Six days after the close of a tumultuous 2020, Americans witnessed a new level of tragedy at the nation’s capital. Fueled by lies of a rigged election, angry protests turned riotous, leaving five people — including at least one police officer — dead, dozens wounded, and, within a week, one president impeached.
Boston Public Radio interviewed congressional leaders about their experience during the Jan. 6 insurrection and the duty they felt to hold the president accountable for what they witnessed.
Rep. Bill Keating, Mass.’ 9th Congressional District
“It’s one of those things we picture in a movie,” Keating told hosts Jim and Margery, the morning after the attempted coup. “You know, those usually B-rated movies, where someone tries to take over the government and they have these scenes of the Capitol being taken over. Only this time it was for real.”
Keating also recalled speaking to Capitol police in the days before the attack. He said officials assured him that several perimeters had been established and that everything was under control.
“Well that day it was clear, that perimeter… the furthest ring, they had just put, basically, metal, movable barriers — that some people used as ladders to help climb up the Capitol later on,” he said.
Listen to the excerpt from his Jan. 7 interview:
Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Mass.’ 7th Congressional District
“There was a moment there, where we were in the dark,” Pressley said of her experience in the Capitol building during the insurrection. She recalled lying on the ground with her staff, “with gas masks in our hands, [and] with furniture and water bottles used to barricade the doors closed.”
"It was terrifying," she said. "Absolutely terrifying."
An investigation is currently underway into whether Capitol officials played a role in January’s insurrection. As Pressley and her colleagues hid in their office, they found their panic buttons, installed into desks as a safety precaution, had been ripped out sometime before the attack.
Listen to the excerpt from her Jan. 8 interview:
Rep. Seth Moutlon, Mass.’ 6th Congressional District
Moulton remembered being escorted to a small room in the Capitol building with his congressional colleagues. About a dozen of those colleagues, huddled in the crowded space, were unmasked, he said.
“I decided, ‘I’m just going to walk over and take out my phone,’” he recalled. “Which I did, and [started] taking pictures of them standing there without their masks. And they flipped out.”
“For what it’s worth,” he noted, “I looked back a few minutes later, and most of them were wearing their masks.”
In the days following the incident, at least three members of Congress — Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Rep. Brad Schneider, and 75 year-old Rep. Bonnie Coleman, a cancer survivor — tested positive for COVID-19.
Listen to the expert from his Jan. 8 interview:
Mass. Sen. Ed Markey
As the pro-Trump mob was pushing past Capitol police forces, Markey was preparing his speech for the Senate floor as part of the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College win. Suddenly, an ominous message came over the Capitol’s intercom system.
The voice, he remembered, announced grimly, “The Capitol is under attack. Lock all doors. Pull the shades, the Capitol is under attack.”
“Well, you can imagine, that’s a pretty chilling announcement to be coming into your office,” he said. “We locked down, immediately, every one of the doors. And we just turned on the TV to watch the events as they were unfolding, not knowing if this crowd — which was getting larger and larger — would be able to move throughout every part of the Capitol complex,” including his office in the Dirksen building.
Listen to the expert from his Jan. 11 interview:
Rep. Jake Auchincloss, Mass.' 4th Congressional District
Auchincloss was sworn in to his first congressional term just three days before the storming of the Capitol. Like Rep. Moulton, Auchincloss spoke about watching his colleagues waiting in the crowded room without face masks.
“It’s just an egregious lack of care for other people,” he said. “You’ve got to show compassion to one another, and it’s just not that hard to wear a mask in the building.”
Asked what was going through his head during Wednesday’s impeachment hearing, Auchincloss said it was “the same thing that was in my head right before I swore in on Sunday, last week.”
He continued, “This country, our democracy, was brilliantly framed. It has been resilient over the course of centuries, it has adapted and lived into an era that the founders could’ve never have imagined. And it is incumbent upon holders of office, now, to continue to sustain our way of government.”
Listen to the excerpt from his Jan. 13 interview:
Rep. Jim McGovern, Mass.' 2nd Congressional District
McGovern, who chairs the House Rules Committee, led the opening debate on the House floor on the day of Donald Trump’s second impeachment.
One week prior, as the mob was making its way inside the Capitol building, McGovern was sitting in Nancy Pelosi’s chair on the House floor. As he oversaw the evacuation of members and staff out of the chamber, he witnessed the violent mob firsthand.
“I was one of the last people out,” he said. “And when I walked off the floor into the speaker’s gallery — there are glass doors in the speaker’s lobby — and I saw, not a stone’s throw away from where I was standing, this angry mob banging on these glass windows, breaking, cracking these windows.”
The lasting image, he said, was the look in the eyes of the rioters.
“I mean, I saw hate in their eyes. These were not protestors coming to make a political point, they were here to destroy property and to do harm to individuals.”
Listen to the excerpt from his Jan. 13 interview:
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse
From his private hideaway office in the Capitol, Conn. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse remembers hearing a “loud roar,” and watching as rioters pushed their way past the outer-perimeter fence line. Moments later, he’d be helping to calm a “badly-shaken” member of the Capitol police, who managed to find her way to his office.
“I was a little bit surprised that the Capitol police didn’t immediately fall back to the next line of defense, which was the building,” he said. “There seemed to be a lot of uncertainty and turmoil in getting organized and so forth, and it didn’t take long before you could hear the banging at the building itself.”
“And then,” he said, “I heard the knock on the door.”
Listen to the excerpt from his Jan. 15 interview below:
