• GOP lawmakers accused of creating coronavirus hot spot.
Cases reported after hunkering down in room during siege
WASHINGTON
As a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol last week, House members and some staff sheltered in a cramped, windowless room with no more than an arm’s length of distance between them.
The group seemed safe from the violence raging nearby, but inside they faced another threat. Several Republican members hunkered down, maskless, refusing to use the face coverings that their Democratic colleagues and staffers were begging them to wear as protection from the coronavirus that thrives in such low-ventilation indoor environments.
One Democrat, Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, grew so angry that she left the room, concluding, according to an aide, that “we’re not going to survive a terrorist attack to be exposed to a deadly virus.”
But many stayed behind and some think they were exposed. Nearly a week after the riot, three Democratic lawmakers who had sheltered in that room, including Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, DN.J., a 75-year-old cancer survivor, have tested positive for the coronavirus. Rep. Bradley Schneider, D-Ill., announced Tuesday that he had tested positive.
The results added fuel to an already burning fire of rage that has enveloped Capitol Hill since last week’s violence, as Democrats already blaming many of their GOP counterparts for inciting the mob that endangered their lives now are pointing to them for selfish behavior that has jeopardized their health.
The outbreak — dubbed a “superspreader event on top of a domestic terrorist attack” by Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, one of the Democratic lawmakers who tested positive — led House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, to impose stiff fines on members who don’t wear masks.
“The second I realized our ‘safe room’ from the violent white supremacist mob included treasonous, white supremacist, anti masker Members of Congress who incited the mob in the first place, I exited,” Pressley tweeted on Tuesday. “Furious that more of my colleagues by the day are testing positive.”
Republican lawmakers seen in a video refusing masks from a Democratic congresswoman did not respond to requests for comment.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who was also in that group, called it “absurd” to blame them and shifted it to Pelosi.
“It is absolutely ridiculous and insane to blame those of us who did not have COVID or symptoms,” she said in an email. “The blame lies squarely on Nancy Pelosi and the positive COVID members bringing COVID in the Capitol! It’s absurd to say they caught it during the safe room.”
On Sunday, Brian Monahan, the attending physician to Congress, told members that they may have been exposed to someone with the virus while in “protective isolation.”