National Guard officials who were with Walker on January 6 when pro-Trump rioters breached the US Capitol testified that Walker “seriously contemplated aloud the possibility of breaking with the chain of command,” the report says.

“Should we just deploy now and resign tomorrow?” one National Guard lieutenant recalled Walker bluntly putting it, the report states.

“I would have done just that,” Walker said, “but not for those two letters” from his superiors curtailing Guard redeployment, according to the committee report.

Controversy has swirled over the delay in sending National Guard troops to the US Capitol on January 6 with members of both parties seeking to blame one another for the lack of reinforcements that day.

The committee’s final report undercuts claims by Donald Trump that he authorized the deployment of thousands of National Guard troops prior to January 6, as well as findings from the GOP analysis of security breakdowns that day which places blame squarely on Democratic leaders in Congress.

The committee also noted that because the Justice Department was leading the federal agency response to January 6, Trump’s plan to replace the acting attorney general with Jeffrey Clark would have been disastrous.

The Justice, Homeland Security and the Defense departments discussed who would take the lead, as Trump was considering installing Clark, who was sympathetic to him blocking the congressional certification of the vote.

“Had Clark ultimately been appointed, and had he been placed in charge of the Federal security response to the violence on January 6th, the situation could have been materially worse,” the committee writes in its report.

A law firm representing Clark sent out a new statement on his behalf Thursday night, attacking the House panel as too political and calling for a Republican-led House investigation into ” intelligence and security perimeter failures that led to a group of rioters bursting into the Capitol.”