South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)

Rioters from all walks

Infamous and anonymous took part in Capitol uprising

- By Sabrina Tavernise and Matthew Rosenberg

WASHINGTON— There were infamous white nationalis­ts and noted conspiracy theorists who have spread dark visions of pedophile Satanists running the country. Others were more anonymous, people who had journeyed from Indiana and South Carolina to heed President Donald Trump’s call to show their support.

All of them converged Wednesday on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, where hundreds of rioters crashed through barricades, climbed through windows and walked through doors, wandering around the hallways with a sense of gleeful desecratio­n, because, for a few breathtaki­ng hours, they believed that they had displaced the very elites they said they hated.

“We wanted to show these politician­s that it’s us who’s in charge, not them,” said a constructi­on worker from Indianapol­is, who is 40 and identified himself

only as Aaron. He declined to give his last name, saying, “I’m not that dumb.”

He added: “We’ve got the strength.”

As the country sifts through the shards of what happened Wednesday in Washington, what comes into focus in the storming of the Capitol is a jumbled constellat­ion of hard-core Trump supporters: a largely white crowd, many of them armed with bats, shields and chemical spray; some carried Confederat­e flags and wore costumes of fur and horns inspired by QAnon; they were mostly men, but there were women too.

Those who stormed the Capitol were just one slice of the thousands of Trump supporters who had descended on Washington to protest the certificat­ion of Joe Biden’s victory in November over Trump. Their breach came with a confused and frenzied energy, fueled by the words of Trump just minutes before and the fervor of the mob standing behind them.

During the disturbanc­e, one woman was fatally shot by the Capitol Police and a Capitol Police officer suffered injuries from which he later died. Three other people died after suffering medical emergencie­s.

Some of those who had also surged forward in the crowd seemed to show a bewildered wonder at what they were seeing in front of them. A few remarked on the opulence of the Capitol building and offices, a quality that seemed to confirm their suspicions about the corruption of Washington.

“Yeah, look at all this fancy furniture they have,” said a man in a winter parka and red hat, standing on the west side of the Capitol and peering through the glass at empty desks, computer screens and ergonomic chairs. Several people banged on the windows with their fists, including one man who shouted, “Put the coffee on!” One man hit his head, not seeing the outer layer of glass was there, it was so clean.

As people rushed inside, there was a strange mix of confusion and excitement, and the almost complete lack of police presence in the beginning amplified the feeling of lawlessnes­s. They gawked at a place of wealth and beauty, adorned with art and marble, a domain of the powerful, and for a short while Wednesday afternoon, the rioters were in control. For once, they felt, they could not be ignored.

Aaron, the constructi­on worker from Indianapol­is, and his two friends had heard people talking about going to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. So once inside they decided to instead find New York Sen. Chuck Schumer’s office. Both are Democrats.

“We wanted to have a few words” with Schumer, he said. “He’s probably the most corrupt guy up here. You don’t hear too much about him. But he’s slimy. You can just see it.”

But they could not find Schumer’s office. He said they asked a Capitol Police officer, who tried to direct them. But they appeared to have gotten nowhere near the minority’s leader’s office.

They ended up smoking cigarettes inside the building — “We can smoke in our house,” Aaron said — and one of his friends, who would not give his name, joked that he had gone to the bathroom and not flushed.

A woman in a coat sat on the couch in a small room with a blue carpet and watched as a man ripped a scroll with Chinese lettering hanging on the wall.

Nearby, six men sat at a large wooden desk. A lamp with a white shade was knocked over and broken. Someone was smoking marijuana. “This is the pot room!” a young man said.

In the Crypt, people walked around taking photograph­s of the statues and themselves with their phones. One man had a selfie stick, like a tourist in a foreign land. A woman in baggy jeans and a blue puffer jacket was shouting chants into a megaphone, while a man in a black T-shirt that read “Not Today Liberal” ran around the central columns in what looked like a frenetic victory lap.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Thursday that the FBI and the Transporta­tion Security Administra­tion should add the names of anyone who had entered the Capitol building during the mob attack to the federal no-fly list.

“We already saw reports of ‘unruly mobs’ in air on the way to Washington, D.C.,” Thompson said in a statement. “It does not take much imaginatio­n to envision how they might act out on their way out of D.C. if allowed to fly unfettered.”

As authoritie­s try to identify those in the mob, some will be less hard to pin down than others. The group included some well-known figures from the conspirato­rial right, including Jake Angeli, who has pushed the false QAnon claims that Trump was elected to save the U.S. from deep-state bureaucrat­s and prominent Democrats who worship Satan and abuse children. He was pictured sitting in Congress in a Viking helmet and furs. Angeli, who is known as the “Q Shaman,” has been a fixture in the pro-Trump protests in Arizona since the election, and there are indication­s that he and other right-wing activists had planned to spark a confrontat­ion with authoritie­s before Wednesday’s rally.

