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Pro-Trump rioters attack U.S. Capitol as lawmakers meet to certify election results
Americans watched in horror Wednesday as a mob supporting President Donald Trump scaled walls and smashed windows at the U.S. Capitol, breaching police lines to lay siege to the iconic legislature and force a temporary halt to the constitutional process of affirming the results of the presidential election.
Trump had encouraged mayhem for weeks. Speaking earlier Wednesday on the outskirts of the White House complex, he told supporters to march on Capitol Hill. They did so and succeeded in storming the Capitol Rotunda, passing through Statuary Hall, reaching the Senate chamber and the doors of the House chamber. They posed for pictures, ransacked offices and walked away with items.
One woman was fatally shot, and three other deaths were attributed to medical emergencies on the Capitol grounds over the course of the day. More than a dozen law enforcement officers were injured, and at least 52 people were arrested.
Police found a cooler full of Molotov cocktails and two pipe bombs at the nearby headquarters of the Republican and Democratic national committees.
Lawmakers were evacuated from the Senate and House floors and taken to undisclosed locations by armed guards, where they were held for hours until forces from the National Guard, Capitol Police, local metropolitan police and the FBI helped clear the building, allowing them to proceed with their constitutional imperative to certify the Electoral College count by the end of the day.
Congress finished that job early Thursday. Shortly after, the White House issued a statement from Trump that promised an “orderly transition.” The statement, in which Trump continued his false claims of victory, was tweeted by social media director Dan Scavino because Twitter had locked the president’s account.
The weight of events altered plans of a handful of Republicans to prolong the process by repeating debunked claims of widespread voter fraud – a baseless conspiracy theory pushed for weeks by Trump that motivated the rioters to storm the Capitol.
President-elect Joe Biden said that attack amounted to an assault on “public servants who work at the heart of our Republic.”
“At this hour, our democracy is under unprecedented assault unlike anything we’ve seen in modern times,” Biden said from Wilmington, Del. “This is not dissent, it’s disorder, it’s chaos. It borders on sedition. And it must end now.”
Protests had been expected. Local law enforcement officials feared violence. But the infiltration of the nation’s Capitol building and the disruption of the peaceful transfer of power shocked the nation, posing an unprecedented challenge to American democracy and cementing a turbulent end to the Trump era.
Once the grounds were cleared of rioters, members of Congress resumed debate, with bipartisan insistence that a violent mob could not intimidate or thwart the democratic process.
But confidence was shaken on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, with longtime allies of the president no longer supporting his false claims that the election was stolen from him, and with several senior White House officials submitting their resignations.
Vice President Mike Pence, who entered the day in conflict with Trump over his decision to adhere to his constitutional role simply to open — and not to reject or interfere with — the Electoral College count, was swept from his presiding seat over the Senate chamber into a secure location as soon as the building was breached.
While Trump reportedly pushed back against issuing a strong statement condemning the riot, and hesitated in sending in the National Guard, Pence was quick to repudiate the event as a criminal attack on the Capitol and worked personally with Pentagon and congressional leadership to increase security on the Hill.
Scenes of rioters scaling the storied steps of one of America’s icons of democracy appalled the nation’s allies and delighted its adversaries. Prime ministers and presidents in Europe issued statements insisting the results of the 2020 presidential election be respected, while leaders from Turkey to Venezuela mocked the country’s state of affairs.
“What happened today in Washington, D.C., is not America,” said French President Emmanuel Macron. “We believe in the strength of our democracies. We believe in the strength of American democracy.”
FEAR AND CHAOS INSIDE CAPITOL CHAMBERS
The assault began about 30 minutes after lawmakers convened at 1 p.m.
As police officers locked the House chamber from the inside, lawmakers and reporters in the room were ordered to remain in their seats and in place.
“We had a breach of the Capitol Building – that’s why we ordered a lockdown of both chambers, the House and Senate,” an officer said. “We will advise of further information as it becomes available. Please do not try to leave.”
At that moment, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican who has opposed efforts by members of her party to overturn the Electoral College result, drawing Trump’s ire, turned to stare at Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, who was in the middle of objecting to Arizona’s election results.
She appeared to tell him it was his fault, shaking her head as the proceedings stopped.
“Be prepared to get under your chairs if necessary,” the officer said from the front of the chamber, where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been sitting moments before.
It wasn’t immediately clear when Pelosi left the House chamber. Reporters sit directly above the front of the chamber and were unable to view her exit.
At that time, various bangs could be heard throughout the chamber. The bangs were not gunshots, but it wasn’t clear whether the noise was from rioters or from police barricading the chamber.
Lawmakers were advised to reach under their chairs and open self-inflating gas masks and were told tear gas had been dispersed inside the Capitol Rotunda.
On the third floor, lawmakers, reporters and staff were told to remain in place because the floor was not secure.
