Impeachment prosecutors show chilling new video
Prosecutors unveiled chilling new security video in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial Wednesday, showing the mob of rioters breaking into the Capitol, smashing windows and doors and searching menacingly for VicePresident Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as overwhelmed police begged on their radios for help.
In the previously unreleased recordings, the House prosecutors displayed gripping scenes of how close the rioters were to the country’s leaders, roaming the halls chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” some equipped with combat gear and members of extremist groups among the first inside. Outside, the mob had set up a makeshift gallows.
At one dramatic moment, the video shows police shooting into the crowd through a broken window, killing a San Diego woman, Ashli Babbitt.
The vice-president, who had been presiding over a session to certify Joe Biden’s victory over Trump — thus earning Trump’s censure — is shown being rushed to safety, where he sheltered in an office with his family just 100 feet from the rioters. Pelosi was evacuated from the complex as her staff hid behind doors in her suite of offices.
Police, overwhelmed by the mob, frantically announce “we lost the line” and urge officers to safety. One officer is seen being crushed by the mob and prosecutors said another suffered a heart attack. One later died.
Though most of the Senate jurors have clearly already made up their minds on acquittal or conviction, they sat riveted as video showed the rioters taking over the chamber where the impeachment trial is now being held. Screams from the audio filled the chamber.
“They did it because Donald Trump sent them on this mission,” said House prosecutor Stacey Plaskett, the Democratic delegate representing the Virgin Islands.
“President Trump put a target on their backs and his mob broke into the Capitol to hunt them down.”
The stunning presentation opened the first full day of arguments in the trial as the prosecutors argued Trump was no “innocent bystander” but the “inciter in chief” of the deadly Capitol riot, a president who spent months spreading election lies and building a mob of supporters primed for his call to stop Biden’s victory.
The House Democrats showed piles of evidence from the former president himself — hundreds of Trump tweets and comments that culminated in his Jan. 6 rally cry to go the Capitol and “fight like hell” to overturn his defeat.
Trump then did nothing to stem the violence and watched with “glee,” they said, as the mob ransacked the iconic building. Five people died.
The senators on Wednesday saw for the first time the detailed security video of the break-in and heard grim emergency calls from Capitol police.
In one scene, a Capitol Police officer redirects Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, down a hallway to avoid the mob. It was the same officer, Eugene Goodman, who has been praised as a hero for having lured rioters away from the Senate doors.