WASHINGTON (AP) – Under battle flags bearing the name of Donald Trump, the Capitol attackers he covered a bloodied police officer in a doorway, his face twisted and the screams captured on video. They fatally wounded another officer with a blunt weapon and made a body with a third on a railing against the crowd.
“Penja Mike Pence!” insurgents sang as they pressed inward, hitting the police with pipes. They also demanded the location of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They hunted down all the legislators: “Where are they?” Outside, an improvised gallows stood, with sturdy wooden steps and the bow. Weapons and pipe bombs had been hidden in the vicinity.
Only days later is the extent of the danger of one of the darkest episodes of American democracy highlighted. The sinister nature of the aggression has become apparent, betraying the crowd as a determined force to occupy the inner sanctuaries of Congress and defeat leaders, including Trump’s vice president and the Democratic House president.
It wasn’t just a collection of Trump supporters with MAGA bling caught in a wave.
This revelation came in real time from Representative Jim McGovern, D-Mass., Who briefly took over the paperwork in the House of Representatives as the crowd closed on Wednesday and the speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, was excited for the safest moments. before everything was wire.
Video AP
“I saw that crowd of people yelling at that glass,” McGovern told The Associated Press on Sunday. “Seeing their faces, it occurred to me, they are not protesters. They are people who want to hurt.
“What I saw in front of me,” he said, “was basically a domestic fascism, out of control.”
Pelosi said Sunday that “the evidence is that it was a well-planned and organized group with leadership, guidance and direction. And the direction was to go find people.” He did not delve into this point in a “60-minute” interview on CBS.
The scenes of anger, violence and agony are so vast that everything can be even beyond their comprehension. But with countless smartphone videos coming out of the scene, largely from the same cheerful insurgents themselves, and more lawmakers recounting the chaos surrounding them, the contours of the revolt are shrinking. month.
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THE STAGE
The crowd received explicit orders from Trump and even more encouragement from the president’s men.
“Fight like hell,” Trump urged his supporters at the assembly rally. “We are conducting trial by combat,” implored his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who failed in his attempt to throw the election results in a courtroom trial. It’s time to “start tearing down names and kicking ass,” Republican Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama said.
Trump-pardoned criminals, including Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, showed up at rallies on the eve of the attack to tell the crowds that they were waging a battle between good and evil and that they were on the side of good. . On Capitol Hill, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri gave a clenched fist to hordes outside the Capitol as he stood up to press the challenge of the election results.
The crowd was pumped. Until shortly after 2 p.m., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was in charge of the final minutes of decorum in collaboration with Pence, who played his ceremonial role presiding over the process.
The two men had backed Trump’s agenda and excused or ignored his provocations for four years, but now they had no mechanism or will to subvert the elections Biden won. This placed them among the targets of the insurgents, who were no different in the minds of the mafia than the “socialists.”
“If these elections were overturned by mere denunciations of the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral,” McConnell said in his chamber, shortly before things got out of hand in what lawmakers call the ” Village House “.
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THE ASSAULT
Thousands had swarmed the Capitol. They charged against police and metal barricades outside the building, pushing them and hitting officers. The aggression quickly drove the vastly outdated police line; agents fell on a man and beat him.
In the melee, near the structure built for Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, a man threw a red fire extinguisher at the head of a police officer in a helmet. He then grabbed a megaphone and threw it at the officers as well.
The identity of the agent could not be confirmed immediately. But Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick, who was wounded in the chaos, died the following night; officials say he had hit him in the head with a fire extinguisher.
Shortly after 2 p.m., Capitol police sent out an alert to tell workers in an in-house office building that they were heading to the underground transportation tunnels that ran through the complex. Minutes later, Pence was taken from the Senate chamber to a secret location and police announced the closure of the Capitol. “You can move around the building (s) but stay away from exterior doors and windows,” the email said. “If you’re out, look for coverage.”
At 2:15 p.m., the Senate withdrew the debate from the Electoral College and a voice was heard about the chamber’s audio system: “Protesters are in the building.” The doors of the chamber were barricaded and lawmakers were told inside that perhaps they should go under the chairs or move to the wardrobes on the floor of the house so that the crowd has violated the Capitol roundabout.
Even before the crowd reached the closed doors of the House of Commons, Capitol police pulled Pelosi off the podium, he said at “60 minutes.”
“I said,‘ No, I want to be here, ’” he said. “And they said,‘ Well, no, you have to leave. ’I said,‘ No, I’m not leaving. ’They said,‘ No, you have to leave. ’So she did.
At 2:44 p.m., as lawmakers inside the House of Representatives were preparing to be evacuated, a shot was heard from outside, in the speaker’s lobby, on the other side of the room. barricaded doors. That’s when Ashli Babbit, who wore a Trump flag as a cloak, was shot dead in the camera while insurgents poured blood on the white marble floor.
The California Air Force veteran had climbed through a broken window in the Orador lobby before a police gun shot him down.
Back in the room of the house, he saw and heard a woman on the balcony shouting. Why he was doing this was only revealed later when the video circulated. He shouted a prayer.
About ten minutes after the shooting, House lawmakers and staff members who had been covered up during the attack, with terror etched in their faces, had been moved from the chamber and gallery to a safe room. The crowd burst into Pelosi’s offices as members of his staff hid in one of the rooms in his suite.
“Staff passed under the table with barricades at the door, turned off the lights and fell silent in the dark,” he said. “Under the table for two and a half hours.”
On the Senate side, Capitol police had circled the chamber and ordered all staff and journalists and nearby senators to enter the chamber and close it. At one point there were about 200 people inside; an armed officer with what appeared to be a semi-automatic weapon stood between McConnell and Democratic leader Sen. Chuck Schumer.
Authorities then ordered the evacuation and moved everyone to a safe place, and Senate parliamentary staff picked up the boxes containing the election collage certificates.
Although the Capitol attackers had been sent with Trump’s exhortation to fight, in some cases they seemed surprised to have arrived.
When they broke into the abandoned Senate chamber, they toured, searched papers, sat at counters, and took videos and photographs. One of them stepped up to the podium and shouted, “Trump won this election!” Two more people were photographed with flexible fists that were normally used for mass arrests.
But outside the chamber, the hunt for the mob was still in progress for lawmakers. “Where are they?” you could hear people shouting.
This question could also have been applied to reinforcements: where were they?
Around five-thirty in the afternoon, once the National Guard arrived to supply the overwhelmed Capitol Police force, a full-scale effort began to pull out the attackers.
Heavily armed officers took them in as reinforcements began using tear gas in a coordinated manner to get people to advance towards the door and then combed the corridors for the pursuers. As darkness fell, they pushed the crowd toward the plaza and lawn, using riot gear officers with full shields and tear gas clouds, explosions and percussion grenades.
At 7:23 p.m., officials announced that people housed in two Congressional office buildings could leave “if anyone needs it.”
An hour later, the Senate had resumed its work and the House followed it, returning the People’s House to the control of the people’s representatives. Lawmakers claimed Biden’s election victory early in the morning, impacted by the catastrophic failure of security.
Maxine Waters, D-Ca., Told AP Sunday it was as if Capitol police were “naked” against the attackers. “It turns out it was the worst kind of security anyone could have imagined.”
McGovern said: “I was so incredulous that this could happen. These national terrorists were in the People’s House, desecrating the People’s House, destroying the People’s House. “
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Associated Press writers Dustin Weaver in Washington and Michael Casey in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed to this report. Reeves reported from Birmingham, Alabama.