A vital anti-Trump smear dissolved a few days ago with the release of suppressed evidence that the former president had indeed sought an extra 10,000 National Guards to buttress the security of the Capitol on 6 January, 2021.

Far from aiming to incite a riot to seize power, the President had repeatedly tried to boost troop numbers at the Capitol, but had failed or been thwarted, more on which later. So much for an ‘insurrection’, a charge the Australian media gullibly recycled for years.

The new evidence comes courtesy of the US House’s Initial Findings Report reviewing the Democrats’ ‘Get Trump’ show trial, the J6 Select Committee. The report says the J6 committee was highly partisan, irregular in its processes, and hid much testimony and evidence, deleting hundreds of video recordings and losing over a terabyte of digital data.

The vexed question of why the Capitol was underdefended that day has been batted back and forth for years, with the J6 committee asserting that there was ‘no evidence’ Trump had sought the extra troops, contrary to the claims of multiple Trump officials and the President himself. It’s worth getting into the weeds here to establish the truth, because this allegation is still being exploited, for example in the attempt to keep ‘insurrectionist’ Trump off the ballot in Colorado.

In the newly disclosed testimony, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Anthony Ornato, a career secret service official, told lawmakers that he overheard Chief of Staff Mark Meadows urge DC Mayor Muriel Bowser on 4 January 2021 to mobilise as many National Guard troops as needed.

‘Meadows wanted to know if she needed any more guardsmen,’ Ornato testified. ‘And I remember the number 10,000 coming up of, you know, “The president wants to make sure that you have enough”’. You know, “He is willing to ask for 10,000”. I remember that number.’

As a matter of process, National Guards troops must be authorised by the President but requested by, among others, the local government head, in this case Bowser, and then approved by the Secretary of Defense.

Bowser refused to request more than 340 extras. Ornato further says a frantic White House lit up Defense Department phones on the afternoon of 6 January demanding to know when the specially created Quick Reaction Forces would arrive at the Capitol. These are not the actions of those plotting a coup.

General Mark Milley, former joint chief of staff head and no Trump supporter, testified about a White House meeting three days before 6 January. He was asked, with specific reference to the 10,000 extra troops, whether he remembered Trump telling Secretary of Defense Chris Miller to take whatever action he needed as events unfolded. Milley: ‘I think so, yeah. Words to that effect.’

Why Miller failed to fully follow through on the extra 10,000 remains unclear, but it’s worth remembering the charged atmosphere surrounding ‘politicising’ the military at the time. In Washington’s infamous ‘summer of violence’ a few months before, in June 2020, Trump had been excoriated for calling out the National Guard, and Senator Tom Cotton famously had his New York Times article on sending in the troops to quell Black Lives Matter violence scragged. On the Sunday before the J6 riot, Liz Cheney secretly organised a Washington Post article from ten former defense secretaries warning against Trump using the military to interfere in elections. Given these atmospherics Trump likely felt constrained to offer troops rather than insist on them, but was Miller also intimidated out of acting on Trump’s offers? Possibly. Or did he think the President was exaggerating the threat, as also reported? However, that Trump sought 10,000 or more National Guards no longer seems to be in any doubt.

As a side issue, both Ornato and other witnesses, including the driver of the presidential vehicle that day, rejected the sensational claim that Trump had lunged for the wheel of the SUV to grab it and head to the Capitol. That never happened, their now-released testimonies say. Another lie enabled by hiding contrary testimony.

Then there’s the role of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has ultimate responsibility for the House, but whose activities the Democrats’ J6 committee omittted from its inquiries. That’s worse than inexcusable, that’s a tell. What did the powerful Pelosi worry might be found? Capitol Police Chief Stephen Sund says he made six requests for extra National Guard troops ahead of J6 but they were all rejected by Pelosi’s deputies and the Sergeant at Arms – who reported to Pelosi. Someone’s scheming hand left the Capitol vulnerable to opportunistic and politically advantageous violence, adroitly avoided the scheduled Congressional election fraud review, and marketed the result as an insurrection. Masterful work.

When I moved to Manhattan in 2014, I knew nothing of Trump, and came fresh to many controversies. Over time the controversies were resolved and almost always in Trump’s favour. Russia pee tapes? Fake. Steele dossier? Fake and paid for by Hillary’s campaign. Russia collusion? Non-existent. Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinfo? Rubbish. Trump calling neo-Nazis fine people in Charlottesville? He ‘condemned (them) totally’, read the transcript. Telling people to drink bleach during Covid? Wrong, he was referring to light, and never said bleach.

The pattern is clear: scream the lie and whisper the truth, so most people remain unaware of it. This is Pelosi’s famous ‘wrap-up smear’, a tactic that relies on a compliant media and participants willing to fib brazenly. A lot of Americans are now wise to it, which explains their obdurate resolve to support Trump.

We are now in the midst of another Trump hoax-in-the-making, the ‘bloodbath if I’m not elected’ one. As Elon Musk tweeted, Trump’s remark clearly referred to the auto industry being destroyed by aggressive Chinese car exports, not America at large being laid waste by right-wingers if Trump loses the election. But stripped of any context, it is now the newest legacy media narrative being deployed. Thanks to Twitter/X, the full remarks can easily be seen, and the misrepresentation revealed. There is no substitute for going back to primary sources to sort out truth from propaganda

In Australia, even conservatives fall for the blitzkrieg of lies and fail to go back to the primary sources. The insurrection slur should now be dead and buried, but it won’t be. People will remain vaguely convinced Trump plotted an insurrection, and much more, although their ‘evidence’ will collapse when confronted with facts. We have just seen Special Counsel Robert Hur revealing that Biden did indeed lie about sharing his classified documents – lying being, in reporter Miranda Devine’s phrase, Biden’s superpower. Perhaps it is the Democrats’ superpower.