WASHINGTON (AP) — Long after most other lawmakers had been rushed to safety, they were on the hard marble floor, ducking for cover.
Trapped in the gallery of the House, occupying balcony seats off-limits to the public because of COVID-19, roughly three dozen House Democrats were the last ones to leave the chamber on Jan. 6, bearing witness as the certification of a presidential election gave way to a violent insurrection.
As danger neared, and as the rioters were trying to break down the doors, they called their families. They scrambled for makeshift weapons and mentally prepared themselves to fight. Many thought they might die.
“When I looked up, I had this realization that we were trapped,” said Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., a former Army Ranger who served three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. “They had evacuated the House floor first. And they forgot about us.”
Bound together by circumstance, sharing a trauma uniquely their own, the lawmakers were both the witnesses and the victims of an unprecedented assault on American democracy. Along with a small number of staffers and members of the media, they remained in the chamber as Capitol Policestrained to hold back the surging, shouting mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump.
The lawmakers were finally taken to safety roughly an hour after the siege began.
Interviewed by The Associated Press before this week’s anniversary of the attack, 10 of the House members who were in the gallery talked of being deeply shaken by their experience, recalling viscerally the sights and sounds amid the chaos.
Vividly they remember the loud, hornetlike buzz of their gas masks. The explosive crack of tear gas in the hallways outside. The screams of officers telling them to stay down. The thunderous beating on the doors below. Glass shattering as the rioters punched through a window pane. The knobs rattling ominously on the locked doors just a few feet behind them.
And most indelibly, the loud clap of a gunshot, reverberating across the cavernous chamber.
“I’ve heard a lot of gunshots in my time, and it was very clear what that was,” Crow said. “I knew that things had severely escalated.”
The shot was fired by Officer Michael Byrd and killed Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter from California who was trying to crawl through the broken window of a door that leads to the House chamber. Both the Justice Department and Capitol Police investigated the shooting and declined to file charges.
While the gunshot dispersed some of the violent mob, the lawmakers ducking in the gallery believed the worst was just beginning.
“I think all of us, myself included, had images of a mass-shooting event,” said Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., who posted video updates on Twitter as the chaos unfolded. “It was terrifying in the moment.”
Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., said he could tell the gunshot had come from the back of the chamber, in the Speaker’s Lobby just outside, and not from the main doors on the opposite side where they could see rioters trying to break through. In that moment he realized why they couldn’t leave — they were surrounded. “It was in stages that you realized the severity,” he said.
Their terror was compounded by knowledge of what the mob was after: stopping Congress from certifying the Electoral College votes that would make Joe Biden the 46th president of the United States. Mike Pence, as is customary for the vice president, had been presiding over the ceremony in the House chamber where lawmakers were gathered to hear the certified results from all 50 U.S. states and the territories.
Trump had other ideas.
Spouting lies about election fraud that were refuted by his own Justice Department, Trump pressured Pence to reject the electors — a move that would have bucked the Constitution and thrown the House, and potentially the country, into chaos. Pence refused to do so, but Trump held a rally in Washington before the vote-counting began, telling hundreds of supporters at the Ellipse to “fight like hell.”
Members of the mob chanted “Hang Mike Pence” as they forced their way into the Capitol, brutally overpowering police who stood in their way. Dozens were injured, some seriously, and four officers who were there that day later took their own lives.
Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., was among those sheltering in the gallery. She tried to remain calm, drawing on what she learned as chief of the Orlando police. But she also felt powerless, lacking a gun or any of the other weapons she always had on the beat.
She shuddered when police said there had been a “breach” of the building.
“That is probably the word that I will remember about that day for the rest of my life more than any other,” Demings said. “I knew that meant that the police had somehow lost the line. And I also know, having been a former police officer, that they would have done everything in their power to hold that line to protect us.”
She says she told a colleague sheltering with her in the gallery: “Just remember, we’re on the right side of history. If we all die today, another group will come in and certify those ballots.”
Congress reconvened that night, certifying Biden’s election victory before sunrise.
In the days after the attack, many of the lawmakers who were in the gallery started connecting on a text message chain. It quickly evolved into therapeutic group sessions and even potluck gatherings where they tried to make sense of it all.
They dubbed themselves “the gallery group,” and the name stuck.
The Democrats were social distancing in the balcony as they waited to speak on the floor at the invitation of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and those interviewed said they don’t recall any Republicans sheltering alongside them. GOP Rep. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota was in the gallery at the beginning of the insurrection and recounted the ordeal to a local news outlet that evening. But he declined to be interviewed. A handful of other Republicans, including Reps. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma and Troy Nehls of Texas, helped police barricade the door below.
Some of the Democrats who sheltered in the gallery are planning to spend time together at the Capitol this week, not only to remember their own experiences and honor those who protected them but also to reflect on the country’s narrow escape from a coup.
“We were the last people in the chamber,” said Rep. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a former Navy helicopter pilot. “I think we saw the whole thing play out in a way that is very different from anybody else on the Hill.”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state helped organize the first virtual session the Sunday after the insurrection. She received multiple texts from colleagues after she spoke up on a Democratic caucus call about what the group went through and how they felt forgotten.
“It ended up being a three-hour Zoom,” Jayapal says. “It was deeply personal. People shared a lot of things about what they were going through. There were a lot of tears. There was a lot of anger. There was a lot of, you know, just how could this be? How could we be in America and have this happen in our Capitol?”
Many of the members went on to seek therapy. Some were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress, their struggles exacerbated by the raw tensions on Capitol Hill and an increasing number of death threats. Others said they have been more traumatized by the growing tendency among Republican lawmakers, and some in the public, to downplay or ignore the violence than they were by the attack itself.
Lawmakers said the gallery group has been a refuge through it all.
“I think it really saved my mental health,” says Rep. Norma Torres, D-Calif. “It just seemed like every time somebody posted something, we were all awake, no matter what time of day or night, and we were all responding to each other. So that was really powerful.”
Rep. Annie Kuster, who sought treatment for post-traumatic stress, says the gallery group connects almost daily on the text message chain, which moved to an encrypted app after some members raised security concerns. “Sometimes it’s to get a ride to a vote. Sometimes it’s, ‘Who’s cooking, and can you bring a bottle of wine to a dinner together?’ And sometimes it’s talking about our treatment for trauma and how we can preserve our democracy.”
Kuster, D-N.H., was one of the first to be let out of the gallery on Jan. 6, escaping through the doors along with three other members just before the remaining lawmakers were locked inside. When Kuster’s group reached the hallway, a group of rioters was rushing toward them.
“We ducked into the elevator,” Kuster said. “And I said to this incredible policeman — I said, oh, my God, what if the elevator doors open, and they kill us? And I will never forget this moment … he said, ‘Ma’am, I am here to protect you.’ And he was there to protect our democracy.”
For those still in the gallery, fear was escalating. Crow was tending to Rep. Susan Wild, D-Pa., who was in distress after talking to a family member, while also communicating with Mullin on the floor below as he helped barricade the door. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del., was shouting a prayer for peace and healing. Jayapal, who had knee replacement surgery just a few weeks earlier and was using a cane, was trying to figure out how she would escape if she had to run. She held hands with some of her female colleagues crouching beside her.
Eventually, Capitol Police determined the upstairs area was clear, even as insurrectionists kept trying to break through the doors below. The lawmakers and others were rushed out of the chamber and down a warren of staircases and hallways. When they left, they could see police officers holding five or six rioters flat on the ground, guns pointed at their heads.
The rioters were just inches from the doors of the gallery.
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., says he has tried not to dwell on what happened. But he still has searing images in his mind, including watching police drag heavy furniture in front of the main doors to the House floor as the rioters tried to beat them down.
As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, Himes says he spends a lot of time in high-security spaces — and before Jan. 6, he had assumed the Capitol was one of them.
“It was as though you were watching water flow uphill,” Himes said. “Something that you imagined was impossible is happening right in front of your eyes.”
Kuster says that one of the most traumatic things for her was not being able to see what was happening outside the chamber. They could only hear “the noises of the threat — the pounding on the door, the shouting in the hallways.”
When she made it home two days later, she watched hours of video from the insurrection, including harrowing footage from the police battles outside the building. It only compounded the trauma.
“I remember my husband coming in, and I was just sobbing,” Kuster said. “And he was holding me, saying, ‘I don’t know if this is the best thing for you to see.’”
“But we have to — we have to acknowledge the reality of what happened that day. And what’s challenging for us is that we are both victims and witnesses to the crime on our country.”
Recalling Jan. 6: A national day of infamy, half remembered
NEW YORK (AP) — Beneath a pale winter light and the glare of television cameras, it seemed hard not to see the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot for what it was. The violent storming of the Capitol by Donald Trump supporters bent on upending the election of Joe Biden was as clear as day: democracy under siege, live-streamed in real time.
Yet a year later, when it comes to a where-were-you moment in U.S. history, there is far from national consensus.
