Consider This from NPR - BONUS: Inside The Capitol Siege

Episode Date: January 16, 2021

In this episode from the team at NPR's Embedded, hear the stories of two NPR teams that spent January 6th on the grounds of the Capitol — and stories from a lawmaker, photographer, and police officer who were inside the building. Subscribe to or follow Embedded on NPR One, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and RSS.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, Consider This listeners, it's Audie Cornish here, and it's Saturday, which means we have a bonus episode for you. This one comes from our colleagues at NPR's Embedded. That's a podcast that takes a story from the news and goes deep. And this episode is an inside look, minute by minute, at how the siege of the U.S. Capitol unfolded, as told by NPR reporters, other journalists, and lawmakers who were there to see it firsthand. Embedded host Kelly McEvers takes it from here. Hey, everybody, just a heads up. There's some language in this episode and descriptions of violence that some listeners might find disturbing, and it might not be suitable for children.

Okay, here's the show. Hey, I'm Kelly McEvers, and this is Embedded from NPR. When you look back at everything that has happened in the last couple of months, it's clear that something was building. The president making more baseless claims about the election being stolen from him. Today, thousands marched in the streets of Washington. November 14th, a week after the election was called for Joe Biden. President Trump refused to concede and, of course, was saying the election was stolen.

So his supporters had this massive rally in Washington, D.C., called Stop the Steal. Today's event attracted men wearing the colors of the far-right extremist group Proud Boys. It was right after the election, but there were still legal challenges, so people were celebrating and hopeful and declaring victory. This is Hannah Alam, who reports on extremism for NPR. She covered that rally. And another one like it.

A month later, in December. By that point, dozens of legal challenges to the election results had come and gone in the courts. They believe the election was stolen, believe their protests can stop it, and Donald Trump can stay in the White House. Biden had won, but that really hadn't sunken in for the MAGA crowd.

They still were clinging to these ideas of, you know, legal relief and interventions. And so there was more anger. Among the protesters today, this group of proud boys, they say they're anticipating about 700 people here and the possibility of clashes with other groups. That night in Washington, D.C., there were clashes. At least four people were stabbed.

Nine were taken to the hospital. And then came January 6th. I just, again, I want to thank you. It's just a great honor to have this kind of crowd and to be before you. Two months after the election, Trump still hasn't conceded, is still claiming it was stolen. Another huge rally. And he's got a new slogan. It's no longer Stop the Steal.

The rally on January 6th, the day Congress was scheduled to formally certify Joe Biden's win, was called Save America. And this is what the crowd was chanting that day, fight for Trump. Hannah had seen it coming. This one, in the weeks leading up to it, the chatter just became increasingly violent online. And these Stop the Steal groups, other groups, sort of self-described patriot groups, you know, just sort of this right wing soup. You'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. This one felt less like a rally and more like a last stand.

We're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And I remember texting my editor the night before saying, you know, I'm really dreading this one. We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I want to thank you all. God bless you and God bless America. Thank you all for being here. Of course, we all know what get it. By now, it's history. They're in. A day that got Donald Trump impeached again. Made him the only president to be impeached twice.

So far, more than 100 people have been arrested. Some could face charges of sedition and decades in federal prison. Five people died. But even now, more than a week later, as security officials warn that more riots and violence could be coming, we are still filling in the blanks of what happened that day. NPR had two teams of reporters on the ground that day, outside the Capitol. And on today's show, we'll hear their stories.

And stories from a lawmaker and a photographer and a police officer who were inside. They'll tell us minute by minute what it was like to be there. Because to know what really happened is to understand what could happen next. That's after this break. Support for NPR and the following message come from BetterHelp, offering online counseling.

BetterHelp therapist Hesu Jo explains the importance of creating a safe space for therapy. I can't tell you how many times I've had clients that say that expression, like, I've never told that to anybody. That's when I know I've made some kind of momentous move with this person. They feel safe enough to expose that part of themselves. And doing that together with somebody else can be very powerful. To get matched with a counselor within 48 hours and save 10%, go to betterhelp.com slash embedded. The world was shocked when pro-Trump extremists stormed and seized the U.S. Capitol. Throughout this tumultuous era, the NPR Politics Podcast has been there every day explaining and making sense of the news. We'll be doing that through the final

days of the Trump administration as we all try to understand how this moment happened and what will come next. The morning of January 6th, Tom Bowman got to the National Mall around 10 a.m. So I did prepare myself a little bit. I dressed for the occasion. I didn't have any press credentials showing. I stuffed two press credentials into my pockets, each pocket. Tom covers the Pentagon for NPR.

