As we told you this morning, members of the National Guard were ejected from the Capitol building last night and here’s the running theory as to why it happened:
FOX NEWS – Two top senators on Friday said that the order for National Guard troops to move their rest area from on Capitol grounds to a nearby parking garage, which sparked fierce outrage on both sides of the aisle, appeared to be a mistake made lower in the chain of command rather than an order from “on high.”
“There was one uniformed police officer who issued an order without authority or without going through the chain of command and I’m glad the Capitol Police and the Guard are talking and trying to figure this out,” Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., said after a morning of competing statements from the two organizations. “We are going to be able to identify who that person was.”
Inhofe remains the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee until Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., come to an organizing resolution on how to run the Senate with a 50-50 split.
Schumer said something similar to Inhofe’s comments earlier in the morning. When asked what happened Thursday, when the story about the National Guard’s substandard break area broke, he said “we heard about it 9:30, got on top of it at 10, and it was solved by about 11, 11:30.”
Schumer continued: “No one from anyone on high, but a few people said they had to leave. No one understood why. But it’s gone. And they all had a nice place to stay… What happened was an outrage and it will not happen again.”
The Capitol Police, however, say that they did not eject the Guardsmen:
The National Guard said Friday that the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) had ordered its troops to move its break area — where the troops rest during their 12-hour shifts — from inside the Capitol to the Thurgood Marshall Judicial Center’s parking garage.
Acting USCP Chief Yogananda Pittman, however, pushed back on that assertion.
“I want to assure everyone that, with the exception of specific times on Inauguration Day itself while the swearing-in ceremonies were underway, the United States Capitol police did not instruct the National Guard to vacate the Capitol Building facilities,” Pittman said.
It looks like everyone except the Capitol Police say it was the Capitol Police, even the National Guard. Either way, it never should have happened.
UPDATE: As soon as I wrote this and got it published, I saw another theory as to why they were kicked out:
It turns out that our National Guard was sent to the garage b/c Will Keating (D-MA) ratted out a National Guardsman who he saw in a Dunkin Donuts w/o a mask on (“I appreciate my freedom” said the soldier) & the incident spiraled into sending them down in the garage like animals.
— Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) January 22, 2021
BREITBART – National Guard troops were forced to evacuate the Capitol building grounds on Thursday and hang out in parking garages, allegedly after a Democrat congressman complained about one National Guard member not wearing a mask at a cafe in the building.
According to a source, Rep. Will Keating (D-MA) reported to the Capitol building authorities earlier in the day that a National Guardsman was seen in a Dunkin Donuts without a mask on.
After Keating commented out loud that masks were required to be worn at all times in a federal building, the National Guard member responded, “I appreciate my freedom,” according to the source.
National Guard commanders are now looking for the National Guard member, according to the source.
Breitbart News reviewed communications by National Guard officials regarding the situation with Keating.
Breitbart News reached out to Keating’s press secretary but did not receive a response.
Another source told Breitbart News that the situation is “being worked to fix it.”
This sounds more plausible to me, or might explain why a lone officer ordered these guardsmen out after being told to do so by a Democrat.