WASHINGTON (AP) – “Where are they?” a Trump supporter demanded a crowd of dozens of people roam the Capitol halls, carrying Trump flags and knocking on doors.
They, legislators, staff members and more, hid under the tables, hiding in closures, praying and seeing up close and violently the fruits of the country’s divisions.
Weapons were drawn. A woman was shot dead by police and three people died in apparent medical emergencies. A Trump flag hung on the Capitol. The resounding grace stank of tear gas. Shattered glass.
On Wednesday, consecrated spaces of American democracy, one after the other, yielded to the occupation of Congress.
The crowd for Trump he assumed the presidency of the officer in the Senate, the offices of the Speaker of the House, and the Senate Chamber, where one shouted, “Trump won this election.”
They mocked their leaders, posing for photos in the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one with her feet resting on a desk in her office, another sitting in the same seat that Vice President Mike Pence had occupied only a few moments before during the procedure to certify the Voting of the Electoral College. This certification will finally take place, but not until well past midnight.
On Thursday morning there was a strong police presence at the Capitol, including officers from DC, Maryland and Virginia and the DC National Guard. But the streets were quiet.
Wednesday began as a day of reckoning for President Donald Trump’s futile attempt to cling to power when Congress adopted the certification of President-elect Joe Biden victory. It became scenes of fear and agony that left a primordial ritual of American democracy.
Trump told his people in the morning at the Ellipse that he would go with them to the Capitol, but he didn’t. Instead, he expelled them with incendiary rhetoric.
“If you don’t fight like hell, you will no longer have a country,” he said. “Let the weak come out,” he continued. “This is the moment of strength.”
His lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, told the crowd, “We’re on trial for combat.”
What happened Wednesday was nothing short of a coup attempt, said Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo. Senator Ben Sasse, R-Neb., A frequent critic of Trump, said: “Today, the United States Capitol – the world’s largest symbol of self-government – was looted while the leader of the free world stood up behind your keyboard “.
Sasse continued: “Lies have consequences. This violence was the inevitable and ugly result of the president’s addiction to constantly fueling the division. “
Police said they recovered two pipe bombs, one outside the Democratic National Committee and one outside the Republican National Committee and a refrigerator of a vehicle that had a long pistol and a Molotov cocktail on the Capitol grounds.
Still, Trump, in a video posted 90 minutes after lawmakers evacuated, told insurgents, “We love you. You’re very special, ”as he asked them to come home.
Authorities finally regained control when night fell.
Heavily armed officers took them in as reinforcements began using tear gas in a coordinated effort to get people to advance towards the gate, then combed the corridors for pursuers, pushing the crowd farther towards the square and the lawn, in clouds of tear gas, explosions. and percussion grenades.
Video footage also showed officers letting people quietly out through the gates of the Capitol despite riots and acts of vandalism. There were only about a dozen arrests in the hours after authorities regained control. They said a woman was shot earlier when the crowd tried to open a barricaded door to the Capitol, where police were armed on the other side.
She was hospitalized with a gunshot wound and then died.
At first, some inside the Capitol saw problems coming out of the windows. Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota polled people growing up on the ground shortly after Trump had addressed his supporters for the Ellipse, fueling their grievances for an election he and they say won , against all evidence.
“I looked out the windows and could see how overwhelmed the Capitol police were,” Phillips said. Under the same elevators set for Biden’s inauguration, Trump supporters clashed with police who spray-painted pepper spray in an attempt to stop them.
It didn’t work. Crowds of maskless protesters with MAGA hats tore down metal barricades at the bottom of the Capitol stairs. Some of the crowd shouted “traitors” as officers tried to hold them back. They burst into the building.
The announcements sounded: due to an “external security threat,” no one could enter or leave the Capitol complex, according to the recording. A loud bang sounded as officials detonated a suspicious package to make sure it was not dangerous.
It was around 1:15 p.m., when New Hampshire Rep. Chris Pappas, a Democrat, said Capitol police knocked on his door and “told us to leave everything, to leave as soon as possible. how could we “.
“It was impressive how quickly the protesters overwhelmed law enforcement,” he told The Associated Press.
Shortly after 2 p.m., Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Vice President Mike Pence were evacuated from the Senate as protesters and police knocked on doors.
“Protesters are in the building,” were the last words a microphone carrying a live broadcast from the Senate before it went out.
Police evacuated the room at two-thirty in the afternoon, grabbing boxes of Electoral College certificates as they left.
Phillips yelled at the Republicans, “This is for you!”
Representative Scott Peters, California, told reporters he was in the House of Representatives when protesters began assaulting it. He said security officers urged lawmakers to put on gas masks and placed them in a corner of the great hall.
“When we got to the other side of the gallery, the Republican side, they made us all go down, it was seen that they were defending some kind of aggression, it seemed,” he said. “They had a piece of furniture against the door, the door, the entrance to the ground from the roundabout and they had their weapons stretched out.” Officers eventually escorted lawmakers out of the chamber.
Shortly after they were told to put on gas masks, most of the members were quickly escorted out of the chamber. But some members stayed in the seats in the upper gallery, where they had been seated due to distance requirements.
Along with a group of journalists who had been escorted from the press area and Capitol workers acting as ushers, members lay on the floor as police secured a door to the downstairs room with their guns pointed. After making sure the hallways were clean, police quickly escorted members and others down a series of hallways and tunnels to a cafeteria in one of the House’s office buildings.
Describing the scene, Democratic Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut said “there was a point where officers had guns pointed at the door, obviously waiting for a gap in the door. It was clear that there was strength in about to pull the trigger, so they asked us all to go down to the room. ”
When he left the Capitol, Himes said he had lived in Latin America and “always assumed he could never pass here.
“We have known for four years that our democracy was in danger and hopefully this is the worst and final moment,” Himes said. “But with a president who demands these people, Republicans go out of their way to try to make people feel that democracy has been taken away from them, even though they are the ones taking the prey. It’s really hard, really sad. “I spent my whole political career on the other side. And it’s very difficult to see that.”
Illinois Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley was also on the balcony. “It’s not good to be with terrified comrades, with weapons aimed at people who have a barricade … people crying. It’s not what you want to see, ”he said.
“That’s how a coup begins,” Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif. “That’s how democracy dies.”
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Associated Press writers Ben Fox, Ashraf Khalil, Alan Fram and Michael Balsamo in Washington and Michael Casey in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed to this report.