He's reported on national security for years, from Afghanistan and Iraq many times. That press credential in the pocket thing is pretty standard by now at Trump events. Journalists can be targets, so you hide your ID. But I also had some first aid bandages stuffed into the pockets of my cargo pants, just in case, just in case something would happen. Tom is one of the reporters who's going to take us through the first part of the day. And he started at the Ellipse. That's this big park near the Capitol, where people were also gathering,

was reporter Hannah Allamp, who you heard earlier, and a producer she was working with that day, Lauren Hodges. So we got to the east side of the Capitol, the side facing the Library of Congress at about 10 a.m., and there was kind of a medium crowd there, and they were doing their usual chants like stop the steal and USA but it was pretty calm and we tried to speak to a few people about why they came I think the Georgia outcome is appalling I think that the evidence for fraud is so overwhelming that to ignore

it is treasonous and and things And things were calm for a bit until this one counter protester showed up and she was the only counter protester I saw all day. And this fight broke out between two groups of Trump supporters who were surrounding her. And this small group, like maybe two or three people, were like, we're not here to hurt anybody. This other much larger group said, actually, it's exactly why we're here. Really? And that, yeah, that for me was kind of like the point of no return. Their intentions were out there. And I was like, oh, no, this is going to be a long day. So that's how it felt near the Capitol, even in the morning.

It was different back at the rally, at the Ellipse, where Tom was. Check, check, check. Check, check, check. Tom was working that day with producer Graham Smith, who you hear there. They started walking around. They saw more people than they expected. But at first, Tom says, it didn't feel dangerous. I was surprised at how many people there were. I would have estimated at that point maybe 20,000, just from what we could see.

No violence. People were cheering. It was really festive at that point. Like a football game or a pre-game warm-up. There was no real anger. So it felt like a rally. Yeah, just like a rally. And there was a jumbotron set up a couple hundred yards away from where we were on the ellipse itself. There were songs and people singing.

Some were kind of odd choices. But then other songs that kind of made more sense, like Proud to be an American. And then there were pictures of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the screen and Biden kind of flashed on the screen and people would scream and boo. But again, not really angry, kind of, I would say almost festive, like the game's ready to begin. No anger. But then... Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome America's mayor, Rudy Giuliani. Things started to change. After a while, Giuliani comes on, Rudy Giuliani, and then he kind of gets the crowd really rocking.

Let's have trial by combat. Talking about trial by combat. That really got the crowd going. And then finally Trump came on. This amazing movement, thank you. And then that's when things really just started moving. The crowd clearly at that point was energized, and they would cheer everything he said. We're leading Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia by hundreds of thousands of votes and then late in the evening or early in the morning,

boom, these explosions of bullshit and all of a sudden... And again, the crowd was just cheering and cheering. Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! And he said, I'm going with you to Capitol Hill. We're going to walk down to the Capitol. And we're going to cheer on our brave senators. Trump, of course, did not go with them to Capitol Hill.

After the speech, he got into the presidential limo and went right back to the White House. Tom Bowman and producer Graham Smith did walk with the crowd onto Pennsylvania Avenue and headed southeast toward the Capitol. And there was just a sea of people. And at that point, I said, this is something different. At the Capitol, Hannah Alam and producer Lauren Hodges could tell that something had changed,

that the smaller group of people that was gathered there had heard about what Trump said at the rally. So Lauren and Hannah climbed up a small hill to get a better look down Pennsylvania Avenue. And I saw people coming from as far as the eye could see. As this crowd was coming toward us, we found out that they were coming basically because President Trump told them to come. Like he said, go to the Capitol, go. We're not going to, you know, fix our democracy with weakness or something like that. And it seems like they took that as a direct order.

