By MARY CLARE JALONICK, ANDREW TAYLOR, LISA MASCARO and CALVIN WOODWARD
WASHINGTON (AP) – “Where are they?” a Trump supporter demanded in a crowd of dozens wandering the Capitol corridors, carrying Trump flags and knocking on doors.
They – lawmakers, officials and more – were hiding under the tables, crouched in confinements, offering prayers and seeing the fruits of the country’s divisions up close and violent.
The weapons were drawn. One woman was shot and killed by the police and three others died in apparent medical emergencies. A Trump flag hanging from the Capitol. The graceful Rotunda smelled of tear gas. Shattered glass.
On Wednesday, sacred spaces of American democracy, one after another, gave in to the occupation of Congress.
The pro-Trump crowd took the chair of the president in the Senate, the offices of the mayor and the Senate platform, where one shouted, “Trump won that election.”
They scoffed at their leaders, posing for pictures in the office of Mayor of the Chamber, Nancy Pelosi, one with his feet propped up on a table in his office, the other sitting in the same place that Vice President Mike Pence occupied only moments before during the procedures to certify the Electoral College Vote.
This started as a day of reckoning for President Donald Trump’s futile attempt to hold onto power when Congress passed President-elect Joe Biden’s certification of victory. It evolved into scenes of fear and agony that left one of the main rituals of American democracy in shambles.
Trump told his morning crowd at Ellipse that he would go with them to the Capitol, but he didn’t. Instead, he sent them away with incendiary rhetoric.
“If you don’t fight like the devil, you won’t have a country anymore,” he said. “Let the weak ones out,” he continued. “This is a moment of strength.”
His lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, told the crowd, “We are going to do the trial by combat.”
What happened on Wednesday was nothing short of an attempted coup, said MP Diana DeGette, D-Colo. Senator Ben Sasse, R-Neb., A frequent critic of Trump, said: “Today, the United States Capitol – the world’s greatest symbol of self-government – has been looted while the leader of the free world has cowered behind his keyboard. “
Sasse continued: “Lies have consequences. This violence was the inevitable and horrible result of the president’s addiction to feeding the division constantly. “
Police said they had recovered two barrel bombs, one outside the Democratic National Committee and one outside the Republican National Committee and a refrigerator for a vehicle that had a long gun and a Molotov cocktail on Capitol Hill.
However, Trump, in a video posted 90 minutes after lawmakers were evacuated, told the rebels “We love you. You are very special ”, when asking them to go home.
The authorities finally regained control as night fell.
Heavily armed officers brought in as reinforcements began to use tear gas in a coordinated effort to get people moving towards the door, then scanned the corridors for stragglers, pushing the crowd further out of the square and onto the lawn. clouds of tear gas, flash-bangs and percussion grenades.
Video footage also showed police officers allowing people to calmly leave the Capitol, despite the unrest and vandalism. Only about a dozen arrests were made in the hours after the authorities regained control. They said a woman was shot earlier while the crowd tried to break into a blocked door on the Capitol, where the police were armed on the other side.
She was hospitalized with a gunshot wound and then died.
Early on, some inside the Capitol saw the problem coming out of the windows. Democratic Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota surveyed the growing crowd at the site not long after Trump addressed his supporters through Ellipse, fueling his complaints about an election he and they say he won, against all evidence.
“I looked out the windows and could see how the Capitol police were at a disadvantage,” said Phillips. Under the risers themselves set up for Biden’s possession, Trump supporters clashed with the police who spread pepper spray in an attempt to contain them.
Did not work. Crowds of unmasked demonstrators wearing the MAGA hat knocked down metal barricades at the bottom of the Capitol steps. Some in the crowd shouted “traitors” as officers tried to keep them at bay. They broke into the building.
Announcements rumbled: Due to an “external security threat”, no one could enter or leave the Capitol complex, the recording said. A loud bang sounded when officers detonated a suspicious package to make sure it was not dangerous.
It was about 1:15 pm when New Hampshire deputy Chris Pappas, a Democrat, said the Capitol police knocked on his door and “told us to drop everything and get out as soon as possible.”
“It was amazing how quickly the police were dominated by these protesters,” he told the Associated Press.
Shortly after 2 pm, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Vice President Mike Pence were evacuated from the Senate while protesters and police shouted outside.
“The protesters are in the building,” were the last words caught by a microphone that broadcast a live broadcast from the Senate before hanging up.
The police evacuated the chamber at 2:30 pm, picking up boxes of certificates from the Electoral College on their way out.
Phillips shouted at the Republicans, “This is because of you!”
Representative Scott Peters, D-Calif., Told reporters he was in the Chamber of Deputies when protesters started attacking her. He said security officials asked lawmakers to put on gas masks and led them to a corner of the huge room.
“When we moved to the other side of the gallery, the Republican side, they brought us down, it looked like they were defending themselves from some kind of attack,” he said. “They had furniture leaning against the door, the door, at the entrance to the Rotunda floor, and they had weapons drawn.” Police officers finally escorted lawmakers out of the chamber.
Shortly after being ordered to put on gas masks, most members were quickly escorted out of the chamber. But some members remained in the upper gallery seats, where they had sat down due to distance requirements.
Along with a group of reporters who were escorted from the press area and Capitol workers who act as gatekeepers, the members lowered themselves to the floor as the police closed the chamber door with pointed guns. After making sure the corridors were clean, the police quickly escorted members and others through a series of corridors and tunnels to a cafeteria in one of the City’s office buildings.
Describing the scene, Democratic Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut said that “there was a point where police officers had their guns aimed at the door, they obviously expected a breach in the door. It was clear that we were very close to pulling the trigger, so they asked all of us to get down in the chamber. “
Upon leaving the Capitol, Himes said he lived in Latin America and “always assumed that it could never happen here.
“We have known for years that our democracy is in danger and this is, hopefully, the worst and the final moment of it,” said Himes. “But with a president urging these people on, with Republicans doing everything they can to try to make people feel that their democracy has been taken from them, even though they are responsible for taking it, it is very difficult, very sad. I spent my entire political career looking for the other side. And it is very difficult to see that. “
Illinois Democratic MP Mike Quigley was also on the porch. “It is not good to be around terrified colleagues, with guns aimed at people who have a barricade … people crying. It’s not what you want to see, ”he said.
“This is how a coup starts,” said Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif. “This is how democracy dies.”
___
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.