Graphic Video of Capitol Attack Leaves Emotions Raw but May Not Change Votes
The terror of that day felt palpably real again as
senators sitting in judgment of Donald J. Trump were forced to relive the first
mass siege of the Capitol since British invaders ransacked the building in
1814.
TRANSCRIPT
0:00/10:09
House Managers Show Previously Unseen Capitol Riot
Footage
House
managers presented security videos and police audio recordings that had not
been made public as they reconstructed the Jan. 6 riot on the second day of
former President Trump’s impeachment trial.
“Radio
communications from the Metropolitan Police Department highlight how, during
and and following President Trump’s speech, Trump supporters descended on the
Capitol, and became increasingly violent. What you are about to hear has not
been made public before.” “In another radio communication between Metropolitan
Police officers, you can hear an officer declare that there is a riot at the
capital at 1:49 p.m.” “We are seeing the inside view as the mob approaches from
outside and beats the windows and doors. You can see that the rioters first
broke the window with the wooden beam that you saw previously, and a lone
police officer inside responds and begins to spray the first man who enters,
but is quickly overwhelmed. I want you to pay attention to the first group of
assailants as they break into the building. The second man through the window
is wearing full tactical body armor and is carrying a baseball bat. Others are
carrying riot shields. Among this group are members of the Proud Boys, some of
whom, like Dominic Pezzola, who was recently indicted on federal conspiracy
charges, we will discuss later. In this security footage, you can see Officer
Goodman running to respond to the initial breach. Officer Goodman passes
Senator Mitt Romney, and directs him to turn around in order to get to safety.
On the first floor, just beneath them, the mob had already started to search
for the Senate chamber. Officer Goodman made his way down to the first floor.
On the left-hand side of the video, just inside the hallway, is the door to the
Senate chamber. And watch how officer Goodman provokes the rioters and
purposefully draws them away from the door to the Senate chamber and towards
the other officers waiting down the hall. The rioter seen carrying a baseball
bat in this video is the same one we saw moments ago, breaching the window on
the first floor. While all of this was going on, Vice President Pence was still
in the room near the Senate chamber. It was not until to 2:26 that he was
evacuated to a secure location. This next security video shows that evacuation.
His movements are depicted by the orange dot in our model — the red and blue
dots represent the location where the mob and Officer Goodman were, and where
Officer Goodman led the mob away from the chamber, just moments ago. You can
see Vice President Pence and his family quickly moved down the stairs. The vice
president turns around briefly as he’s headed down. About the same time Capitol
Police announced the Capitol had been breached, Speaker Pelosi’s staff heeded the
call to shelter in place. As you can see here, the staff moves from their
offices, through the halls, and then enters a door on the right hand side.
That’s the outer door of a conference room, which also has an inner door that
they barricaded with furniture. The staff then hid under a conference room
table in that inner room. This is the last staffer going in and then
barricading themselves inside of the inner office. After just seven minutes of
them barricading themselves, and the last staffer entering the door on the
right, a group of rioters entered the hallway outside. And once inside, the
riders have free rein in the speaker of the House’s offices. In this security
video, pay attention to the door that we saw those staffers leading into and
going into. One of the rioters, you can see, is throwing his body against the
door three times until he breaks open that outer door. Luckily, when faced with
the inner door, he moves on.” “This security footage, which does not have
sound, shows a close-up of Trump’s mob as they move toward the second floor of
the House chamber to stop the counting of votes. This security video shows
Ashli Babbitt, followed by others in the mob, turning the corner toward the
House lobby doors where the members were leaving. This security video from 2:56
p.m. shows the mob in the House of Representatives wing on the second floor of
the Capitol. Insurrectionists who are still inside the building are fighting
with the police, who are overwhelmed and trying to get them out. In this security
video, you can see how the Capitol Police created a line and blocked the
hallway with their bodies to prevent rioters at the end of the hall from
reaching you and your staff. Additional security footage shows how leader
Schumer and the members of his protective detail had a near miss with the mob.