A table was used to barricade the main door of the House of Representatives, where the president and Congress enter during the State of the Union address.
Everyone remaining in the chamber was told to lay flat on the ground.
“Is the third floor safe?” one police officer shouted to another.
At the doors of the House chamber, police drew their guns and ordered approaching rioters to stop. At least one lawmaker, Oklahoma Rep. Markwayne Mullin, a former mixed martial arts fighter, took off his suit jacket, stood next to the police and attempted to get the rioters to leave.
They would not.
They continued to bang on the door of the chamber. A glass window pane was broken from the outside.
Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley laid next to a reporter and calmly spoke on the phone, narrating the events as they unfolded. He continued to speak as everyone on the third floor was ordered to evacuate.
In the northwest corner of the House chamber, about a half dozen rioters appeared to be in police custody. They were lying with their stomachs flat on the floor and were silent as a reporter passed by down a marble staircase about 10 feet away.
Everyone was ordered to keep moving and told that they were being led to Longworth House Office Building through an underground tunnel. Members of Congress and reporters walked alongside each other in the tunnel. Most were calm and silent.
The mob also succeeded in reaching the Senate floor, with one rioter sitting in the chair of the president of the chamber, where Pence had been sitting moments before.
Pence, who was in the chamber to preside over the official Electoral College tally before being evacuated, issued a scathing statement, characterizing the riot as an “attack on our Capitol.”
“The violence and destruction taking place at the US Capitol Must Stop and it Must Stop Now. Anyone involved must respect Law Enforcement officers and immediately leave the building,” Pence wrote on Twitter. “Peaceful protest is the right of every American but this attack on our Capitol will not be tolerated and those involved will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
For a time, the whereabouts of other senior government leaders — including Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris — were unknown.
At 3:30 p.m., law enforcement said the rioters had been cleared from the Senate side of the building. But others were seen breaking into the building by shattering windows at other locations for hours afterward.
ELECTORAL COUNT PROCEEDS
The Senate and House had convened for a joint session to count and certify the electoral votes in the House chamber. The Constitution requires that procedure to take place on Jan. 6.
As darkness fell on Washington, it remained unclear whether Congress would be able to reconvene to fulfill its duty.
Republican and Democratic leaders from the House and Senate consulted with law enforcement officials, as well as military leadership, to ensure that resuming the count on Wednesday night would be safe. They returned at 8 p.m., picking up where they left off by considering an objection to the certification of Arizona’s electors.
“To those who wreaked havoc in our capital today, you did not win,” Pence said, resuming the process. “Violence never wins. Freedom wins. And this is still the people’s house. And as we reconvene in this chamber, the world will again witness the resilience and strength of our democracy.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called the rioters “unhinged,” while Minority Leader Chuck Schumer described the events of the day as “the final, terrible, indelible legacy of the 45th president of the United States – undoubtedly our worst.”
In a statement, Pelosi said that all parties had agreed to proceed.
“Today, a shameful assault was made on our democracy,” she said. “It was anointed at the highest level of government. It cannot, however, deter us from our responsibility to validate the election of Joe Biden.”
“We always knew this responsibility would take us into the night,” the speaker continued. “The night may still be long, but we are hopeful for a shorter agenda, but our purpose will be accomplished.”
Trump has refused to acknowledge his loss to Biden, and his falsehoods about election fraud have only escalated. He has spent several days encouraging supporters to gather in D.C. He encouraged supporters to disrupt Wednesday’s vote in hopes of delaying the certification of his loss and called on Pence to reject the legitimacy of state electors – a power the vice president does not have under the Constitution.
The president, who in remarks at midday Wednesday encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol, issued a video statement during the chaos in which he doubled down on his false claims that the election was stolen from him while calling on the rioters to leave.
“You have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order,” he said. “We don’t want anybody hurt — it’s a very tough period of time.”
Twitter immediately slapped a warning label on the video and prevented users from interacting with the post: “This claim of election fraud is disputed, and this Tweet can’t be replied to, Retweeted, or liked due to a risk of violence.”
A few hours later, Twitter hid that tweet and two others and, for the first time, locked the president’s account for 12 hours, citing the “unprecedented and ongoing violent situation.”
The night before the riot, Trump wrote on Twitter that Washington would be “inundated with people who don’t want to see an election victory stolen by emboldened Radical Left Democrats.”
“Our Country has had enough, they won’t take it anymore!” he wrote. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
In his speech outside the White House on Wednesday morning, he encouraged the crowd to walk toward the Capitol and falsely told them he would go with them.
“Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on democracy, and after this, we’re going to walk down — and I’ll be there with you — we’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” he said, standing behind a shield of glass on the Eclipse along the National Mall.
“And we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them,” he said, “because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength.”
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