What really happened on January 6th? A deep dive into the chaos and violence

Trump promised it would be ‘wild.’ Bannon said ‘all hell’ would break loose. They celebrated the chaos and violence that continually dominated their campaigns. What did they know and when?

Jan 06, 2022

NOTE: Journalist Kevin James Shay has spent the last year investigating the many questions behind the U.S. Capitol attack on January 6, 2021. This article incorporates excerpts from his book, Operation Chaos: The Trump Coup Attempt and the Campaign to Erode Democracy.

ALL hell is going to break loose tomorrow. It’s gonna be moving. It’s gonna be quick…. This is not a day for fantasy. This is a day for maniacal focus. Focus, focus, focus. We’re coming in right over the target. This is the point of attack we have always wanted.
– STEPHEN BANNON, “War Room” podcast, Jan. 5–6, 2021

IT was barely light as Metropolitan D.C. Officer Daniel Hodges stationed himself with several others in front of the IRS Federal Building on Constitution Avenue, near the popular Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. The air was cold, but above freezing with no hint of rain. Not bad for early January in the nation’s capital city.

Some in bright-red “Make America Great Again” caps, carrying signs that read “Stop the Steal” and other messages, hustled past Officer Hodges to the Ellipse just south of the White House. The procession included men dressed in tactical gear − ballistic vests, helmets, goggles, military face masks − without identifying patches. “They appeared to be prepared for much more than listening to politicians speak in a park,” Officer Hodges, 32, later observed.

A group wearing battle fatigues and boots stopped to speak with a couple officers. Some had radios and one an earpiece. “Is this all the manpower you have?” one asked an officer. “Do you really think you’re going to be able to stop all these people?” The query surprised the officers, and the group soon left to join the gathering crowd.

Over his radio in the ensuing hours, Hodges would hear officers in the department’s gun recovery unit seize weapons. “Multiple gun arrests were made,” he said. “Unfortunately, due to the course of events that day, we will likely never know exactly how many were carrying firearms and other lethal weapons.”

Stationed on the East Capitol steps that led to the Senate chamber, U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn initially didn’t notice much to alarm him. But around 11 a.m. on January 6, he received a text message from a friend with a screenshot of a call to arms at the Capitol. “Trump has given us marching orders,” the message read. “Keep your guns hidden…. [There would be] “time to arm up.”

“At the time, we had not received any threat warnings from our chain of command, and I had no independent reason to believe that violence was headed our way,” Officer Dunn said. “Looking back, it seemed to foreshadow what happened later.”

‘Heads on pikes’

In the early-morning hours of November 4, 2020, Donald Trump had claimed victory over Joe Biden in a bizarre White House speech, despite millions of votes left to be counted. That strategy was one Trump had hinted at in the months before the election, one that had been publicly advocated by longtime far-right propagandist and adviser Stephen Bannon in an October 10 speech before the Young Republican Federation of Virginia.

As officials ignored Trump’s claim and kept counting votes on November 5, Bannon went beyond his previous remarks when he accused Democrats of cheating through mail-in ballots and definitively stated — not predicted — that Trump would claim victory before millions of votes were counted. But as the votes soon pointed to a Biden win, Bannon’s rhetoric degenerated to advocating violence. As his face lit up in excitement and his voice became more pronounced with rage, the former Navy officer proposed on his “War Room” podcast that Trump not just fire officials who opposed him, but behead them and put their “heads on pikes” outside the White House as a warning, referring to monarchs doing that in Tudor England. He was dead serious, not a hint of a joking smile. Bannon, who had served in Trump’s White House for several months before he left to do even darker work while continuing to have Trump’s ear, specifically targeted FBI Director Christopher Wray and infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci.

After Biden was declared the winner on November 7, more than 60 court challenges by Trump, lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and supporters went nowhere. Not even the U.S. Supreme Court, which Trump packed with three conservative justices, would rule in his side’s favor. The nonviolent tactics to keep Trump in power weren’t working. It was time for something more.

Campaign manager Bill Stepien and deputy campaign manager Justin Clark had wanted to keep the court challenges about actual evidence of vote fraud, which most experts concluded was virtually nonexistent. They knew it would be a long shot to somehow find enough votes in Arizona and Georgia and win a legal challenge in Wisconsin for Trump to prevail. But in early November, Giuliani and lawyer Sidney Powell, a proponent of the outlandish conspiracy-promoting QAnon movement, hijacked the post-election strategy meetings. They soon gained Trump’s ear. During a November 13 Oval Office meeting, Giuliani detailed a false theory about Dominion voting machines electronically changing Trump votes to Biden. When the former New York mayor could not provide any proof of that theory, Clark argued against including that in the legal strategy.