They came within just yards of rioters and had to turn around. Going up the
ramp with his detail, he’ll soon go out of view. Seconds later, they return and
run back down the hallway, and officers immediately shut the door and use their
bodies to keep them safe. Here’s an audio recording from the radio traffic of
the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department describing the violence.” “In a
separate Metropolitan Police Department radio traffic recording, you can hear an
officer when he realizes that the insurrectionists had overtaken the police
line.” “Hours after members of the House and Senate had left this area, on the
west front of the building, the mob continued to grow, continued to beat the
officers as they tried to get in. In this new security video, you can see the
mob attacking officers with a crutch, a hockey stick, a bullhorn and a Trump
flag.”
Peter Baker
By Peter
Baker
Feb. 10,
2021
It was ghastly
to watch, but that was the point. A rampaging crowd threatening death as it
hunted the vice president and speaker of the House. Senators spinning around
midstep to run for their lives. Staff members barricading themselves in an
office as attackers pounded on the door. Overwhelmed police officers retreating
from rioters, desperately calling for help.
It seems
safe to assume that never in American history has such gut-churning video
footage been shown on the floor of the Senate, where matters of great weight
have been debated but hardly brought home in such a visually powerful way. The
images shown in former President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment trial on
Wednesday were all the more resonant because some of the jurors themselves were
onscreen.
The display
of never-before-seen video from Capitol security cameras, along with newly
disclosed police dispatch audiotapes, brought the mob assault of Jan. 6 back to
life as mere words from the House managers prosecuting Mr. Trump never could.
The terror of that day felt palpably real all over again as senators sitting in
judgment of the former president were forced to relive the first mass siege of
the Capitol since British invaders ransacked the building in 1814.
The
emotions inside and outside the Senate chamber were raw as the sun set on
Wednesday evening after the House managers sought to use the montage of
wrenching pictures to drive home their case against Mr. Trump. Some current and
former senators struggled to regain their composure after watching, which was
exactly the reaction that the managers were trying to generate.
“I’m angry,
I’m disturbed, I’m sad,” Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican of Alaska who has
been critical of Mr. Trump’s actions, told reporters afterward. Even after
living through the attack on the Capitol that day, she said, she found the
video shown by the managers eye-opening. “I knew what it meant to be running
down this hallway with my colleagues. I wasn’t fully aware of everything else
that was happening in the building.”
But it was
not clear that it would change the overall dynamics of a trial governed largely
by partisan divisions, with most Republicans still backing Mr. Trump and likely
to block the two-thirds vote required for conviction. Several of his Republican
allies said afterward that they too found the video images distressing but did
not consider them the former president’s fault.
A
conviction seems unlikely. Last month, only five Republicans in the Senate
sided with Democrats in beating back a Republican attempt to dismiss the
charges because Mr. Trump is no longer in office. Only 27 senators say they are
undecided about whether to convict Mr. Trump.
If the Senate convicts Mr. Trump, finding him guilty
of “inciting violence against the government of the United States,” senators
could then vote on whether to bar him from holding future office. That vote
would only require a simple majority, and if it came down to party lines,
Democrats would prevail with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaking
vote.
If the Senate does not convict Mr. Trump, the former
president could be eligible to run for public office once again. Public opinion
surveys show that he remains by far the most popular national figure in the
Republican Party.
“Today’s
presentation was powerful and emotional reliving a terrorist attack on our
nation’s capital,” said Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. “But there was
very little said about how specific conduct of the president’s satisfies the
legal standard” of convicting him of high crimes and misdemeanors.
As former
Senator Doug Jones, Democrat of Alabama, wryly described his onetime Republican
colleagues on Twitter: “Apparently shaken, but not stirred.”
There was a
lot to be shaken about. The footage from Capitol security cameras showed Vice
President Mike Pence, who had alienated Mr. Trump’s supporters by refusing to
try to overturn the election as the president had demanded, being rushed with
his family by Secret Service agents down a staircase to escape invaders calling
for his death. Young aides to Speaker Nancy Pelosi were shown scrambling into
an office and barricading themselves inside just minutes before the mob arrived
and tried to break down the door.
