Keep Guard up at Capitol: D.C. cops

Pentagon officials were reviewing a request Thursday for National Guard troops to help out with security at the U.S. Capitol for another two months, as threats of more far-right violence remain heightened in the wake of January’s bloody attack.

The Capitol Police department sent the request for continued National Guard backup on the same day that law enforcement officials said a militia was scheming to attack the historic building again, less than two months after Trump supporters besieged it in a deadly attempt to stop Congress from certifying President Biden’s election.

According to a Capitol Police intelligence assessment, an unnamed militia had been devising a “possible plot” to storm the building in an attack modeled after the Jan. 6 riot, likely because Thursday was March 4 — the date when followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory falsely believed the military would reinstall Donald Trump as president.

Law enforcement agencies stepped up security on Capitol Hill in anticipation, adding more checkpoints and barbed wire fencing, making Washington look more like a city at war than it already did.

But there were no signs of unrest at the heavily-fortified Capitol on Thursday, and nearly no people milling about, except for police officers and National Guard soldiers wielding assault rifles while on patrol in tactical gear.

QAnon adherents also admitted Trump wouldn’t be inaugurated Thursday, but sought to move the goalposts again, which is a key characteristic of the deranged theory.

“No there won’t be a Trump inauguration today, as much as we’re all patiently waiting for that,” a QAnon conspiracy theorist wrote on the encrypted Telegram app, which is popular among far-right extremists. “It will happen, be patient and hold the line.”

QAnon believers, who ascribe to the outlandish belief that the U.S. government is being controlled by a Satanist cult of child trafficking Democrats, picked March 4 as the day Trump would reclaim power because it was the original presidential inauguration date until 1933.

QAnon followers were among the hundreds of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. A police officer and four others died in the attack, which Trump incited with his call for the insurrectionists to “fight like hell” to subvert Biden’s election.

The request for continued National Guard presence at the Capitol asked for a 60-day extension of the initial Jan. 6 deployment, a Pentagon official confirmed to the Daily News.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other Pentagon brass were reviewing the request late Thursday, the official said, declining to provide more details.

The roughly 5,200 National Guard soldiers who have been stationed at and near the Capitol since Jan. 6 were set to go home on March 12.

If Austin approves the extension request, a National Guard presence will remain at the Capitol until May 11.

It’s unclear if Capitol Police wants all 5,200 soldiers to stay put or if a smaller deployment would suffice. Capitol Police did not return a request for comment.

Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who served as a senior official at the Defense Department before her election to Congress, said she had gotten word that the National Guard is already getting the ball rolling on the request for continued assistance.

“The Guard is soliciting states to send contributions,” Slotkin tweeted.

The National Guard troops deployed to the Capitol are from all over the country. Roughly 540 soldiers from New York’s National Guard are among them.