony and details supplied so far.”
The Pentagon’s inspector common declined to remark. A spokeswoman for the Military stated she couldn’t touch upon a pending matter.
Within the interview, Colonel Matthews additionally faulted the now-defunct Home Jan. 6 committee for not holding a listening to on safety failures throughout its 2022 inquiry due to a choice to deal with the actions of Mr. Trump.
“They have been targeted on the president, and I perceive that,” he stated, “however the safety failures have to be checked out as a result of we don’t need that to occur once more. And I don’t suppose that was carried out.”
Colonel Matthews’s expertise on Jan. 6 is essentially in line with the accounts of different District of Columbia and regulation enforcement officers concerned within the response that day, together with one supplied by the previous Capitol Police chief, Steven A. Sund, who stated the Pentagon was extra involved about “optics” than rapidly deploying the Nationwide Guard.
“I obtained on a name with the Pentagon and pleaded for the Nationwide Guard,” he stated in an interview about his ebook, “Braveness Underneath Hearth.” “There was delay after delay after delay.”