Page:CTRL0000034609 - Transcribed Interview of Kashyap Pramod Patel, (December 9, 2021).pdf/74

74. Like, 4:30, 5 o'clock at night, hours after the Capitol was breached.

The Witness. Okay. So you're asking me to speculate on a statement—


 * BY .: [sic]

Yes, I am.

—that was, now we've found out, made at 4:00, 1600 in the afternoon.

I don't know how I can answer that beyond—if you want me to guess, I'll guess. But I can't really answer that question. It's a hypothetical.

You're, at the time, chief of staff to the Acting Secretary of Defense

Uh-huh.

—focused very much on, from your prior testimony, the deployment of the National Guard, trying your best to sort of quell the unrest.

Uh-huh.

Would that job, that overall mission, have been made easier if the President of the United States had said earlier, "Go home, don't be violent"?

Well, I'm not a soldier at that day—

Okay.

—so I wasn't in uniform, so I can't tell you if it would've been easier in the streets to do that job. Our job was to mobilize, deploy, and employ them. That was not interrupted by anything on that day, as I recall.

Yeah. Okay. You really haven't answered my question, but we can move on.

Mr. Sofer. Actually, just for the record, I think he's answered it a number of times. And you're asking for rank speculation.

Yeah. I'm asking whether the chief of staff to the Acting Secretary of Defense thinks it would've enhanced the mission of the Department of Defense if there