‘I COULD HEAR SCREAMING’
Members of Congress describe moments insurrectionists and violent riots breached U.S. Capitol
He had a piece of glass in his pocket.
That’s what U.S. Rep. Andy Levin ( D-Bloomfield Township) said of fellow Michigan congressman Fred Upton (RSt. Joseph) after supporters of President Donald Trump, some armed, stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday smashing windows, looting offices and interrupting Congress as it counted states’ Electoral College votes.
Levin, like many congressional members with offices located in the House Cannon Office Building, was forced to flee the mob with hundreds of lawmakers, staff and members of the media, some running to safety. Others in the House chamber hunkered down, ordered by police to wear gas masks and take cover under desks and on the floor.
The mob streamed into the building smashing windows and vandalizing offices. “Murder the media,” read graffiti on one door.
When asked about the moment when police pounded on his office door and ordered him to leave, Levin said it was “pretty shocking and abrupt.” He was preparing his floor speech in the event Michigan’s Electoral College votes were challenged.
He’s no stranger to unrest and
violence.
“When I was younger I was caught up in a great deal of historic unrest,” he said of time spent in Haiti during its first presidential election in 1987, which was suspended after a massacre of voters. “In 1990, I was in Israel and Palestine and I tasted tear gas in Gaza. I was also in China during the Tiananmen massacre. I just never thought I would see anything like this in the U.S. Capitol.”
He also called Wednesday’s insurrection a “logical outcome of Trumpism,” given Trump’s speech earlier in the day near the White House urging supporters to march to the Capitol and months of baseless charges that the November election was rigged.
The Associated Press reported that six Michigan men, ages 25 to 64, were among nearly 90 people arrested by Washington, D.C., and Capitol police for offenses that included curfew violations, unlawful entry and firearms charges. One woman was shot inside the Capitol and later died, according to police. The Washington Post reported 14 D.C. officers were injured. One was pulled into a crowd, assaulted and hospitalized. Another received “significant facial injuries” after being hit by a projectile. Police also reported recovering pipe bombs at the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee offices near the Capitol. A cooler containing crude incendiary bombs called Molotov Cocktails, gasoline-filled glass bottles with wicks for lighting, were also found on Capitol grounds.
According to the Post, the Capitol has been the target of violence before. The British set fire to the Capitol in 1814. In 1954, Puerto Rican nationalists started shooting from a House gallery injuring five lawmakers on the floor below. In 1971, a bomb planted by a radical left-wing group exploded, though no one was harmed. In 1998, a gunman opened fire, killing two Capitol police officers.
U. S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly) told The Oakland Press that she was walking to the House chambers to listen to arguments involving Arizona’s Electoral College votes when the breach occurred.
“I walked into the tunnels from my office that led into the Capitol, which is not too long of a walk,” she said. “There was a short, one flight of stairs to get right outside the chamber. Basically, by the time my feet reached the second stair, I could hear screaming and yelling and breaking of glass.”
She heard a loud bang. “I turned tail immediately and headed quickly back to my office,” she said. “I locked the doors and sheltered in place. Within a few minutes, Congressman Levin had called me asking if I was in my office and that he couldn’t get back to his. He and his chief of staff ... spent the rest of the day in my office.”
Later, she wondered if the bang may have been the fatal gunshot.
Slotkin said no one could have conceived that the Capitol building would be “taken over by a violent mob of insurrectionists.”
As the mob fought past police and streamed into the building, U. S. Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-Southfield) was in the House chamber. She and others were ordered by police to get on the floor, get behind their chairs and desks, and to put on gas mask hoods. Police used furniture to block the main doorway and waited behind with guns drawn to keep the mob from entering the room. Minutes later, those inside were escorted quietly to a safe location inside the building.
At that moment she thought to herself, “Am I at war here?”
“Here I am,” she said.”Being rushed through a building from an angry mob who are all dressed in Trump attire. It was frustrating and I was angry. I was running to a safe place while they’re taking over the Capitol, the sacred place of our government.”
“I felt insulted and terrified because I didn’t know what was happening,” she said.
Lawrence said Trump has been encouraging violent activity and unrest for months. “Yesterday should have slapped America in the face,” she said. “His words became reality.”
“(The mob) was trying to stop us from certifying the election,” Lawrence said. “They were trying to impede a Democratic, constitutional responsibility of our government. That was never going to happen. We were going to do our job. Even the vice president put out a statement and did his job.”
Around 8:30 p.m., more than an hour after heavily armed police used tear gas to clear the building of the mob, lawmakers from the House and Senate were back at work.
MediaNews Group reached out to U. S. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Tipton), but did not receive a response before press time. But in a statement posted on his website, he wrote, “A day later, I am still sickened over the unacceptable violence that transpired at the U.S. Capitol. It is not what we stand for as Americans. Every lawbreaker should be held fully accountable for their abhorrent actions.”
Later that night, with the smell of tear gas lingering in the building, Walberg joined two other Michigan representatives – Jack Bergman (R-Watersmeet), and Lisa McClain (R-Bruce Township) – in objecting to the certification of electoral votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania.