Nation’s stunning day; Arizona’s starring role
It was a scene that one conservative congressman said reminded him of his time in Iraq and that others likened to life in a developing country. But it was happening in America, an insurrection in the U.S. Capitol. And when the history of Jan. 6, 2021, is written, Arizona’s role will be central.
Hundreds of rioters stormed the Capitol on Wednesday, breaking windows, crowding into the Rotunda, invading House and Senate chambers and even breaking into the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Washington police said one person inside the
Capitol was shot and later died.
The riot sprang from a demonstration outside, one to protest the defeat of President Donald J. Trump, who had urged his supporters to converge on Washington to overturn the results of his Nov. 3 election loss.
Though the scene turned from loud to violent in the space of an hour, it had been stoked for months by the president and by supporters, including elected Arizonans, who had pushed to reject President-elect Joe Biden’s victory by any means necessary.
As lawmakers were removed to unknown locations and the capital city went into an emergency curfew, cries of election fraud had given way to calls for impeachment, and the end result of the move to certify the 2020 presidential election remained unclear.
“Pray for our country,” Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., tweeted in part as he marked himself safe after the evacuation order. “We are better than this. This election WILL be certified.”
A formality delayed
Part of Arizona’s role emerged from the luck of the alphabet.
A joint session of Congress on Wednesday had convened for the ceremonial purpose of certifying the results of the presidential election.
Vice President Mike Pence gaveled the proceedings to order and began the roll call of states. Results from Alabama and Alaska, both of which voted for Trump, were accepted without comment.
Then came Arizona’s turn. The state’s voters had tilted the presidential vote to the Democratic Party for the first time in a generation, giving its 11 electoral votes to Biden and Vice Presidentelect Kamala Harris.
Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, who for two months has joined Arizona’s most extreme Trump supporters in trying to overturn the election results citing baseless reports of fraud, rose to object to his home state’s certification. That prompted a standing ovation from Trump supporters in Congress.
Gosar was joined by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a Trump ally.
The objections from a member from each chamber triggered an automatic halt to the proceedings, and each body retired to its own chamber for two hours of debate.
Arizona Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the sixth to speak, defended Arizona’s electoral process on the Senate floor of the Senate, saying Gosar’s challenge “fails any factual analysis” and seeks to rob voters of their Constitutional right to elect their leaders.
She urged colleagues to put the interest of the nation over their own personal interests, as the late Sen. John McCain did after his loss to President Barack Obama.
Just after Sinema’s time ended, both chambers were evacuated.
Stirrings of a riot
About an hour before the congressional proceedings were disrupted, Trump had held a rally and urged supporters to head to the Capitol.
“We’re going to try and give our Republicans,” he said. “... the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”
The mob that had gathered outside breached a thin line of Capitol police and rushed into the Capitol complex. Some waved Trump flags, others, the Xshaped banner known as the Confederate battle flag.
Members of Congress were forced to don gas masks and flee or seek shelter.
“What we all saw today at the U.S. Capitol today was not the America that stands as the beacon of hope for the world,” U.S. Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois said in a statement on his website.
Kinzinger called the riot an attempted coup and said it reminded him of his military service in Iraq. “As a military officer, I did not risk life and limb for only the Republicans in this country — I did it for the entire country and all our citizens. And the same applies to my office in Congress.”
As Trump tweeted lukewarm admonitions that there should be no violence and his daughter Ivanka described the mob as “patriots,” Capitol police issued distress calls.
Photographs and news footage showed insurrectionists breaking windows and standing on the dais from which the greatest statesmen and women in the country’s history have debated the laws of the land.
One photo stood out for many Arizonans. It showed a man dressed in animal pelts and horns, holding an American flag at the desk where Pence had stood only moments before.
He was longtime Phoenix demonstrator Jake Angeli, like Gosar, from Arizona, and like Gosar, a subscriber to right-wing conspiracy theories.
Indeed, the vote-fraud conspiracy narrative has been embraced by a wide array of Arizona politicians, including Arizona Republican U.S. Reps. Andy Biggs and Debbie Lesko, as well as a number of members of the state Legislature, even though more than half a dozen lawsuits over Arizona’s results have been dismissed, and conspiracies around the election have been repeatedly debunked.
More than an hour after the violence erupted, Gosar appeared to walk back his rhetoric on Twitter.
“Ok. I said let’s do an audit. Let’s not get carried away here. I don’t want anyone hurt. We are protesting the violation of our laws. We are builders not destroyers. BLM burns and loots. We build. If anyone on the ground reads this and is beyond the line come back,” he tweeted.
Last July, Gosar was photographed with members of the Proud Boys, the right-wing extremist group with ties to white nationalism, and in 2018 he had a lengthy dinner with a far-right antiMuslim politician in Belgium.