So you heard him say that somehow, like over the speaker or you just people were talking about it? It was people talking about it, saying, Trump said it, Trump said it. And so they were walking, they were marching. As this bigger crowd approached a series of barriers around the Capitol, those kind of bicycle-wreck-style things about waist-high, Hannah figured she was about to see the same thing she'd seen at so many demonstrations and protests. Police, maybe tear gas, some clashes here at so many demonstrations and protests. Police. Maybe tear gas.

Some clashes here and there. Law and order. I was more worried about getting arrested by the authorities that day because that was my frame of reference for protests was that, you know, people try to do this thing and then they get beaten back in a really forceful way. And that didn't happen. There were no police at all.

I didn't see one policeman. By the time Tom Bowman made it to the Capitol, that football game vibe was gone. You could feel it as you were heading onto the Capitol grounds. It was just a different, different feeling. It felt like the crowd was turning into a mob. Hannah and Lauren could see the first barrier being knocked down and people streaming onto the Capitol grounds.

They have pushed past the barriers. Pushed past the barriers and are now going up the steps to the Capitol. It's absolutely pandemonium. It's as far back as the eye can see. This was on the Capitol, but it's absolutely pandemonium. It's as far back as the eye can see. This was on the Capitol's west side, the side you see on TV during inaugurations. In fact, a lot of scaffolding and folding chairs had already been set up. At the time, inauguration was less than two weeks away.

Here's Lauren again. They were kind of climbing all over the scaffolding and the stacks of folding chairs shouting like, whose house? Our house. And the small group of police came down the Capitol steps with what looked to me like paintball guns aimed at the crowd, but there just were not very many of them. And so it did nothing to deter the crowd, and more people just kept coming and coming and coming. People were almost cheerful and giddy to have gotten this close to the Capitol building without any consequences, like nothing was really going on. There were some pops

that sounded like tear gas, but I think it was actually the crowd throwing fireworks. And they were taking down the folding chairs and passing them out, sitting down, breaking out their thermoses and taking pictures together. Wow. Some people had clearly come just for the show. But as more and more people kept coming, it was clear there were some who were not just there to watch.

Like the guys we saw in photos and videos, lined up with their hands on each other's backs, heading toward the building in standard combat formation. Tom Bowman had seen them earlier. Then he watched as the mob just got bigger and bigger. There were hundreds and hundreds of people. And we saw them going up the steps on the west side of the Capitol. There were so many people in the stairway that some people were actually walking up the banisters,

the marble banisters. They were just going from all angles of the building, trying to find anywhere they could get in, like down this alley, over to this window. What about this back door? You know, they were relentless. Watching all this, Hannah was struck by how many different kinds of people there were. And remember, she covers extremist groups.

She can recognize insignias and patches and logos and jackets. Am I going to see an Oathkeeper? Okay, there's an Oathkeeper. Am I going to see the 3% logo? Definitely saw some of them there. QAnon, huge presence at this one. I saw Neo-Confederates in the crowd, all sorts of white supremacist and neo-Nazi insignia too. All of the strands of american extremism were there in the same crowd and what's wilder is that they were in the same crowd with you know a grandmother from arizona you know who fervently believes in her heart that the election was stolen and that her vote didn't matter.

And she was so, you know, hyped up on disinformation and conspiracy theory that she drove 34 hours with her 87-year-old mother to attend this. And so, no, they didn't come to break windows or kill police, but they're there shoulder to shoulder with the guys who did come for that. Hannah sees a group smashing a window of the Capitol building and another group shouting them down. This is bullshit. We don't want to damage our building. That's not what's going on here.

One guy, we'd only say his name was Joe from Ohio, comes over to her to complain. And then Hannah asks him this. his name was Joe from Ohio, comes over to her to complain. And then Hannah asks him this. So today as you look around, what do you hope comes of all of this? The people in this house who stole this election from us, hanging from a gallow out here in this lawn for the whole world to see so it never happens again. That's what needs to happen.

Four by four by four hanging from a rope out here for treason. By this point, it's between 1 and 2 p.m. The mob has pushed through the barriers and is now swarming the Capitol building. And they are not stopping at the doors. That's when things really got ugly. They were banging on those doors. They were yelling and screaming. There was a guy with a bullhorn. Hundreds and hundreds of people were going up into the plaza. All right, let's move down that way. Cans and bottles were thrown.