Other clips
showed Eugene Goodman, a Capitol Police officer famous for facing the mob
alone, encountering Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, and warning him
about the danger, prompting the senator to abruptly spin around and run the
other way to safety. Likewise, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the
Democratic leader, was seen being led away by his security detail only to suddenly
realize they were heading toward the rioters, forcing them to turn and race in
the opposite direction.
“They were
within 100 feet of where the vice president was sheltering with his family,”
Stacey Plaskett, a Democratic delegate from the Virgin Islands and one of the
House impeachment managers, told the senators sitting as jurors. “They were
just feet away from one of the doors to this chamber where many of you remained
at that time.”
She and
other Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, played police
dispatch audio recordings and cited legal filings, social media postings and
videos to make clear that the rioters posed a serious danger to Mr. Pence, Ms.
Pelosi and other lawmakers as well as to police officers, some of whom sounded
nearly panicked pleading for backup.
“Hang Mike
Pence! Hang Mike Pence!” the crowd could be heard chanting. Outside the Capitol,
where a gallows had been set up, others called out, “Bring out Pence!” One
rioter taped a video saying, “He’s a total treasonous pig.”
They
likewise were searching for Ms. Pelosi, and Ms. Plaskett pointed out that the
intruder photographed sitting at a desk in her office was actually carrying a
950,000-volt stun gun walking stick. “Where are you, Nancy?” some of the
rioters called out. “We’re looking for you!”
Over the
police radio tape played for the senators, officers could be heard effectively
narrating the escalating threat to the building — and to them.
“They’re
throwing metal poles at us.”
“We need
some reinforcements up here now.”
“We have
been flanked and we’ve lost the line.”
To make the
point even more vivid, the managers created a graphic representation of the
Capitol using menacing red dots to show the progress of the mob as it invaded
the building and approached the chambers where senators and House members were
meeting to count the Electoral College votes ratifying the victory of Joseph R.
Biden Jr. over Mr. Trump.
“Again,
that is a mob that was sent by the president of the United States to stop the
certification of an election,” Ms. Plaskett told the Senate. “The vice
president, the speaker of the House — the first and second in line to the
presidency — were performing their constitutional duties presiding over the
election certification and they were put in danger because President Trump put
his own desires, his own need for power, over his duty to the Constitution and
our democratic process.”
“President
Trump,” she added, “put a target on their backs and his mob broke into the
Capitol to hunt them down.”
The video
footage was the culmination of a methodical presentation by the managers
arguing that Mr. Trump’s incitement of the insurrection began months before
Jan. 6 with the propagation of what they called the “Big Lie” that the election
would be stolen if he lost. The managers laid out the timeline of the
president’s efforts to inflame supporters, setting the stage for the eventual
outburst of violence at the Capitol.
The
president, they added, cared not about the havoc he had unleashed but continued
to push his efforts to block the Electoral College count even after the attack
began. The video showing Mr. Pence being evacuated was time-stamped at 2:26
p.m. — just two minutes after Mr. Trump posted on Twitter attacking his own
vice president for not trying to overturn the election: “Mike Pence didn’t have
the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”
Even at
that point, the managers told the senators on Wednesday, Mr. Trump disregarded
pleas from his aides and allies to intervene to explicitly call on the mob to
stop the attack, issuing instead only a belated and mildly worded video telling
supporters to be peaceful and return home even as he embraced them. “We love
you,” he said at the time. “You’re very special.”
Representative
Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the lead House manager, said that Mr.
Trump bore responsibility for the actions of supporters who were acting on his
false assertions of widespread election fraud that did not exist.
“Donald
Trump surrendered his role as commander in chief and became the inciter in
chief of a dangerous insurrection,” Mr. Raskin said. “He told them to fight
like hell,” he added, “and they brought us hell that day.”
Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent and has covered the last five presidents for The Times and The Washington Post. He also is the author of six books, most recently "The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III." @peterb
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário