And I’m kind of monitoring that in the back of my head as I mill around. The next thing I see is a tweet that there were protesters in the Senate.ĭaniel Lippman : I knew things were getting bad when I saw DHS Federal Protective Service cars racing down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol.īurgess Everett : At that point, the Senate debate is going on-the certification there. But this was snowballing into something else. I saw some protesters start jogging toward the Capitol saying they wanted to join the action. Sarah Ferris: Amid a discussion of Arizona’s Electoral College votes, a Capitol Police official rushed to take the dais and issued a warning: “We had a breach.”ĭaniel Lippman, White House reporter : I heard that the Capitol was breached. This time, into the House chamber-laptop, wallet, car keys and my undrunk cup of coffee all left behind. We all moved, but within minutes, we were moving again. Sarah Ferris: Mid-bite of my lunch, House gallery staff-increasingly frantic themselves-warned us to get away from windows. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Subscribe on Google Podcasts They also told us where the escape hoods were located. We might be there a long time if we do have to go into lockdown, so bring all the things you need. They told us if we do go into lockdown, we’re all going to go on the balcony, take your snacks, take your cellphones. If that’s the case, we’re going to have to lock the doors and escort you to inside the chamber.” There’s a balcony that overlooks the House floor. Melanie Zanona, Congress reporter: The gallery staff started telling us, “We’re hearing we might have to go into lockdown. We were getting texts, emails, tweets, Signal, all the platforms, that there were all these threats-a potential bomb at the Library of Congress, a suspicious package. Olivia Beavers, Congress reporter: Suddenly all these sources were reaching out to us. Then the police were sprinting down the halls of Cannon, banging on doors to get staff out. The Madison building, a tiny corner of the Capitol complex, was evacuated. Sarah Ferris, Congress reporter: I was sitting in the House press gallery, just steps from the chamber, when the texts began to come in. The police said to people there to keep moving along, and the crowd, who earlier in the day were thanking the police, started saying things like, “Just disobey! Just disobey.” It was clear they wanted to occupy the building. You could see a big throng of MAGA supporters approaching from several blocks away. Tina Nguyen, White House reporter: I was standing near the intersection of Delaware and Constitution. One rioter also sprayed the police with pepper spray. At 2:04, the Capitol Police were spraying pepper spray toward the crowd and the crowd was fighting back. I was there only 10 minutes before I started seeing people using the metal barricades to push toward the Capitol. Stephen Voss, photographer: I arrived at the Capitol’s west side. And I noticed that all of a sudden there were hundreds of people just milling around in places they shouldn’t be. There’s a very strict fence that surrounds the perimeter of where you can go and where you can’t go. ![]() I kind of looked out the windows to see what was happening, and I was noticing that there were a lot of people. And, you know, that was a little unsettling. We started to see videos on Twitter of protesters outside the building, kind of overrunning the police, or trying to. ![]() Outside, thousands of people broke off from a Trump rally on the Mall and marched toward the Capitol, pushing past barriers that police had set up around the building.īurgess Everett, Co-Congressional Bureau Chief: We were in our little gallery, which is right across from the Senate chamber. But an objection by members of the House and Senate to Arizona’s result derailed the ceremony, forcing the House and Senate to debate in their separate chambers. In a joint session of Congress, members of the House and Senate met to certify the electoral vote, normally a quadrennial formality. Note on this article: The following was edited and assembled from direct recollections of the reporters, many of them overlapping in time. We asked them-as well as a photographer and two more reporters outside-to describe, by phone, what happened in those frenzied, confusing hours when the threat to American democracy came from inside the building. Five of the journalists in the building were congressional reporters for POLITICO, whose normal beats cover the far more bureaucratic daily business of Congress.
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