They were smashing the doors trying to get in. The cops were pushing people out. And then they shot tear gas. This cloud of tear gas came out the side door. And then cops came out with weapons and started shooting pellets at the crowd. And the crowd was screaming at them, shame, shame, shame. Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame. Capitol Police officers were stationed at some of the doors around the building,

but there were just not enough of them to hold off the growing mob. Two o'clock was when the last of those sort of outer barriers fell, and we go, and now we're basically on the steps and there were just a few police officers from where we were on the eastern steps i guess we walk up and i hear these guys telling the police it's not going to go well for you you guys should just stop look look at the crowd they were kind of warning the police, like, just look at the numbers, man. Do yourself a favor. Go. You know, that was at two o'clock. I have a picture of those guys still on the steps. By 2.15, they're off the steps.

They've been overrun within minutes. Oh my God. Oh my God. Get it, get it, get it, get it. They're in. They're in the crocodile. We heard the doors kind of break or windows break. And so, you know, I was pretty sure they were in. And so I tried to text on WhatsApp and tell my editor I think they're in. And then the last message I saw before we lost signal was something like, you know, they're in Statuary Hall.

And I'm like, oh, my goodness. Wow. Yeah. Coming up, the mob moves from outside to inside and from violent to deadly. That's after this break. With civil unrest, the pandemic, and the economic crisis, you want to know what's happening right when you wake up. And that's why there is Up First, the news you need in about 10 minutes from NPR News. Listen every day. Okay, we are back and we're talking about January 6th, 2021. It's about 2.15 in the afternoon. And as we just heard, rioters have broken into the Capitol building.

The house will be in order. Where lawmakers were in the process of debating and finalizing the certification of the election. I'd known for a while that I would be on the Hill for the Electoral College vote certification, the joint session. New York Times photographer Erin Schaaf was one of those journalists who was inside. It's her job to be in the Capitol every day, documenting the work of the federal government. She knew about the Save America rally, but she figured anything chaotic was going to happen outside. What I decided to do was to pack my car with a gas mask and some other protective gear,

but I knew I probably wouldn't be able to bring that with me into the Capitol, and I figured, why would I need that in the Capitol? So I left that in my car. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Vice President. In order to follow with the Speaker's instructions... That morning, things started out like normal. At least as normal as hundreds of lawmakers objecting to the results of a free and fair election can feel. Arendt was in the press gallery when word came that rioters had pushed down those barriers and gotten onto the Capitol grounds. And so I stood up, I looked out the window, and I took photos and it looked like it was just kind of maybe a hundred people and they were just standing around from the vantage point that I could see. And so I thought, okay, I'm just going to finish what I'm doing. Cause I

was photographing, I was a pool photographer, which means I was photographing for all the news organizations. And I knew, I thought that everyone would need these images and that they would need them right away. And then we started hearing over a loudspeaker something about, like, don't leave the Capitol. Like, the Capitol was secure, something along those lines. Lockdowns at the U.S. Capitol complex are actually pretty common. Suspicious package, anonymous threat.

It's not even that unusual for a building to be evacuated as a precaution. And so I was thinking, OK, like this is, you know, par for the course of the day. But on the second floor of the house, up in the gallery, it was already becoming clear to Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington state, that things were not normal. By then, we were really starting to hear more and more of the people outside of the mob that was gathering. The Capitol steps are now jammed with people, flag-bearing people.

So at 2.17, according to my text, I said, they just locked us in, took out Nancy and Steny. So this is the Speaker of the House and the House Majority Leader. I'm just getting a message right now saying all buildings within the Capitol complex, external security threat, no entry or exit is permitted. Which, of course, immediately alerted us to the severity of what was happening. Then she got word that the rioters had made it inside the Capitol. At 221, I said the Capitol has been breached. We cannot leave the chamber.

You texted that? I texted that to my husband. Yeah. At 2.31, there was an announcement that rioters were headed in the direction of the House floor. Everybody, get down under your chairs if necessary. So we have folks entering the rotunda and coming down this way. So we'll update you as soon as we can, but just be prepared. Stay calm. In the press gallery, Aaron heard they were about to lock the doors. And if anyone wanted to leave, now was the time. So I grabbed my cameras and I got out of the press gallery.

And so I heard the voices of the rioters. And I ran to the second floor of the Capitol, where one of the Capitol police officers was drawing them away from the unguarded doors to the Senate floor. This is the images that many people have seen of this officer, you know, single officer facing down a pretty big crowd coming up the stairs and kind of leading them away from, you know, the Senate floor. Yeah. So I was next to the reporter who was filming that. And, you know, we were moving back and I was just so shocked that they had made it in the building. If you missed the story about this video, it was taken by a reporter for the Huffington Post, Igor Bobik. And it shows this mob of what appear to be all white men backing a black police officer up several flights of stairs.

Throughout the encounter, the officer moves his hand to his gun multiple times, but he never unholsters it. And yeah, he leads the crowd away from the door to the Senate floor, very close to where Vice President Mike Pence had been standing just a few minutes before. That officer's name was Eugene Goodman. You know, while Eugene Goodman's actions were caught on camera and has really been celebrated, rightly so around the country,

there were just, there were so many encounters just like that at the Capitol. BuzzFeed reporter Emanuel Felton talked to a handful of Black Capitol Police officers who were working that day. They told their stories anonymously. And one of them described a moment that really stuck with Emanuel. Another confrontation with a Black officer on one side and rioters on the other. He's in a shoddy match with protesters. He even says, I voted for Joe Biden. You're telling me I don't matter, that my vote doesn't matter.

And he's in this confrontation. And they just keep saying, hey, we are doing this for you. A couple of rioters take out badges and say, hey, we're law enforcement too, just like you. And he just gets even more upset at that point. How can you say you're fighting for us, that you're fighting for law and honor and for police when I have X number of friends who are down right now. And he says then they had this moment of realization, like, wow, like, what have we done? And they asked him, like, how many offices do you have down? Like, what can you do to help?

But he says they quickly snap out of that and go back, well, but this is about more than that. This is about saving America. We can't know for sure, but one of the officers down he was talking about could have been Brian Sicknick. He reportedly was hit with a fire extinguisher during a confrontation with rioters.

He was taken to a local hospital that day, and he died at 9.30 the next night. Back inside the Capitol, it's now just before 3 p.m. on that second-floor House Gallery. Representative Pramila Jayapal was still stuck with about a dozen other members not sure where to go. She could hear rioters yelling and pounding on the doors just a few feet away. She'd recently had knee surgery and she was afraid she wouldn't be able to run if she needed to. At one point, a security official told her and the others to move to the other side of the gallery. And so I was trying to crawl under the banisters with my cane, with my bad knee, and with the gas mask in one hand. And so I think it was almost halfway around the gallery

that we were crawling under these banisters to where we ended up. They broke the glass? Everybody stay down! Get down! Then the group was told to get down on the floor. And then they heard a shot. It could have been when police shot and killed one of the rioters, a woman named Ashley Babbitt. Jayapal didn't know who was aiming at who.

Another congresswoman started praying. Peace in the land! Peace in this country! Peace in this world! What we're asking for, a healing, a remedy. In that moment, I thought I could die. I mean, I really thought I could die here. Eventually, Jayapal and the others were evacuated by Capitol Police. They were shuttled down a hallway toward a safe room. Back in the other hallway, Aaron Schaaf, the New York Times photographer, had just watched police officer Eugene Goodman direct rioters away from the Senate floor.

And I thought, I need to get photos of what's happening right now quickly because this is going to be shut down so fast. Wow. Because that's what happens on the Hill, you know? I mean, during Kavanaugh's confirmation, every day there would be these women who would come and they would interrupt proceedings. And immediately they would be arrested, dragged out, and be processed. And I was shocked that this was happening in the actual Capitol. But I thought there is no way that this is going to continue.

This is going to be like a two minute thing. It was not a two minute thing. What happened to Aaron Next was published in the New York Times the next day. You might have read it. Just a warning. It's intense. Basically, after she had seen those rioters confront Officer Goodman, it occurred to Erin that she might need to find somewhere a little safer. So she ran up another flight of stairs and ran into a new group of rioters. One of them asked her if she worked for CNN. Then he pulled my credential out of my shirt and saw that it said New York Times.

And he yelled, like, she's with the fucking New York Times and at that point a group of men surrounded me initially I had thought that it was two or three people but now I've seen photos of what happened and it looks like there were about five men around me and what happened and it looks like there were about five men around me um and uh they um were trying to take my cameras off me um and uh I was doing my best to not have them do that and uh they threw me onto the ground um and all I could think to do was to scream

at the top of my lungs because I thought that maybe that would scare them or maybe someone would come and help me and no one came and I'm so sorry Erin no one came and um I'm so sorry Erin yeah I um I've never experienced that level of fear of um I've covered some protests and um I've had I've had people grab me before or yell at me, but I've never felt afraid for my life.

The men grabbed her backpack and one of her cameras and ran off back down the stairs toward the east side of the building. And then Erin did something that I can assure you is not what they tell us to do in hostile environment training. I ran after them. You did? I really wanted the photos on my camera. She caught up with one of the guys. Tried to pull her backpack away and then he pulled away from me and um all of a sudden it kind of hit me like what are you doing um and then I realized how vulnerable I was because I still had a camera on me and that easily identifies me as a member of the press.

And I knew I had to hide somewhere or anywhere. Erin wasn't too far from the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, someone she photographs a lot for her job. So I thought maybe there will be some kind of like security there. And I ran in to her office suite and there were people just like defacing it. And so I kept going out to her speaker's balcony. She saw a storage box for outdoor furniture. She stashed the one camera she had left in there. And then I looked out over the balcony and I just saw this giant crowd of rioters all over the inaugural stage and very few police officers.

And I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. So I took out my phone and started filming it. Then, while she's standing there, on the balcony of the person who is second in line to the presidency after the vice president, one of the rioters is suddenly standing right next to her. This may be the start of a civil war revolution, he said. I think like I said something like, where do we go from here? Where do we go from here as a country? Well, this was our moment in our time.

The French Revolution started like this. And that was that. Erin realized she needed another hiding place. She left Pelosi's office, found a couple of fellow journalists in another hallway, and they barricaded themselves in a room for a few hours until they were evacuated by police. Pramila Jayapal and the other members she was with did make it to the safe room, but they did not feel safe there.

And I think we were probably one of the last groups because the room was already packed with people. I would say over 100, maybe 150 people. And so I just sat there and I was horrified in the moment. I thought this is a super spreader event. And then there were these Republicans who refused to wear masks. And my colleague, Lisa Rochester from Delaware, came by me to check on me. And she had a bunch of masks in her hand. And she said, I'm going to go try to get them to put on masks, you know, in this very determinedly cheerful way. The political news site Punchbowl actually got video of this

moment. You can see Lisa Blunt Rochester walk up to a table where some lawmakers are sitting, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia congresswoman who has expressed a belief in the QAnon conspiracy. Rochester offers masks and they waver off. One man says, I'm not trying to be political. They were mocking her and laughing at her and, you know, threatening to hug her. And it was just horrific. It was horrific. Later that night, after all the rioters had finally been cleared out, Jayapal and the rest of Congress came back into the main Capitol building to finish the job they had started earlier in the day, certifying the election. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of the state of Delaware has received 306 votes.

Donald J. Trump of the state of Florida has received 232 votes. Erin Schaaf wanted to finish her job, too. After she was evacuated, she came back into the Capitol, found the camera she had stashed, and started working again. The Capitol's my second home, back into the Capitol, found the camera she had stashed, and started working again. The Capitol's my second home, and it was really important to me that no one make me feel like I couldn't do my job, especially after trying to stop me. That was really important for me to finish the day. The purpose of the joint session having

concluded pursuant to Senate concurrent resolution 117th Congress, the chair declares the joint session dissolved. Sometime between the end of the riot and 3.45 a.m. when Vice President Pence was saying those words, a group of Capitol Police officers gathered in the rotunda. They start to get together and they do what people do. They sort of start joking about it and trying to process what just happened. Emanuel Felton, the BuzzFeed reporter

who talked to Black officers on the Capitol Police force, says one of them, there in the rotunda, was not in the mood for jokes. He just wasn't ready for that. He was still beyond, he was still really raw emotionally. And so he eventually, you know, describes having somewhat of a breakdown, sitting down in the rotunda with a buddy of his who's also in the force and starting to cry. He cried and then he started talking, actually yelling, loud enough for other officers to hear. Many of those officers are white and some support the president. Here's Emanuel quoting the officer directly.

