House impeachment managers had senators riveted on Wednesday to disturbing new security camera video that showed just how close the rioters that breached the U.S. Capitol came to lawmakers in the House and Senate chambers.
Wednesday’s images, from several angles outside the chambers and in hallways outside leadership offices, showed one Capitol police officer run past Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney and direct him to turn around and run, as rioters were closing in on that location just off the Senate floor.
Ominously, the video also showed staffers for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi move to hide behind a door in what is typically a secure office suite that minutes later was overrun by a mob that repeatedly tried to break down that same door.
Wednesday was the first of two days for the nine managers to present their case. After they finish on Thursday, the floor turns to Trump’s defense.
One by one, the impeachment managers have been methodically re-creating a timeline. They went back months to try to show that former President Donald Trump not only incited rioters at the rally on Jan. 6, but that he laid the foundation to sow doubt in the outcome of the election that led to violence.
They argued Trump repeatedly claimed any loss on Nov. 3 meant the election was “rigged” in rallies, tweets and speeches, and that he knew those who organized and attended the rally backed his effort to “stop the steal.” The House members walked through how after various failed efforts to undermine the elections — including pushing state officials to overturn results, legal challenges and other attempts at intimidation — Trump was left with the focus on the last day, the day Congress met to count and certify the electoral votes.
Lead manager Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., asserted that Trump was “no innocent bystander” and that he “surrendered his role as commander-in-chief and became the inciter-in-chief.”
“He told them to fight like hell, and they brought us hell on that day,” Raskin said.
Managers previewed that they planned to share video and audio clips that had not been previously released. The edited video montage they aired on Tuesday was jarring in that it reminded lawmakers of what it was like that day, but the images revealed Wednesday showed how much worse it could have been.
Delegate Stacy Plaskett, from the Virgin Islands, used a graphic of the Capitol building showing the layout of the Senate and House chambers alongside new security video showing where and how insurrectionists crashed through windows and doors using bats and flags not far from the Senate chamber.
She noted one member of the right wing group the Proud Boys was among those leading the breach. Plaskett also played audio of police calling for backup and declaring the scene a riot as they reported many in the mob had weapons and bear spray.
The images and timeline revealed how the crowd moved quickly to overrun those U.S. Capitol police in key areas throughout the building, and in one case just 100 feet or so from where then-Vice President Mike Pence was sheltering.
Reporters in the building on Jan. 6 noted that Pence was quickly pulled off the Senate floor to a secure room, but the new video showed him being evacuated briskly by security down a back hallway, with the graphic from Plaskett denoting how close the rioters were.
She emphasized they were hunting for Pence “to execute” him, because he was viewed as a traitor after he declined to bend to Trump’s demands to overturn the election results.
She pulled statements from criminal indictments of those arrested, noting that one said if they had found Speaker Pelosi, “they would have killed her.”
The security footage also showed how plainly outnumbered the U.S. Capitol police officers in and around the chambers were in the face of what looked like scores, if not hundreds of people dressed in fatigues, wielding flags and pounding on doors to offices and the House chamber. It depicted hand-to-hand combat between a group of police and rioters just feet from the House floor.
“They were coming for us,” Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., said to the senators about the rioters.
Texas Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro said over the hours that the Capitol was under siege, the president refused to say what was needed to stop the attack and “the insurgents were following his commands.”
