Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Thursday defended using National Guard soldiers to support law enforcement agencies in handling civil unrest triggered by the killing of George Floyd, saying it was a better alternative than using active-duty forces as President Donald Trump had threatened.
Esper’s stance is at odds with Trump, who had spoken of invoking the Insurrection Act in order to use active-duty forces on the streets of the nation’s capital during protests in late May and early June that included limited acts of violence, such as setting a fire in St. John’s Episcopal Church near the White House.
Several active-duty units were put on alert but ultimately were not deployed in Washington.
“Using active duty forces in a direct civilian law enforcement role should remain a last resort, and exercised only in the most urgent and dire of situations,” Esper said in a statement prepared for Thursday’s hearing.
“I want to make very clear that no active-duty military units engaged protesters or otherwise took a direct part in civilian law enforcement or federal protection missions in the District of Columbia or anywhere else in the country.”
“It was my view then, and remains so now, that local, state and federal police, backed up by the National Guard under governor control could, and continually can, effectively handle the security situation in every case across the country,” said Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley.
The House Armed Services Committee was hearing testimony by Esper and Milley for the first time since March 4, when they appeared to discuss the administration’s defense policy proposal.
That was before the full impact of the coronavirus pandemic became apparent and before nationwide civil unrest threw the Pentagon’s relations with Trump into crisis.
Trump’s push for an aggressive response to the civil unrest led to an extraordinary clash with Esper and Milley, who on June 1 accompanied the president when he walked from the White House to St. John’s Church on Lafayette Square, where he held up a Bible for photographers.
Milley in June expressed public regret that he also had been part of the scene with Trump.
“I should not have been there,” he later told a National Defense University commencement ceremony.
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