Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hit out at a reporter on Wednesday for accusing her of refusing to send in the National Guard during the January 6 Capitol riot.
The 85-year-old California Democrat was caught on camera descending the steps of the Capitol, clutching the hand of one of her aides, when LindellTV reporter Allison Steinberg asked her why she ‘refused the National Guard.’
Pelosi immediately whipped around and pointed her finger at Steinberg.
‘Shut up!’ she demanded. ‘I did not refuse the National Guard. The president didn’t send it.’
She then turned her attention to Steinberg herself, asking: ‘Why are you coming here with Republican talking points as if you are a serious journalist?’
But damning footage released last year shows Pelosi took some responsibility for the security failures on the day of the Capitol riot.
In a video shot by Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandria, while the pair were escaping from the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the former speaker could be seen asking ‘Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?’
‘They clearly didn’t know, and I take responsibility for not having them just prepared for more,’ Pelosi admitted to her chief of staff Terri McCullough in the footage.
Nancy Pelosi hit out at a reporter on Wednesday for accusing her of refusing to send in the National Guard during the January 6 Capitol riot
She accused LindellTV reporter Allison Steinberg of spreading Republican talking points
The video was published on X by Republicans leading the Committee on House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight.
At another point in the video, a frustrated Pelosi could be seen airing questions about how the riot quickly escalated, as she sat in the back seat of a car driving speedily through a Capitol complex parking garage.
‘This is ridiculous,’ the exacerbated Democrat tells her staffer in the video.
‘You’re going to ask me — in the middle of the thing when they’ve already breached the inaugural stuff — ‘should we call the Capitol Police? I mean the National Guard.”
According to findings from the now defunct January 6 select committee, Pelosi, Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other lawmakers were all shepherded by security personnel to Fort McNair in southwest Washington, D.C., as the protest raged on.