Angeli, whose real name is Jacob Anthony Chansley, was taken into custody Saturday and charged with counts that include violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. He will remain in Arizona pending a detention that will be scheduled during an initial court appearance this week. Chansley didn’t respond to email and telephone messages.

Online forums popular with Trump supporters lit up with gleeful posts about the chaotic scenes broadcast from the Capitol. Thousands of messages on Parler, a rightwing alternativ­e to Twitter, included the hashtag #civilwar or other variations of the term.

“If you’re surprised, you haven’t been paying attention,” said Integrity First for America executive director

“If you’re surprised, you haven’t been paying attention

... We should all be horrified by this, but nobody should be surprised that this is happening.”

Integrity First for America executive director Amy Spitalnick

Amy Spitalnick. “We should all be horrified by this, but nobody should be surprised that this is happening.”

Spitalnick’s civil rights group is backing a federal lawsuit filed by victims of the violence that erupted at the August 2017 white nationalis­t “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottes­ville, Virginia, that left a counterpro­tester dead. One of the far-right fringe figures who had been listed as a speaker at the Charlottes­ville rally was livestream­ing video of the Capitol melee on Wednesday.

Tim “Baked Alaska” Gionet posted video that showed Trump supporters in “Make America Great Again” and “God Bless Trump” hats milling around and taking selfies with officers who calmly asked them to leave the premises. The Trump supporters talked among themselves, laughed and told the officers and each other: “This is only the beginning.”

There were also leaders from the Proud Boys, a far-right group whose participan­ts have espoused misogynist­ic and anti-immigrant views, such as Nick Ochs, a failed Hawaii state Legislatur­e candidate and member of a collective called “Murder the Media.” Chris Hood and members of his National Socialist Club, a neo-Nazi group, posted photos on Telegram from outside the Capitol on Wednesday. And the Three Percenters, a far-right armed group, were seen gathered Tuesday night in Washington’s Freedom Plaza, most wearing helmets and Kevlar vests adorned with the group’s symbol, a Roman numeral three.

The mob came from the broader crowd, tens of thousands of Trump’s most loyal supporters, many of whom had driven through the night, or taken buses with friends and neighbors, to watch him speak and be part of a day that many hoped would finally hold some answers to what had been months of false claims that the election had been stolen. A number of people interviewe­d said they had never been to Washington before.

In interviews Wednesday, protesters in the broader crowd expressed a sense that something would happen — something that was bigger than they were. What exactly it would be no one could say. Before the Capitol was stormed, some hinted darkly about violence and the looming threat of civil war. But when pressed for what that might mean, they tended to demur, saying simply that, if called, they would serve their side in a conflict.

“There’s been lots of people talking about this day coming for a long time,” said Brian Sachtleben, 40, a truck driver from a small town near Sheboygan, Wisconsin, who was looking at the sea of people spreading from the Washington Monument to the Ellipse, marveling at the numbers, shortly before Trump began to speak.

When asked what he thought might happen, he said: “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

He referred crypticall­y to the Thomas Jefferson quote: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Then he added: “I don’t think anything is going to be back to normal ever again.”

He left town before the violence began.

When those who entered the Capitol later reemerged after their rampage, many were welcomed like returning heroes.

“Yeah, we stopped the vote!” screamed a man in a blue zippered jacket, as he emerged, hands held high, from a tall yellow wooden door, as people outside whooped and cheered. “Murder the media” was scrawled in black marker across the other part of the double door.

Many said they would not have tried to go in, but they sympathize­d with those who had.

“I’m not going in there, but, yeah, I’m kind of OK with it,” said Lisa Todd, 56, a high school teacher from Raleigh, North Carolina. She was standing with three friends, all fellow teachers.

Some insurrecti­onists posting on Parler and other social media seemed torn about whether to champion their sacking of the Capitol or blame it on antifa, one in a string of conspiracy theories the movement has embraced. Some adherents depicted Ashli Babbitt, the San Diego woman killed in the melee, as martyr for the cause. Others suggested she was an antifa plant — and claimed that no Trump supporters were involved in the ransacking.

“For the core participan­ts and members of the far right, this has been a great success. This has been a milestone in their fight against these windmills, these alleged enemies of America,” said Arie Kruglanski, a psychology professor at University of Maryland and an expert in extremism. “On the other hand, it’s going to discourage those who aren’t quite as committed.”

Others expressed regret. Storming the Capitol was “probably not the best thing to do,” said Eric Dark, 43, a truck driver from Braman, Oklahoma, who was teargassed when he got to the top of the steps to the building but never made it inside.

He had been standing with Brian Hobbs, mayor of Newkirk, Oklahoma, near the top of the steps on the western side of the building around 4:30 p.m. when officers in riot gear started moving to clear out the thousands of people who had gathered.

It could have been a lot worse, he said.

“We had enough people; we could have tore that building down brick by brick,” he said.

 ?? JASON ANDREW/THE NEW YORK TIMES ?? Protesters stand Wednesday at the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
JASON ANDREW/THE NEW YORK TIMES Protesters stand Wednesday at the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

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