What REALLY happened at the Capitol Wednesday (Long)

Posted on 1/9/21 at 7:56 am

Posted by BayBengal9

Bay St. Louis, MS

Member since Nov 2019

4171 posts

Posted on 1/9/21 at 7:56 am

Yesterday evening, I finally had a chance to sit down with my best friend who went to DC on Wednesday. For purposes of this post, I'm going to call him Joe. Joe had called me Thursday morning saying I shouldn't believe anything being told by the media (no worries there), and he had videos and pictures to show what really went on.

Here's the actual story:

Joe arrived around the White House around 8:30 Wednesday morning. By that time, the crowd was so large, he could not get anywhere near the Ellipse (I believe it is called) where the speakers and massive jumbotron screens were setup. He said the crowd was at least a quarter mile deep, and it was impossible to get an estimate from the crowd based on pictures because there were so many people spread out all around the White House, and some went to the Capitol building first thing in the morning, so his estimate was 300-500k people.

One of the first things he noticed was that there were some port-a-potties on the Mall that had been barricaded off due to "COVID." So he asked a Capitol police about where they should use the bathroom. The police officer told him that normally there were toilets setup all along Pennsylvania and Connecticut, but they had been removed on Tuesday.

So, after standing in the freezing cold too far to see or hear anything for about 30 minutes, Joe decided to make his way over to the Capitol. He arrived there around 11am, and he estimated there were probably 10k people already spread out around the Capitol building. He went to the back of the Capitol and made his way up to the very front of the barricades. If you don't know exactly how the Capitol is laid out... the back is substantially different from the front. In the back, there is basically one walkway up to one fairly small set of stairs that leads up to the back door and that is essentially the only entrance (besides windows at ground level that we saw ANTIFA people breaking out).

There were barricades set up in a semicircle approximately 300 feet away from the back steps of the Capitol and there were about 5 DC Metro "guarding" a 400-500 foot length of barricades. As the time moved closer to 1pm, Joe estimated there were probably 5 to 10k people who had now congregated behind the barricades at the back of the Capitol. Around this time, a group of 50 to 60 Proud Boys made their way right up to the front of the barricade about 10 feet from Joe and kicked over two of the barricades and started walking towards the back steps of the Capitol changing "frick ANTIFA!" and "USA!." At no point did any police try to stop them, did anyone get on a megaphone and ask the crowd not to enter the barricaded area, or anything like that.

After this occurred, people started moving in behind the Proud Boys and the barricades were all eventually moved and neatly lined up over near a construction area. I emphasize this point because many of the people who came behind the Proud Boys had no idea the barricades were meant to keep them out of an area, so they started moving them out of the way in an orderly fashion.

Eventually, the entire area between the bottom of the steps to the Capitol and the original barricaded area was filled in with people. The Proud Boys were changing "This is our house!" at the base of the steps, and someone even stood up on the bottom few steps with a megaphone and said a prayer for guidance to the Congressmen and women. Again, at this point in time, no directions had been given to the crowd by ANY law enforcement officers about moving back or dispersing or anything of the like.

It's a little after noon now, and more and more people are arriving around the Capitol. Joe said there were probably 20 DC Metro at the top steps to the back door of the Capitol and that was the only law enforcement presence he really saw. Out of nowhere, Joe hears a "thumpf" and a tear gas canister lands right in the middle of the crowd that were between the original barricade line and the steps of the Capitol. Joe had a full face gas mask on along with a kevlar vest, so he helped move people out of the tear gas and witnessed an 80 year old woman pass out and urinate herself, a group of college girls screaming and stumbling around blindly, and some other things that rightly pissed off the crowd and made a lot of the men really angry.

Now things started to turn... people from the crowd started yelling obscenities at the police, calling them traitors and fascists, and so on. People start running up the steps of the Capitol and waving flags, who were then promptly arrested, but even after this incident, the crowd was still peaceful and no one was making any kind of aggressive actions towards the police or trying to go up the stairs of the Capitol en masse. It's after 1pm now, and people are streaming in by the tens of thousands from the Mall. Joe estimated by about 1:30pm there were probably 20 to 30k people at the back of the Capitol, and probably just as many spread out around the front and sides.

Joe assumes the police got scared, realizing at this point that the crowd was getting too large for them to control if things got out of hand, so apparently the order was given to tear gas the crowd. 5 or 6 canisters of tear gas were shot out into the crowd milling around between the original barricade line and the steps to the back of the Capitol. At this point, no one could go back because there were 25 thousand people pushing forward from behind you, so 200 to 300 people just rushed forward up the steps of the Capitol to get out of the tear gas. The police just turned and ran. Joe said no one had to "break into" the Capitol because the door was open and they just walked right in. Joe decided to not go into the Capitol itself, but he stood right outside the door talking to people and trying to document what was going on. Even at this point, he did not witness any violence, anyone attacking police, or anything like that, and from what he could see, most of the people at the back of the Capitol were simply hanging out inside the corridors at the back to escape the tear gas.