Inside a Deadly Siege: How a String of Failures Led to a Dark Day at the Capitol

With the police within the lead, weapons drawn, the group stumbled by way of the mayhem, Mr. Crow stated. Some cops rushed to barricade different doorways to dam the mob. Others pinned some rioters to the bottom to permit the lawmakers to cross.

Due to efforts to limit the variety of folks within the chamber, a number of lawmakers and aides have been sheltering of their places of work, scattered throughout the complicated. Some weren’t contacted by the police, at the same time as they barricaded themselves inside.

Lots of the Home members remained in a single safe location, the place they could have been exposed to someone with the coronavirus, the Workplace of the Attending Doctor stated on Sunday.

Consultant Lisa Blunt Rochester, Democrat of Delaware, pushed a handful of Republicans to put on masks, to no avail. Representatives Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, and Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, periodically supplied updates to the room, as lawmakers known as their households and checked on their employees members.

On the Senate facet of the Capitol, the rioters got here perilously near lawmakers. As they approached, a quick-thinking Capitol Police officer pushed one in all them, then backed away, and the group chased him. The officer’s maneuver helped lead the mob away from an entrance to the Senate a number of toes away, in accordance with a video taken by Igor Bobic, a HuffPost reporter.

In a safe, undisclosed location, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, screamed on the Senate sergeant-at-arms, Michael C. Stenger, demanding a plan and ordering him to clear the rioters, in accordance with an individual within the room. Mr. Stenger was milling round, the individual stated, inspiring no confidence that he was in charge of the scenario. He has since resigned, as has Chief Sund. All through the Capitol, pressing voices crackled throughout police radios giving particulars concerning the unfolding siege.

“There was positively the next sense of urgency” on police radio site visitors as rioters breached the east facet of the Capitol, stated Ashan M. Benedict, the pinnacle of the Washington subject workplace of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who was working with the Capitol Police on the close by Republican Occasion headquarters, the place a pipe bomb was found.