VIDEOS – A year ago, the Capitol was stormed by pro-Trump, a black day for America

On January 6, 2021, the world witnessed a dumbfounded assault by a crowd of supporters of now former President Donald Trump against the seat of his own democracy. On the same day that Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election was to be certified in a session on Capitol Hill, a crowd of demonstrators violently invited themselves to try to prevent it. Convinced that Donald Trump was the real winner, after two months of “fake news” launched by the main party, they entered the building by the hundreds, forcing elected officials and parliamentary staff to flee or to find a hiding place.

One afterwards, we now know better the chronology of this invasion, and its setbacks inside and outside the Capitol. We also know a little more about what was going on at the same time in the Oval Office of the White House, less than two miles away. Donald Trump was also watching continuous television, and took more than three hours to intervene when he knew all about the dramatic situation inside.

Since the day before, supporters of Donald Trump have flocked to the capital, from all over the country. On the morning of January 6, they were already numerous in the streets. An FBI agent, who ordered his coffee at a bakery, along with several of them, later recalled fleetingly wondering why a young man had put on a military tactical vest to participate in a simple protest. Politics. We are in Washington, demonstrations are frequent, and this one is expected, but not particularly feared. A number of officials had issued warning signals for several weeks, quickly lost in the chain of responsibilities, and without operational follow-up.

The demonstrators are gradually massing around the Washington Monument, where from 10:30 am, speakers follow one another to harangue them from the rostrum. Among them Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer who orchestrated much of Trump’s legal attempts to challenge the election result – all but one lost, local and paltry. Speeches escalate, and Republican Alabama MP Mo Brooks can be heard calling the crowd to “fight for America”.

At noon, he takes the stage. Donald Trump takes up his argument on the votes that would have been stolen from him, which he has been clubbing without interruption since the November 3 ballot, and which he had even anticipated months earlier. But that day, the focus of the speech narrowed on the certification of the vote, the last act of the democratic process, which will take place a few hours later, in the precincts of Congress.

In front of his supporters, Trump calls on his vice president not to be “weak” and not to recognize the victory of Joe Biden, a power that Mike Pence, who is to chair the certification session, does not yet have. He also galvanizes the crowd against “bad republicans”, that is, those who have made it known that they will do nothing to prevent Joe Biden from becoming the next President of the United States. Above all, he explicitly calls for his supporters to “fight like devils”, in a speech that flirts dangerously with a call for violence. Trump will not have used the word “peacefully” only once, during that 70-minute rant.

An immutable ritual, it is at 1 p.m. that the session opens at the Capitol, for the certification of the votes of the electors. Almost simultaneously, Vice President Mike Pence issues a letter announcing that he is not blocking the Electoral College vote, ending what was the Trump camp’s last hope – albeit unfounded in law. At the same time, a first wave of demonstrators set up barricades west of the parliamentary complex, and began to harass the police officers present. Mike Pence begins the call of the States in alphabetical order, which blocks from the A: the group of Arizona raises an objection, a harmless procedure, but which already promises two good hours of delay in the program.

Donald Trump’s speech has just ended, giving the signal to leave for the thousands of demonstrators he has just heated up. They set off in procession for the Capitol, two kilometers away, whose steps they quickly invade, forcing the – too few – police officers present to retreat.

After the withdrawal of the police, overwhelmed by the number, several hundred demonstrators continue their advance to the doors of the Capitol, and end up entering the building through the windows they broke. At this moment, they are just one floor below the hemicycle where the session is still continuing.

The next minute, the vice-president is evacuated by the secret services and taken to safety, parliamentarians and their assistants lock themselves in offices, others hide where they can.

Meanwhile, the horde of demonstrators advances in the corridors. They are equipped with a motley paraphernalia of riot helmets, shields, tactical vests, pyrotechnic rockets, metal pipes, hockey sticks or baseball bats. After the events, an explosive device will even be found.

Eugene Goodman, an isolated Capitol policeman, shields his body to prevent them from reaching a higher level. The time he held will have allowed several elected officials to gain a wing whose door will then be protected by the police.

At 2:24 p.m., while following the broadcast of the events on television, Donald Trump writes a tweet which, in context, literally places a target on his vice-president: “Mike Pence did not have the courage to do what should have been done, to protect our Country and our Constitution (…)”. At the same time, he was placed in safety with his family in a basement of the complex. The videosurveillance, which will be broadcast in the following days, show the evacuation of parliamentarians in single file, followed by the arrival of the group of demonstrators in the same places, a meeting, which could end very badly, being sometimes avoided within a few seconds. close. The police officers, too few in number, are often face to face to defend key points against the human tide for a while, one of them barely escaping suffocation, wedged between a door and the demonstrators (video below).

Ashli ​​Babbitt is galvanized on this day. This veteran of the US Army, from southern California, is seen in videos made by other protesters, being carried by several people to rush through the shattered glass of a door guarded by a handful of police officers . One of them pulls and touches the young woman, who will die with the effigy of Donald Trump around her neck. Ashli ​​Babbitt has since become a patriotic martyr for the Trump camp, an extremist activist for the Democrats.

At the White House, Donald Trump has not taken his eyes off the screens. It is now known that many allies, and even relatives like his eldest son, have already called on him to “condemn this shit”. Republican parliamentarians trapped inside Capitol Hill informed him of the volatility of the situation. But the one who is still President of the United States refuses to intervene, fascinated by “all these people who come to fight for [lui]”, according to a close present that day at his side.

At 3:13 p.m., he finally sent a new tweet accompanied by a video: “I call on everyone on Capitol Hill to stay peaceful. No violence!”. On the other hand, he does not call on the demonstrators to withdraw. During this time, the intruders of the Capitol take their ease in the hemicycle of the House or in the offices of parliamentarians. That of Nancy Pelosi, abhorred leader of the Democratic minority, is ravaged and filmed as a battle, while some pretend to track her down in the labyrinth of the parliamentary complex, screaming “We’re going to find you Nancy! And hang you!”

More than three hours after the start of the events, two hours after the intrusion into the Capitol, Donald Trump finally appears in a video where he calls on the demonstrators to return home. However, he assures them of his support until this final moment: “we love you, you are very dear to us”, while uttering a new verse on the elections “rigged”. The intruders begin to flow out of the buildings, not without some violent clashes with the police around the Capitol.

At 5:30 p.m., when the first National Guard soldiers arrived, which Trump had refused to deploy so far, most of the violence was over. At 8 p.m., Capitol Police declare the building secure, and Mike Pence logs in again. At 3:40 a.m., at the end of the countdown, he officially recorded Joe Biden’s presidential victory, making him the 46th President of the United States.

After one of the darkest days in the young history of the oldest democracy in the world, the human toll is heavy. One policeman and four rioters died while dozens of Capitol Hill policemen were injured. In the weeks that followed, several police officers from the Capitol committed suicide following these events.

The United States is preparing to commemorate, in its own theater, the first anniversary of these unprecedented events. Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer gave a speech shortly before that date, gravely recalling that “January 6, 2021 will forever remain this indelible stain in the history of our American democracy”.