“They’re lying to you, sir!” Giuliani said to Trump at one point. “We’re not lying,” Clark retorted. “You’re a fucking asshole, Rudy.”

Out in the trenches, Trump supporters mirrored the post-election campaign’s desperation. Violence broke out at “Stop the Steal” rallies organized by key Trump allies. The rally slogan had been formulated well before Election Day, as the campaign prepared its propaganda blitz in the event Trump lost. The Trump campaign provided plenty of funds for the rallies, records showed. At least $3.5 million was paid from Trump’s 2020 campaign to firms like Event Strategies — which listed former Melania Trump aide Justin Caporale as a partner and operations director — involved in organizing the post-election demonstrations, according to federal filings.

The group focused on a planned November 14 rally in Washington, D.C. A few days before that, Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, told Trump media ally Alex Jones that his group had armed members “stationed outside D.C. as a nuclear option in case they attempt to remove the president illegally.” Trump himself promoted the rally on Twitter.

On November 14, about 10,000 Trump supporters listened to QAnon-supporting Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and others at Freedom Plaza near the White House. They applauded as Trump rode by the rally in a vehicle and waved, then took off to play golf at his Northern Virginia course. Many marched two miles to the U.S. Supreme Court building, led by Jones, who was surrounded by a security detail that included Proud Boys, a male-only group that had violently clashed with Black Lives Matter protesters the previous summer.

At a stage on the steps of the Supreme Court, Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert called for a “revolution,” along the lines of the 2013 violent military-style coup that ushered in a new regime in Egypt. “They rose up through all over Egypt, and as a result… they turned the country around,” Gohmert claimed. He left out how the Egyptian military was called in to remove former President Mohamed Morsi, leading to additional violence and more than 1,000 deaths. A small group of counterprotesters, some wearing helmets and shields that read, “BLM” and “We Keep US Safe,” confronted the much larger pro-Trump crowd. Police separated the pro-Trump crowd and counterprotesters, and the scene remained peaceful in daylight.

But that evening, violence broke out as Trump supporters, including Proud Boys, clashed with counterprotesters at Black Lives Matter Plaza. Trump supporters ripped down signs and artwork on the fence surrounding the White House, as some tried to stop them. Likely Antifa activists overturned tables of vendors selling Trump merchandise, burning hats and flags. Of the clashes journalist Luke Mogelson witnessed, most were instigated by Proud Boys, he wrote.

Some brawled. A man was stabbed in the back around 8 p.m. At least 21 people were arrested. As the fights raged, Trump, who had a long history of supporting violence by his supporters, tweeted, “Antifa waited until tonight, when 99% were gone, to attack innocent #MAGA People.” The Proud Boys were clearly Trump’s “people.” Arizona far-right Rep. Paul Gosar chimed in with an even darker and more inaccurate tweet: “Mr. President… Send in the military to restore order. BLM terrorists are assaulting and burning our Capitol. The mayor of DC condones the violence.” The pro-Trump group continued to march through the streets around midnight, with some carrying a large flag emblazoned with “Trump Law and Order.”

‘Someone’s going to get shot’

The violence and intimidation tactics intensified during the ensuing weeks. Trump crusaders occupied state capitol buildings in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, some openly carrying rifles. In Michigan, they even protested outside Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s private home, with some carrying guns and shouting obscenities. A few months before, FBI agents had successfully stopped a violent plot by Trump supporters to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

On November 30, Trump lawyer Joseph diGenova stated on a Newsmax podcast that Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs “should be drawn and quartered — taken out at dawn and shot.” Krebs had said that the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history.” Others, including Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign as Trump’s national security adviser, called for Trump to declare martial law and have the military oversee a new election.

In Georgia, Trump backers accused a 20-year-old election worker of manipulating data during a recount. They released his identity and called for him to be “hung for treason.” Gabriel Sterling, an official from Georgia’s secretary of state office, noted on December 1 that the employee “just took a job” and did nothing wrong, that he was considered one of the best workers. Sterling pleaded with Trump to “stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence…. Someone’s going to get hurt. Someone’s going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed.”

