On Tuesday, Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder demanded answers as to why the National Guard was not called in to quell Ferguson riots Monday night, insinuating that orders to withhold the armed forces may have come from the Obama administration itself.
"If you are going to have the National Guard deployed and a state of emergency declared and then hold them back, I say the governor owes the people of Missouri a lot of explanations," Kinder said during an appearance on Fox News Channel's "America's Newsroom."
"We see the National Guard rolling in this morning... where were they last night? The law-abiding citizens and business owners and taxpayers of Ferguson and the St. Louis region have a right to ask this governor to answer some questions. Why were they not in there at the first sign of an overturned police car or a smashed police car window with a show of force that would have stopped this?"
Governor Jay Nixon signed an executive order on Monday activating the Missouri National Guard to "support law enforcement during any period of unrest that might occur following the grand jury's decision concerning the investigation into the death of Michael Brown."
But as protests grew and riots erupted on the streets of Ferguson Monday night after a grand jury decided against indicting the officer responsible for shooting and killing Brown, the guard was nowhere to be found. In its absence, some 25 buildings and police cars were burned and looted, according to Fox News.
"Is the reason that the National Guard was not in there because the Obama administration and the Holder Justice Department leaned on you to keep them out? I cannot imagine any other reason why the governor who mobilized the National Guard would not have them in there to stop this."
Other than direct intervention from the Obama administration, such a decision is "inexplicable," Kinder told Fox News.
Kinder told Megyn Kelly of Fox News that Ferguson's mayor was "desperately" trying to reach Nixon during the riots, but could not get his calls returned.
"He owes us some answers beyond the flimsy clichés and empty pieties that he offered this afternoon in his press conference when one reporter put my question to him," Kinder said.
