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House impeachment officials on Wednesday used graphic video and audio clips – some of which they said had not been made public – to recreate the moments when a pro-Trump mob burst into the House. Capitol on January 6.
Delegate Stacey Plaskett, Democrat representing the U.S. Virgin Islands, presented the heartbreaking images and sound as she illustrated the danger former Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress faced in confirming President Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
It was on a day when House impeachment officials presented their case that former President Donald Trump incited an insurgency against the government, in front of lawmakers who have both lived through the attack and decide to condemn the former president for causing it.
“President Trump put a target on their backs and his mob has gone to Capitol Hill to hunt them down,” Plaskett said closing his presentation.
The video shows the first moments when Trump supporters begin to break through barricades and approach the Capitol, as a few scattered police officers throw punches but fail to hold them back. Police can be heard on previously unreleased radio newspapers calling for reinforcements amid “multiple injuries to law enforcement.”
An officer describes rioters “throwing metal poles at us”. Another said: “They start throwing explosives” or “fireworks”.
“It is now effectively a riot,” said an officer at around 1:49 p.m. ET on January 6.
When the rioters reach the Capitol, they pound the windows and kick the doors. A man smashes a window with a riot shield, and the crowd begins to pour in through the opening. A rioter carries a Confederate flag in the Capitol.
In this still image from the video, a security video shows senators leaving the Senate as rioters breach Capitol Hill, as House impeachment official Del. Stacey Plaskett, D-Virgin Islands, speaks during the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump at the Senate on the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Wednesday, February 10, 2021.
Senate TV via AP
In security footage of the same event from inside the building that Plaskett said had never been seen, rioters walk through a door and windows as a lone officer responds. One crowd member wears tactical armor and another has a baseball bat.
After the Senate adjourns around 2:13 p.m. ET, Pence and the Senators begin to leave the room. Security footage shows former Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, who then led rioters away from the Senate Chamber, passing Utah Senator Mitt Romney down a hallway and urging him to rush in the direction opposite the crowd.
Other security footage shows Pence and his family rushing down a staircase as they exit the Senate Chamber.
Even more videos show rioters searching for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Asking, “Where are you, Nancy? We’re looking for you.” A Pelosi staff member while hiding whispers into a phone: “They are hammering on doors and trying to find her.”
A subsequent presentation by Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., Recreated just how well the crowd got to reach members of the House. Security footage showed lawmakers fleeing the House chamber and walking through the hallways with gas masks.
He presented a video of police shooting Ashli Babbitt, the woman who died as a group of rioters attempted to enter the doors near the chamber of the House.
Swalwell also showed video of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., turning and scrambling the other way after moving in the direction of the crowd.
“You were just 58 paces from where the crowd gathered,” Swalwell told Senators.
Some senators, including Romney, watched intently as impeachment officials recreated the danger lawmakers faced, according to reporters on Capitol Hill. Masks they wore to slow the spread of protected reactions to the coronavirus.
Senators have watched dozens of haunting videos, the latest of which showed the crowd crushing a policeman outside a door as he shouted. Swalwell ended his presentation with the graphic clip.
Members of the House pursuing the case against Trump face the challenge of trying to persuade Republican senators to vote to convict the former president. Seventeen GOP senators are expected to join the 50 Democrats in doing so.
On Tuesday, only six Republicans voted to say the trial should even take place. The former president’s legal team argued that Trump should not face an impeachment trial after he leaves office.
Both parties have 16 hours over two days to present their arguments. Trump’s lawyers are expected to argue months of comments that the House said incited crowds during the election and after his constitutionally protected speech.
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