Arkansas governor: Intelligence on state capitol protests ‘not to the level that I’m bringing out the National Guard’

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) said his office is monitoring the potential for violence at planned protests at the state capitol but has not yet felt the need to deploy the National Guard.

“You want to be overprepared versus underprepared because you never want to see a repeat of what we saw on January 6 in our nation’s capital,” Hutchinson said on “Fox News Sunday,” adding that “it’s not to the level that I’m bringing out the National Guard.”

“We’re using civilian law enforcement, we’ll have response teams there, we’ll have beefed-up presence at the capitol for Tuesday,” he said.

“We don’t have any specific intelligence that there’s going to be violence associated with those rallies but we want to be extra cautious,” he added. “Every state has to look at their own intelligence matrix and make those kind of judgments.”

Host Chris Wallace noted that one of the most notorious images of the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol, depicting a man with his feet up on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) desk, depicts an Arkansan, Richard Barnett, and that another Arkansan has been arrested for allegedly beating a police officer with a flagpole.

“Is there an element in your state that you believe poses a threat to our government?” Wallace asked.

Hutchinson, a former U.S. Attorney, replied that he thinks that “there is a historic threat from militia groups” as well as neo-Nazi and white supremacist organizations … That’s been diminished but I’d say most states have elements of that threat, it exists in Arkansas as well.”

Wallace went on to ask Hutchinson if he believed President Trump bears responsibility for inciting the rioting at the U.S. Capitol. Trump spoke to his supporters before they stormed the Capitol, and the House last week impeached Trump over his role in the siege, making him the only president to be impeached twice.

“He asked all the people to come to Washington for the rally and then he used very aggressive language in the rally itself and he misled people as to what happened during the election, that it was stolen and that our checks and balances are not working,” Hutchinson replied.

Trump’s challenge to the results of the election “was wrong and did not serve our nation well and it was demonstrated on January 6,” he added.