WASHINGTON (AP) – “Where are they?” demanded a Trump supporter in a crowd of dozens roaming the halls of the Capitol, with Trump flags and banging on doors.
They – lawmakers, staff, and more – hid under tables, squatted in lockdowns, said prayers, and saw the fruits of the country’s divisions up close and violently.
Guns were drawn. One woman was shot by police and three others died in apparent medical emergencies. A Trump flag hung on the Capitol. The graceful Rotunda reeked of tear gas. Shattered glass.
On Wednesday, one after another of the sacred sites of American democracy yields to the occupation of Congress.
The pro-Trump crowd took over the chair of the presiding officer in the Senate, the speaker’s offices of the House and the Senate lineup, shouting, “Trump has won that election.”
They scoffed at the leaders and posed for photos in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, one with his feet on a desk in her office, another sitting in the same chair. Electoral college ballot. That certification would eventually take place, but not until well after midnight.
There was a heavy police presence in the Capitol on Thursday morning, 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 stay in power when Congress took over the certification of President-elect Joe Biden. victory. It turned into scenes of fear and pain that shattered a primary ritual of American democracy.
Trump told his morning audience at the Ellipse that he was going to go to the Capitol with them, but he didn’t. Instead, he dismissed them with inflammatory rhetoric.
“If you don’t fight hard, you have no land,” he said. “Let the weak out,” he continued. “This is a time for strength.”
His lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, told the crowd, “Let’s face a fight.”
What happened Wednesday was nothing short of a coup attempt, Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo. Senator Ben Sasse, R-Neb., A frequent Trump critic, said, “Today the United States Capitol – the world’s greatest symbol of self-government – was looted as the leader of the free world cringed behind his keyboard.”
Sasse continued: ‘Lies have consequences. This violence was the inevitable and ugly result of the president’s addiction to continual division. “
Police said they recovered two pipe bombs, one outside the Democratic National Committee and one outside the Republican National Committee, and a cool box from a vehicle with a long pistol and a Molotov cocktail on Capitol grounds.
Still, in a video 90 minutes after lawmakers were evacuated, Trump said to the insurgents, “We love you. You are very special ”, while you asked them to go home.
Authorities eventually regained control when night fell.
Heavily armed agents brought in when reinforcements began using tear gas in a coordinated effort to move people to the door, then scoured the halls looking for stragglers, pushing the crowd further up the plaza and lawn, in clouds of tear gas, flashy blows and percussion grenades.
Video footage also showed agents quietly letting people walk the doors of the Capitol despite the riots and vandalism. Only about a dozen arrests were made in the hours after authorities regained control. They said a woman had previously been shot when the crowd tried to break through a barricaded door in the Capitol, where police were armed on the other side.
She was hospitalized with a gunshot wound and later died.
Some in the Capitol early on saw the problems outside the windows. Minnesota Democratic Representative Dean Phillips investigated the growing crowd on the property not long after Trump addressed his supporters through the Ellipse, feeding their grievances over an election he and they say he won, against all evidence.
“I looked out the windows and could see how unmanned the Capitol Police was,” Phillips said. Among the uprisings set up for Biden’s inauguration, Trump supporters collided with police who destroyed pepper spray in an attempt to stop them.
It did not work. Throngs of maskless protesters wearing MAGA caps demolished metal barricades at the bottom of the steps of the Capitol. Some in the crowd shouted “traitors” as agents tried to stop them. They broke into the building.
Announcements blared: Due to an “outside security threat”, no one could enter or leave the Capitol complex, the recording said. There was a loud bang as officials detonated a suspicious package to make sure it wasn’t dangerous.
It was about 1:15 PM when New Hampshire Rep. Chris Pappas, a Democrat, said the Capitol police banged on his door and “said we should drop everything and get out as soon as possible.”
“It was breathtaking how quickly law enforcement officials were overwhelmed by these protesters,” he told The Associated Press.
Shortly after 2 p.m., Republican Senator Chuck Grassley from Iowa and Vice President Mike Pence were evacuated from the Senate as protesters and police shouted outside the doors.
“Protesters are in the building,” were the last words picked up by a microphone with a live feed from the Senate before it was shut down.
The police evacuated the room at 2:30 PM and picked up boxes with certificates from the electoral college upon departure.
Phillips shouted at Republicans, “This is because of you!”
Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., Told reporters he was in the room of the House when protesters started storming it. He said security agents were urging lawmakers to put on gas masks and herd them into a corner of the huge room.
“When we got to the other side of the gallery, the Republican side, they let us all go down, you could see they were fighting off some sort of attack, it seemed,” he said. “They had a piece of furniture against the door, the door, the entrance to the floor from the Rotunda, and guns were drawn.” The officers eventually escorted the lawmakers out of the room.
Shortly after being told to put on gas masks, most of the members were quickly escorted from the room. But some members remained in the upper gallery seats, where they had sat due to distance requirements.
Along with a group of reporters escorted from the press room and Capitol officials acting as ushers, the members dove to the floor as police rifled guns secured a door to the room below. After clearing the corridors, police quickly escorted members and others through a series of corridors and tunnels to a cafeteria in one of the House’s office buildings.
Describing the scene, Democratic Representative Jim Himes from Connecticut said, “There was a moment when officers had their guns and weapons pointed at the door, they clearly expected a break through the door. Obviously we were about to pull the trigger so they all asked us to come into the room. ”
When he left the Capitol, Himes said he had lived in Latin America and “always assumed it could never happen here.
“We’ve known for four years that our democracy was in danger and this is hopefully the worst and last moment of it,” said Himes. “But now that a president is urging these people, while the Republicans are doing everything they can to make the people feel that their democracy has been taken from them, even though they are the ones taking it, it’s really hard, very sad. I have spent my entire political career reaching the other side. And it’s really hard to see this. ”
The Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley from Illinois was also on the balcony. “It’s no good being around terrified colleagues, with weapons aimed at barricaded people … people crying. Not what you want to see, ”he said.
“This is how a coup got started,” said Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif. “This is 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.