What the F, man? Is this America? What the F just happened? I'm so sick and tired of this S. These are racist terrorists. I got caught the N-word 15 times today. He yelled. Yeah, he felt like he needed everyone, not just his buddy. It was really important to him that his colleagues knew what they were standing with. At the end of the day's chaos, as a curfew was declared in the city,

producer Lauren Hodges went back to a nearby hotel, where she and Hannah Elam had stashed some gear. And there in the lobby, the hotel bar was crowded with Trump supporters talking about the riot. They were so excited. They were just so proud of themselves. Like, that was the mood. They were talking about being red-blooded Americans.

They were talking about how the police came at them. And I was just like, stand back, man, like they had their whole narrative spun about their day and how they had used their strength and their, their might and their patriotism to make history that day. Wow. And Hannah and I just quietly got in the elevator and went up to our room. Just to get your stuff. And then we both realized we hadn't eaten the whole day, so we went and found a Taco Bell drive-thru and ate for the first time that entire day, and it was glorious and probably the best thing I've ever eaten.

Reporter Tom Bowman and producer Graham Smith also made it home safely that day. Representative Pramila Jayapal and three other lawmakers who were in the safe room where Republican members of Congress were refusing to wear masks have since tested positive for the coronavirus. One of them was Bonnie Watson Coleman, a Democrat from New Jersey. For 10 months, I have been working from home, voting by proxy, doing meetings on Zoom, she told me, because I have pre-existing conditions. Then she goes to D.C. for this vote and gets COVID. I am very angry, she told me, because this did not have to happen. It was almost a week before Hannah Alam had time to go back and look at all the video and photos she had taken on her phone that day. And when she did,

she noticed a moment she had forgotten. It was early in the afternoon, when the mob was just starting to swarm the Capitol. People had taken those folding chairs off the inaugural stage, down to the lawn, and were setting them up so they could sit and watch what was happening. But before they could sit down, a man storms through and screams at them not to sit down, to get up, get to the front of the crowd. Here's the clip Hannah managed to record of that moment. It occurred to Hannah, watching that video, some people at the Capitol that day knew exactly what they came to do.

And some people didn't imagine they would get that far. I don't know that anyone understands the implications of this group of people fired up on the president's rhetoric, marching to the Capitol. And when they get there, then what? Trump didn't offer them a plan. He didn't show up as he said he would. And so they were sort of left to their own devices. So it's not maybe there wasn't this like grand tactical plan that someone like drew up in like military style fashion and like communicated to the whole crowd. But somebody's there and has an idea about what needs to happen next. Yeah, but the domestic terrorism analysts I talked to are saying, you know, there was some level of planning, but also just a lot of spontaneous, you know, just reactions.

And so they said, imagine this is what they were able to do on an ad hoc basis. You know, this is what they were able to pull together at the scene. You know, what are we going to see if they have more time to plan, if they actually do organize and put something bigger together? So, yeah, at the end of all this, we're left with millions, tens of millions of disaffected people on the right. And we don't know yet. One thing NPR has learned since January 6th is that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security had a lot of raw intelligence about the possibility of violence in Washington, D.C. that day. They'd gotten it from

the NYPD and an FBI regional office. Usually, federal agencies would take that intelligence and produce a threat assessment, a report, then send it out to local law enforcement so they could prepare for what was coming. But in the weeks before January 6th, federal agencies did not do that. And officials NPR talked to could not explain why. In contrast, security officials are sounding loud and clear warnings about the possibility of violence on the day of Joe Biden's inauguration. In Washington, D.C., as many as 20,000 National Guard troops are expected to be deployed and armed. This story was produced by Brett Bachman, Raina Cohen, and Justine Yan. It was edited by Jenny

Schmidt and Deb George. Our senior supervising producer is Nicole Beamster-Borer. Huge thanks to everyone you heard in this piece, to NPR Washington desk editor Brett Neely, and to NPR's investigative team and Dina Temple Raston for their reporting that a threat assessment was never produced. Our theme song is by Colin Wamsgan. Some other music was by Blue Dot Sessions. Subscribe to this podcast if you haven't already. Hit us up on Twitter at NPR Embedded. We'll be back soon with more. Thanks for listening.