A colonel who was the highest lawyer for the D.C. Nationwide Guard in the course of the Jan. 6, 2021, rebel is accusing Army officers of retaliating towards him for disputing two generals’ account of why the Nationwide Guard was gradual to deploy in the course of the assault on the Capitol.
In a whistleblower reprisal criticism filed in October and made public this week, Col. Earl Matthews, now a member of the Army Reserve, alleged he was handed over for promotion and publicly kicked out of a convention he was assigned to for work in retaliation for testifying to Congress that two Army generals had been “absolute and unmitigated liars” in how they described the navy’s response to the rebel.
“The retaliatory actions taken towards Col. Matthews are a textbook instance of the vice [the whistleblower protection law] was supposed to each treatment and deter,” his legal professionals wrote of their criticism on his behalf to the Protection Division.
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Army spokesperson Cynthia Smith declined to remark straight on Matthews’ criticism, which was first reported by The New York Instances, as a result of it’s an “ongoing motion.”
However Smith added that “the Army’s actions on January sixth have been well-documented and reported on” and that Army officers “stand by all testimony and info supplied thus far, and vigorously reject any allegations on the contrary.”
Through the Jan. 6 rebel, through which supporters of then-President Donald Trump overran the Capitol in an try to forestall lawmakers from certifying President Joe Biden’s victory within the 2020 election, the Nationwide Guard took greater than three hours to deploy to assist besieged Capitol and D.C. law enforcement officials regain management of the constructing.
Each a Pentagon inspector common report and a report from the Home committee that investigated the Jan. 6 assault concluded that no Pentagon officers intentionally delayed the deployment. However debate and disputes over the precise occasions within the Pentagon that day proceed to rage.
After the inspector common’s report was launched in November 2021, Matthews despatched a memo to the Home Jan. 6 committee and a Senate committee accusing two Army officers of deceptive each the inspector common and Congress.
On the coronary heart of the dispute is whether or not Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt and Gen. Charles Flynn delayed deploying the Guard over considerations in regards to the optics of sending troops to the Capitol. Piatt is the director of the Army employees. Flynn, who’s now the commanding common of U.S. Army Pacific, was a deputy chief of employees on the Army on the time. Flynn’s brother is Michael Flynn, a retired lieutenant common who was one of many Trump allies who pushed for the navy to grab voting machines after Biden gained the election.
Native D.C. officers and D.C. Nationwide Guard officers have testified Piatt and Charles Flynn expressed considerations about optics throughout a frantic telephone name on Jan. 6 the place D.C. and Capitol officers pleaded for assist. Piatt has denied ever utilizing the phrase “optics,” however he acknowledged to the Jan. 6 committee that he believed utilizing the Guard was “not my finest navy judgment or my finest navy recommendation.” Flynn testified he did not take part within the name however was fleetingly within the room.
“Gen. Flynn and Lt. Gen. Piatt have been open, sincere and thorough of their sworn testimony with Congress and DoD investigators,” Smith stated in her emailed assertion.
However Matthews’ December 2021 memo to Congress accused the 2 officers of offering “perjured testimony.”
Since sending the memo, Matthews hasn’t been promoted regardless of a promotion board recommending in November 2022 that he be promoted to brigadier common after discovering he was among the many “finest certified” of a bunch of reserve colonels, in keeping with his whistleblower reprisal criticism. The board’s advice “displeased a number of senior officers inside the Pentagon and the Workplace of the Chief of the Army Reserve,” the criticism alleged.
Moreover, the criticism alleged that Army officers had safety escort Matthews out of a resort in February after falsely accusing him of being disruptive at a seminar on the resort. Matthew was assigned to the seminar as a part of his reserve responsibility, and eradicating him early resulted “within the lack of navy pay and reserve retirement factors,” the criticism stated.
“What believable cause might there have been to take away a senior colonel, with an unblemished file of service, beneath such circumstances, besides as reprisal for protected disclosures that negatively impacted a serving common officer who had accountability for the Conflict Faculty?” the criticism stated. “There may be none.”
The criticism requested for Matthews to be promoted to brigadier common and for many who retaliated towards him to be reprimanded or in any other case disciplined.
“If public confidence within the integrity of presidency operations is to be restored,” the criticism stated, “he should be made complete and the accountable officers appropriately disciplined.”
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