Throughout the late afternoon, protesters repeatedly left the Capitol carrying items they had stolen. Some carried “Closed Area” signs that they had grabbed and passed like a storm. But it was something taken from spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi’s office that was especially popular with the crowd.
A person appeared holding a piece of wooden sign that marked the entrance to Pelosi’s office, which someone seemed to have pulled out of a wall. The hooligan raised it like a trophy, while hundreds of people on the steps below screamed frantically. “He is not our speaker!” shouted a woman. “Get her out of here!” another man shouted.
Richard Barnett, 60, from Gravette, Arkansas, was outside the Capitol, his shirt torn and his chest bare from the cold, bragging loudly about how he had invaded the speaker’s office.
“I wrote a nasty note for her, put my feet on her desk,” said Barnett, who goes by the nickname Bigo. He was brandishing an envelope with the header of the speaker he picked up from Ms. Pelosi’s office. He insisted he hadn’t stolen it – “I put a 25-cent coin on her table.”
Mr. Barnett continued: When the police came in with pepper spray, “I said, ‘I paid for this, it’s mine’ and left.” His face was swollen from being hit by pepper spray, but he was laughing as he entertained other protesters with his story.
His account was supported by a photo subsequently posted on social media that showed Barnett sitting at Pelosi’s table with his feet up, just as he had described.
Mr. Barnett insisted that he had just knocked on the door when he was pushed by the crowd. It was a story that he knew no one would buy. “I will probably tell them that this is what happened until DC’s arrest,” said Barnett.