WASHINGTON (AP) – Under battle flags named Donald Trump, Capitol attackers a bloodied police officer pinned in a door, his twisted face and screams captured on video. They fatally wounded another officer with a blunt weapon and struck a third over a railing in the crowd.
“Hang Mike Pence!” the insurgents chanted as they pushed inside, hitting the police with pipes. They also demanded that Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the house, live. They chased any lawmakers: “Where are they?” Outside stood improvised gallows, complete with sturdy wooden stairs and the snare. Guns and pipe bombs were stored in the area.
Only a few days later, the danger of one of the darkest episodes in American democracy comes into focus. The sinister nature of the assault became clear and betrayed the crowd as a force determined to occupy the inner sanctuaries of Congress and defeat leaders – Trump’s vice president and speaker under the Democratic House.
It was not just a collection of Trump supporters with MAGA bling trapped in a wave.
The revelation came in real time to Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., Arrived who briefly took over the proceedings in the living room when the mob closed Wednesday and the speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, was excited after safer quarters of a moment before everything went haywire.
AP Video
“I saw this crowd of people screaming at the glass,” he told The Associated Press on Sunday. “When I looked at their faces, it occurred to me, ‘These are not protesters.’ These are people who want to do damage. ”
“What I saw in front of me was a homemade fascism that was out of control.”
Pelosi said on Sunday ‘the evidence is that it was a well-planned, organized group with leadership and guidance and leadership. And the direction was to fetch people. She did not elaborate on this in a 60-minute interview on CBS.
The scenes of anger, violence and pain are so great that the whole of them can still get out of mind. But with countless smartphone videos coming off the scene, much of it by ardent insurgents themselves, and more lawmakers recounting the chaos around them, the contours of the uprising are increasingly coming to light.
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THE STAG
The mob has received explicit instructions from Trump and even more encouragement from the president’s men.
“Fight like hell,” Trump warned his partisans during the rally. “Let’s we hear through a fight,” pleaded his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, whose attempt to throw out election results in court has failed. It’s time to ‘start taking names and kicking a hole’, said Republican Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama.
Criminals forgiven by Trump, including Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, came forward at the rally before the attack to tell the crowd that they were fighting a battle between good and evil and that they were on the side of good. wash. On Capitol Hill, Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri gives a clenched fist salute to the hordes outside the Capitol when he arrives to address his challenge of the election results.
The crowd was pumped. Until shortly after 2 p.m., Senate Leader Mitch McConnell was at the helm of the last minutes of decorum in partnership with Pence, who served his ceremonial role as chairman of the process.
Both men supported Trump’s agenda and excused or ignored his provocations for four years, but now had no mechanism or will to undermine the election Biden won. This placed them high under the targets of the insurgents, not otherwise in the minds of the mob than the ‘socialists’.
“If this election were overthrown by mere allegations of the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral,” McConnell told his chamber, not long before things got out of hand in what lawmakers call the ‘People’s House’.
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THE RECOMMENDER
Thousands swarmed the Capitol. They charged police and metal barriers outside the building and bumped and punched officers in their path. The assault quickly pushed through the extreme police line; officers ran down a man and punched him.
In the nearby exterior, near the structure built for the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20, a man threw a red fire extinguisher at the helmet of a police officer. Then he picked up a bullhorn and threw it at officers as well.
The identity of the officer could not be immediately confirmed. But Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick, who was wounded in the chaos, died the following night; officials say he was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher.
Shortly after 2 p.m., Capitol police issued a warning to send workers into a home office to drive to underground transportation tunnels that traverse the complex. Minutes later, Pence was taken from the Senate to a secret location and police announced the closure of the Capitol. “You may move through the building (s), but stay away from windows and doors outside,” the email said. “If you’re out, seek cover.”
At 2:15 p.m., the Senate suspended its debate on the Electoral College and a voice was heard on the chamber’s sound system: “The protesters are in the building.” The doors of the living room were blocked and lawmakers inside were told they might have to move under their chairs or move to the locker rooms of the house floor because the mob had violated the Capitol Rotunda.
Even before the mob reached sealed doors of the living room, Capitol police pulled Pelosi off the podium, she said, “60 minutes.”
“I said, ‘No, I want to be here,'” she said. And they said, ‘Well, no, you have to go. “I said, ‘No, I’m not going.’ They said, “No, you have to leave.” ‘So she did.
At 2:44 p.m., when lawmakers in the living room were ready to evacuate, a gunshot was heard from outside, in the Speaker’s lobby on the other side of the barred doors. That’s when Ashli Babbit, with a Trump flag like a hood, was shot dead on camera when insurgents jumped while her blood was flowing together on the white marble floor.
The California Air Force veteran climbed through a broken window into the speaker’s lobby before a police officer shot her dead.
Back in the living room, a woman was seen on the balcony and heard screams. Why she does this only became clear later when the video spread. She shouts a prayer.
Within about ten minutes of the shooting, lawmakers and staff members of the Housemates who had rushed together during the attack were frightened into their faces, taken from the room and gallery to a safe room. The mob broke into Pelosi’s offices while members of her staff hid in one of the rooms in her suite.
“The staff went under the table and blocked the door, extinguished the lights and remained silent in the dark,” she said. “Under the table for two and a half hours.”
On the side of the Senate, Capitol police surrounded the room and ordered and locked all staff and reporters and any nearby senators in the room. At one point, about 200 people were inside; between McConnell and Democratic leader Senator Chuck Schumer stood an officer armed with a semi-automatic weapon.
Authorities then ordered an evacuation and rushed everyone to a safe place, while Senate parliamentary staff scooped up the boxes with the election collage certificates.
Although the Capitol attackers were sent with Trump’s admonition to fight, in some cases they seemed surprised that they had succeeded.
When they broke through the deserted room of the Senate, they ground around, scratched through papers, sat at desks and took videos and photos. One of them climbs on the scene and shouts, “Trump won that election!” Two others were taken down with bending shackles commonly used for mass arrests.
But outside the room, the mob’s hunt was still going on for lawmakers. “Where are they?” people could be heard screaming.
That question could also apply to reinforcements – where was it?
Around 5:30 p.m., as soon as the National Guard arrived there to replenish the overwhelming Capitol police force, a full-scale effort began to get the attackers out.
Heavily armed officers brought in when reinforcements began using tear gas in a coordinated manner to move people to the door then combed the halls for strolling. As darkness fell, they pushed the crowd further out onto the square and lawn, using officers in riot gear in full shields and clouds of tear gas, lightning and percussion grenades.
At 7:23 p.m., officials announced that people who had rushed from Congress in two nearby office buildings could leave “if anyone had to.”
Within an hour the Senate resumed its work, and the House followed and returned the House of Commons under the control of the people’s representatives. Lawmakers confirmed Biden’s election victory early the next morning, shocked by the catastrophic failure of security.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Ca., Told AP on Sunday it was as if Capitol police were “naked” against the attackers. “It turns out it was the worst kind of insecurity anyone could ever think of.”
McGovern said: ‘I was so disbelieving that it could possibly happen. These domestic terrorists were in the People’s House and desecrated the People’s House and destroyed the People’s House. ‘
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Associated Press authors Dustin Weaver in Washington and Michael Casey in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed to this report. Reeves reported from Birmingham, Alabama.