MO Lt Gov: Fed Pressure Only Explanation for Not Sending Guard to Ferguson

Missouri Lt. Governor Peter Kinder (R) said that pressure from federal officials was the only explanation for Missouri Governor Jay Nixon’s (D) refusal to send the National Guard to Ferguson on Tuesday’s “Kelly File” on the Fox News Channel.

“It’s [the refusal to send in the National Guard] otherwise inexplicable…the Governor of Missouri owes us all some answers. He owes us some answers beyond the flimsy cliches and empty pieties that he offered this afternoon in his press conference when one reporter put my question to him. My question was, why was the National Guard called out? Was it because, as I suspect may be the case, that officials in Washington, DC and the Obama administration and the Holder Justice Department, perhaps Eric Holder himself or someone doing his bidding leaned on the governor very hard not to call in the National Guard” he stated. Although, Kinder said he didn’t know why federal officials wouldn’t want the National Guard called in, but that Nixon’s support for sending the National Guard to Ferguson before the riots broke out and reluctance to use them during the riots was unusual.

After hearing Nixon’s explanations for not dispatching the Guard, Kinder said his responses were “an attempt to deflect the whole thing as political. It is not political when a nonpartisan elected Mayor of Ferguson is desperately trying to reach the Governor of Missouri and he can’t get his calls returned by anyone in the governor’s office so he starts calling me in the wee hours of the morning. He starts calling the Speaker of the Missouri House, the Majority Floor Leader of the Missouri House whom he happens to know and none of us wield the executive power. The executive power as commander-in-chief of the Missouri National Guard resides in the chief executive’s office, that’s the governor. Why don’t you ask him where he was last night? Was he in a command center? Where was he? Why did they hold the Guard back? Let’s get some real answers to those questions.”

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