A Quinnipiac poll found that 93% of Democrats considered it an attack on the government, but only 29% of Republicans agreed. A poll by The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about 4 in 10 Republicans recall the attack — in which five people died — as violent, while 9 in 10 Democrats do.
Such a disparity in memory may be inevitable in our hyper-polarized politics, but it’s striking given the stark clarity of Jan. 6 at the time and in its immediate aftermath. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said then that “the president bears responsibility” for the attacks. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., then the majority leader, said: “They tried to disrupt our democracy. They failed.”
But since that day, separate versions — one factual, one fanciful — have taken hold. The Capitol riot — the violent culmination of a bid to delegitimize the 2020 election and block its certification — has morphed into a partisan “Rashomon,” the classic Japanese film about a slaying told from varying and conflicting points of view. Indeed, the act of remembering can be a highly mercurial thing — particularly when deep-seated political views are involved.
“We keep using terms like post-factual, but it almost feels like there’s this national psychosis or amnesia about what happened a year ago,” says Charles Sykes, the former conservative Wisconsin radio host and founder of the website The Bulwark. “It’s not just that we’re two nations. It’s as if we live on two different reality planets when it comes to the memory of Jan. 6.”
Nations remember the way people do: imperfectly. Neuroscientist Lisa Genova, author of “Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting,” describes how even the most searing memories are edited each time they’re revisited. An original memory is replaced with a 2.0 version, a 3.0 version and beyond.
“Outside influences can sneak in every time we revisit and recall a memory for what happened. So for these collective memories, we have a lot of chances to revisit them,” says Genova. “Depending on your political point of view, the news channels you watch, what this meant to you, this memory is going to have a different slant based on the story that you tell yourself.”
And a lot of people have been working hard to chip away at the memory of Jan. 6. Rep. Andrew S. Clyde, R-Ga., has described the siege as like “a normal tourist visit.” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., has claimed the rioters were leftist militants “masquerading as Trump supporters.” Trump has continued to insist that the election — Biden won by a wide margin, with scant evidence of fraud — was the real insurrection.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson has attempted to frame the Capitol attack as a “false flag” operation, orchestrated by the FBI. Carlson created a series on the riot that aired on Fox News’ subscription streaming service.
To counter such misrepresentations, other documentary projects have tried to capture Jan. 6 in rigorous, methodical detail. Jamie Roberts’ HBO documentary “Four Hours at the Capitol” was motivated in part to firmly establish a visual chronology of that day, with the rampage following Trump’s incitement to his followers to “fight like hell.”
Roberts interviewed witnesses and participants. Some of those in the mob praised his film only to later complain after seeing Carlson’s series.
“I had people who were in the film texting me saying: ‘Why the hell didn’t you put that in your film? You’re liars,’” Roberts says. “What I was hoping with the project was to put some very hard and fast facts together with people who can tell the story from a witness perspective. But for some people, it’s still not going to reach them.”
Alexander Keyssar, a professor of history and social policy at Harvard and author of “Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?”, believes a full-fledged investigative commission, like the one that followed the Sept. 11 attacks, might have fostered more national consensus on Jan. 6. In May, Senate Republicans used their filibuster power to block the creation of such a commission. (A House committee is to soon make public some of the findings from its six-month investigation.)
Instead, many Trump supporters have adopted the former president’s denial over the 2020 election. In the last year, Republicans have passed dozens of laws in 19 states to restrict voting. More election battles loom in the 2022 midterms and beyond.
“It’s obviously dangerous because it becomes precedent,” Keyssar says of the Capitol riot. “It has become a prism through which events are viewed. The prism for a large segment of Republican adherents is that you can’t trust the outcome of elections. If you can’t trust the outcome of elections, that will be true in the future as well. It becomes, as the great historian Bernard Bailyn once said, ‘a grammar of thought.’”
Instead of receding into the past as an anomalous threat to the heart of American democracy, the history of the Capitol riot is yet to be fully written. Some projects are ongoing. To tell the story of Jan. 6, the Capitol Historical Society is creating an oral history. Some of the stories — like those of staffers who have since quit government and returned home — are particularly haunting for the society’s president, Jane L. Campbell.
Meanwhile, the Capitol remains closed to the public. Where tours once regularly paraded, now only those with an appointment may enter.
“When people say ‘Oh, it’s never been this bad,’ well, we did have a civil war. That was bad. That was truly bad,” Campbell says. “But during the Civil War, Lincoln made a decision to finish the dome of the Capitol. We tell that story a hundred times over.”
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Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP