The sheer savagery of the crowd that invaded the Capitol that day was breathtaking, as cataloged by the injuries inflicted on those who tried to protect the nation’s elected legislators. One policeman lost an eye, the other a fingertip. Another was shocked so many times with a Taser gun that he had a heart attack.
They suffered broken ribs, two broken spinal discs and multiple concussions. At least 81 members of the Capitol force and 65 members of the Metropolitan Police Department were injured, not to mention the police officer killed that day or two others who later died of suicide. Some officers described the situation as worse than when they served in combat in Iraq.
And through it all, President Donald J. Trump served as an inspiration, if not a catalyst. Even while he was speaking at a rally before, supporters could be heard on the video responding to him shouting, “Take the Capitol!” Then they talked about calling the president at the White House to report what they had done. And at least one of his supporters read on a megaphone one of the president’s furious tweets to cheer the crowd up.
Although Trump escaped conviction, the Senate impeachment trial served at least one purpose: it sewed up the most comprehensive and scary account to date of last month’s mortal attack on Capitol Hill, ensuring that the former president’s name will be inextricably associated to a violent attempt to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, the first in American history. In the new details he revealed and in the minute-by-minute methodical montage of known facts he presented, the trial was revealing to many Americans – and even to some who experienced the events.
There were almost accidents when the invaders, some wearing military-style tactical equipment, some carrying baseball bats or flagpoles or seized police shields, came just several dozen steps from the vice president and members of Congress. There was an almost medieval physical combat captured on camera body shots and the panicked voices of policemen on police dispatch tapes calling for help. In the weeks before January 6, there were more open signs about the coming violence on social media than many lawmakers had realized.
“Until we prepared for this trial, I did not know the extent of many of these facts,” Rep. Madeleine Dean, a Democrat from Pennsylvania and one of the managers, told senators on Saturday. “I witnessed the horror, but I didn’t know. I did not know how deliberate the president’s planning was, how he had invested in it, how many times he incited his supporters with these lies, how carefully and consistently he incited them to violence on January 6. “
However, despite all the moving narrative of that day and the weeks leading up to the Senate floor presentation, what was also surprising after it was over was how many questions remained unanswered on issues such as funding and crowd leadership, extension of coordination with extremist groups, the collapse in security and the failure in various sectors of the government to heed intelligence alerts about impending violence.
And then, more especially, what the president was doing at the time the Capitol was being ransacked, a point that several hesitant Republican senators tried to clarify by asking questions to the prosecution and defense and that briefly broke out on Saturday.
House managers were able to submit a statement by a Republican Congresswoman, Jaime Herrera Beutler, of Washington, describing what she was told about a phone call full of profanity that California deputy Kevin McCarthy made with Trump in the middle of the attack.
Ms. Herrera Buetler said that McCarthy, the Republican leader of the House, told her that when he pleaded with the president for help with the call, Trump appeared to be on the side of the protesters who interrupted the counting of votes at the Electoral College ratifying his defeat. “I think these people are more upset about the election than you are,” Trump told the Republican House leader when he spoke.
The Trump camp never provided a definitive and official account of the former president’s knowledge or actions during the attack. But advisers who spoke on condition of anonymity told reporters that he was initially satisfied, undisturbed, that his supporters hindered the election count and that he never contacted Vice President Mike Pence to verify his safety, even after he was evacuated from the chamber. of the Senate.
Resisting calls from Republican allies like McCarthy to explicitly cancel the attack, Trump gave an ambiguous message that day, embracing protesters and endorsing his cause while calling for peace and telling them to go home. While one of his lawyers told the Senate on Friday that “in no time” Trump was informed that the vice president was in danger, this was contradicted by a phone call described by Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama.
Despite conflicting and sometimes fragmented reports, the House decided to proceed with impeachment and the trial without conducting a real investigation or calling witnesses, eager to end the constitutional confrontation quickly so that President Biden could continue his agenda.
The managers concluded that the available record was convincing enough to make a judgment, but they admitted gaps in their knowledge. “We have not known for a long time about what happened that day,” said Representative Joaquin Castro, a Democrat from Texas, at a time of the presentations.
Trump’s defense team tried to use this against managers, arguing that they reliably relied on unverified news and social media posts. “House administrators did not investigate anything,” said Michael T. van der Veen, one of the former president’s lawyers. “The American people deserve much more than coming here without any evidence, rumor about rumor about rumor about rumor.”
But Trump’s lawyers evidently made little or no inquiries on their own client, as they were unable to answer specific questions from senators about what the president knew and did during the unrest. And Mr. Trump rejected an invitation from House managers to testify and clear up any confusion.
Even so, however incomplete, the presentations of the last five days clarified and framed the events of January 6. Managers displayed images from Capitol security cameras and recordings of police dispatches that had never been released before while collecting the enormous volume of videos and photographs posted on social media and other accounts by reporters, police, protesters and members of Congress and their teams.
Some of the senators first discovered how close the attackers were to them. Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah, did not realize until the tape was played in the Senate floor that the officer who saved him from running straight to protesters that day was Officer Eugene Goodman, famous for facing the crowd alone.
“Obviously, it was very worrying to see the great violence that our Capitol Police and others have been subjected to,” Romney told reporters. “It tears your heart and brings tears to your eyes. This was extremely distressing and emotional. “
After the break from the trial, Romney approached Officer Goodman to thank him and listen to the policeman’s own account of the day, including inhaling bear spray and tear gas while trying to ward off the crowd of lawmakers in his chamber.
Perhaps the most striking new details are the audio and video recordings of other officers trying – and failing – to protect the Capitol. Radio communication became more and more frantic, with an officer saying against a noise in the background: “We were flanked and we lost the line”. Another said, “They are throwing metal poles at us.” They were attacked with bear spray and some kind of fireworks. An officer was dragged down a flight of stairs; another was beaten after falling to the ground.
The managers also documented the scale of the desecration of the building itself. A worker had to clean feces off a wall. Another had to clean the blood. And as with a revolution in a distant country, it was the sounds of that day that some remembered most vividly: the knocking on the building’s door, the crash when the glass was broken, the whispers of aides hiding from the crowd. “The sound of these windows bursting, I will not forget that sound,” said a congressman, quoted in audio.
How much Mr. Trump was to blame for the attack documented in such painful detail was left to the Senate to decide. The defense team condemned the administrators of the Chamber who are suing the case for inflaming the senators-jurors with “manipulated video” that, she said, proved only that the troublemakers committed crimes, not that the former president did.
But even so, the managers’ presentation emphatically highlighted how much some of the hooligans thought they were acting on behalf of Trump or even on behalf of an instruction, whether he knew it or not. In a video they self-integrated, an intruder even picked up a phone in a confiscated Capitol office and laughed about calling the president to report what they had done.
“Let’s call Trump, yes!” the man shouted. “Man, man, let’s tell Trump what’s going on.” When a compatriot suggested that Mr. Trump would be displeased, the first man disagreed. “No, just say that we love you. ‘We love you, bro!’ He’ll be happy – what do you mean? We are fighting for Trump! “
In a fascinating juxtaposition of the message that was delivered and how it was received, managers showed a video taken from the crowd’s point of view as Mr. Trump addressed supporters at an Ellipse rally, just before they marched to the Capitol and besiege the building.
When Mr. Trump declared that they should “retake our country” and “show strength”, some at the bottom of the crowd, presumably out of earshot, started shouting: “Invading the Capitol”, “Invading the Capitol building “and” Take the Capitol! ” Mr. Trump went on to say that when they addressed the Capitol, they should “make their voices heard in a peaceful and patriotic way”, but the word “peacefully” was clearly not absorbed by the crowd and was crushed by the many times he said they they must “fight” or “fight like hell”.
Another video played by Castro showed a Trump supporter on the Capitol later using a megaphone to read to the crowd a tweet from the president attacking Pence for lack of “courage”, infuriating the crowd. Some of the protesters that day searched for the vice president at the Capitol, shouting “Hang Mike Pence!” even when a gallows was raised outside.
But what really impressed some senators, particularly the handful of Republicans open to condemnation, was what Trump did next – or what he didn’t. Despite calls from McCarthy, other allies, key advisers and his daughter Ivanka Trump, the president was even more focused on pressing his efforts to block the election than on helping his vice president and Congress.
When he called Tuberville, according to House officials, he was not looking to see if he could help, but to reiterate his objections to the electoral voting process.
Tuberville, one of the former president’s strongest allies, told reporters he didn’t have time for this because the crowd was arriving. “Sir. President, they removed the vice president,” he recalls saying. “They want me to hang up the phone. I have to go.”
Matthew Rosenberg, Mark Mazzetti and Michael S. Schmidt contributed reports.