While Gosar muted his rhetoric in the moment, state Rep. Mark Finchem, another conspiracy theory adherent, continued to push the narrative even as violence engulfed the seat of America’s democracy. Finchem was one of several Arizona legislators who traveled to Washington.
“What happens when the People feel they have been ignored, and Congress refuses to acknowledge rampant fraud. #stopthesteal,” he tweeted with a photo of the mob storming the Capitol.
State Rep. Anthony Kern, a Republican from Glendale who lost his reelection campaign, also traveled to the Capitol on Wednesday.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who had been criticized for being slow to defend Arizona’s election results but ultimately supported them, decried the violence in Washington.
“In America, we practice peaceful transitions of power. We respect the law and law enforcement,” he tweeted. “The scene at the United States Capitol right now is wrong and has no place in our form of government. All should denounce, and it should end now.”
Reality of Arizona’s votes
In her remarks on the Senate floor, Sinema referred to the Republican speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives and the Republican chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, who spoke of the integrity of the system.
Sinema noted that eight legal challenges contesting the presidential election results were withdrawn or dismissed. And she noted the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, when asked by Sinema during a recent hearing if he found any evidence disputing the integrity or fairness of the state’s election, simply said, “No.”
“Those of us who are trusted with elected office are, first and foremost, public servants,” she said. “Our system allows for a continuous contest of ideas — and those voters who support the losing side of a free, fair election have not been disenfranchised. Rather, they maintain just as important a voice in America’s future — and leaders have a duty to serve all of our constituents, including those who voted for other candidates.
“Great leaders in our history faced the choice of whether to take an action strengthening our democracy, even if a different action would better serve their political ambitions.”
But other chief instigators of election-fraud conspiracy theories emerged from Sinema’s home state.
One is Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward, a former state legislator who has made two unsuccessful bids for U.S. Senate.
As Washington, D.C., National Guard units were being mobilized, Ward erroneously tweeted that “Congress is adjourned. Send the elector choice back to the legislatures.”
Her tweet drew an angry reply from Arizona Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego: “F--- you we are. Democracy will not die tonight.”
Scene at the state Capitol
More than two hours after the violence began, Trump released a new video, telling demonstrators to disperse.
“So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens, you see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel, but go home and go home in peace,” Trump said.
In Arizona, meanwhile, a pro-Trump crowd protesting at the state Capitol erupted in applause as they watched a livestream of the violence in Washington.
The crowd later heckled Ward, the GOP head, as she was speaking on stage.
Ward suggested without evidence that the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol were fakes who were trying to undermine Trump supporters. She continued to spread disinformation about election integrity and suggested the same had happened in Georgia the night before, when two Democrats upset Republicans in runoff elections for the state’s Senate seats.
Some yelled that she was a traitor and called for her to get off the stage. Another person in the crowd said she “certified the votes.” The Patriot Party of Arizona, a group that has splintered from the state Republican Party and is trying to form its own political party, blames Ward and other state Republican leaders for Arizona turning blue.
Among other recognizable protesters, two members of the group AZ Patriots were scheduled to be in Washington, D.C., to livestream the protest, according to a posting Tuesday on the AZ Patriots Twitter feed. But no such video was found on the group’s YouTube channel.
Efforts to contact those men, Jeremy Bronough and Jaime Eduardo, were unsuccessful on Wednesday.
The group’s leader, Jennifer Harrison, had posted online that she and her boyfriend would be covering the protests in Arizona. Harrison recently entered a plea deal to avoid felony charges for identity theft. Harrison did not reply to a message on Wednesday evening.
As night fell in the nation’s capital, authorities announced that the Capitol grounds had been secured, though protesters continued to ignore a 6 p.m. curfew imposed by Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser.
About the same time, yet another Arizonan became part of the story as first lady Melania Trump’s chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham, announced she was resigning immediately. Grisham, a longtime Arizona Republican spokesperson who also served as White House press secretary, gave no reason for her sudden departure.
Shortly before 7 p.m., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that Congress would resume the work of certifying the election of Joe Biden later in the evening and that she expected lawmakers would stay until the job is done.
She said in a statement that the storming of the Capitol was “a shameful assault ... anointed at the highest level of government.”
She added, “It cannot, however, deter us from our responsibility to validate the election of Joe Biden.”
“We always knew this responsibility would take us into the night,” she said. “The night may still be long ... but our purpose will be accomplished.”
Shortly after 6 p.m. Arizona time, with the Capitol secured by the National Guard, the Senate resumed deliberations. Vice President Mike Pence implored Congress to get back to work. “To those who wreaked havoc in the Capitol today, you did not win,” Pence said. “Violence never wins.”
Republic reporters Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, Richard Ruelas and Andrew Oxford contributed to this article.
John D’Anna is a reporter on The Arizona Republic/azcentral.com storytelling team. Reach him at john.danna@arizonarepublic.com and follow him on Twitter @azgreenday.