With the police in the lead, guns drawn, the group stumbled into chaos, Crow said. Some policemen rushed to barricade other doors to block the crowd. Others arrested some protesters on the ground to allow lawmakers to pass.
Because of efforts to restrict the number of people in the chamber, several lawmakers and advisers were taking shelter in their offices, scattered throughout the complex. Some were not contacted by the police, even when they barricaded themselves inside.
Many of the members of the House remained in a safe place, where they may have been exposed to someone with the coronavirus, the Assistant Physician’s Office said on Sunday.
Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester, a Democrat from Delaware, lobbied a handful of Republicans to wear masks to no avail. Representatives Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from New York, and Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, periodically updated the room, while lawmakers called their families and checked on their employees.
On the Senate side of the Capitol, the troublemakers came dangerously close to lawmakers. As they approached, a fast-thinking Capitol policeman pushed one of them over, then stepped back and the crowd chased him. The officer ‘s maneuver helped drive the crowd away from a Senate entrance several meters away, according to a video taken by Igor Bobic, a reporter for HuffPost.
In a safe, undisclosed location, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, shouted at Senate weapons sergeant Michael C. Stenger, demanding a plan and ordering him to release the protesters, according to one person in the room . Mr. Stenger was wandering, said the person, without inspiring confidence that he was in control of the situation. He has since resigned, as has Chief Sund. Across the Capitol, urgent voices crackled on police radios giving details of the siege that was taking place.
“There was definitely a greater sense of urgency” in police radio traffic when protesters invaded the east side of the Capitol, said Ashan M. Benedict, head of the field office for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Washington , who was working with the Capitol Police at the neighboring Republican Party headquarters, where a bomb was found.