Five days later, someone did get shot. Trump supporter Michael McKinney fired a bullet into a car with four teenage girls, striking a 15-year-old in the leg. The girls had exchanged insults with Trump backers in the parking lot outside a rally in Iowa and bumped into McKinney’s car as they tried to escape, when he responded with the gunshot.

Despite that incident, Trump ignored Sterling’s advice to calm his rhetoric. In another all-caps message on December 12, Trump yelled, “WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!!”

That night, some of his adherents decoded the message. Before the Proud Boys hit the streets, they listened to a few speeches at another D.C. rally. Flynn insisted that Trump would remain in the White House and that there were still “avenues” beyond the courts. Rhodes called on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to impose martial law.

After the speeches ended, several hundred attendees congregated near the base of the Washington Monument. They marched to Black Lives Matter Plaza just north of the White House, many carrying clubs and canes. They attacked a group dressed in black with medic crosses of red tape. They hit two women. Police used pepper spray to get them to leave but made no arrests.

Near Harry’s Bar and Ford’s Theatre where Abraham Lincoln was killed in 1865, Proud Boys attacked a lone African-American man, Phillip Johnson. The 29-year-old whipped out a knife and tried to walk away, according to a New York Post video. Corey Nielsen, 39, of Robbinsdale, Minn., reportedly punched Johnson in the head several times, as Johnson swung his knife. Nielsen and three other suspected Proud Boys suffered stab wounds, police said. That same night, Proud Boys vandalized some historic black churches.

‘Be there, will be wild!’

On December 14, states certified Biden’s victory, but not without some drama. In Michigan, violent threats forced building shutdowns. Officials increased security at capitol buildings in Phoenix and other cities. Republican North Carolina state senator Bob Steinburg joined the increasing calls for Trump to declare martial law. Trump aide Stephen Miller discussed the plan to submit “alternate slate” of electors in swing states to Congress before that body met on January 6 to ceremonially ratify the results.

At the same time, Trump announced that Attorney General Bill Barr would be leaving the administration. Barr had pushed back harder against Trump’s voter fraud charges, reportedly calling the fraud theories “bullshit” and Giuliani-led legal team “clownish.” “Why would you say such a thing?” Trump shot back. “You must hate Trump.”

On December 15, Peter Navarro, a Harvard-educated economics professor who directed the administration’s trade policy office, released a report that focused on alleged fraud in six states, but not the entire country. The report was ridiculously biased for an academic work, calling the media “anti-Trump” and accusing journalists and political leaders of “participating in what has become a Biden Whitewash.”

In a White House meeting on December 18, Flynn, Powell, and Overstock.com founder Patrick Byrne urged Trump to declare a national emergency and seize Dominion voting machines. Powell also requested to be appointed as a special counsel to investigate voter fraud. White House advisers pushed back. Trump at one point reportedly noted that at least Powell was “fighting” for him and “offering me a chance.”

The following day, Trump promoted a rally being organized in D.C. to oppose Congress ratifying the election results. He cited Navarro’s report, saying, “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election [sic]. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” All Trump had to do to organize a rally was issue a tweet or two. Others piled on. Rep. Lauren Boebert, another QAnon believer, tweeted: “Save the date: January 6, 2021.”

Soon after Trump’s rally tweet, GOP activists started circulating digital graphics on Facebook, Twitter, Parler, Instagram, and other platforms referring to “Operation Occupy the Capitol.” The grassroots campaign was similar to the Operation Chaos program in early 2020 that sought to disrupt Democratic primaries by having Republicans cross over to vote for Bernie Sanders over Biden. That campaign hadn’t worked so others targeting COVID-19 lockdowns called Operation Gridlock, mail-in voting, and the overall election followed.

GOP groups on Facebook spread this graphic to get people to attend Trump’s rally on January 6 and do more than protest outside the Capitol. [Facebook image]

The Republican Party of DeWitt County, Texas, a conservative bastion about 90 miles southeast of San Antonio, posted an online flyer on its Facebook page on December 27. The colorful graphic carried the headline, “Operation Occupy the Capitol: Taking back our country from corrupt politicians,” with the date, “Jan. 6th, 2021,” and time of 12 p.m. An illustration of the Capitol building with lightning striking around it comprised the center. A quote by Lincoln “to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution” dominated the bottom section. Hashtags, including one used by QAnon adherents, #WeAreTheStorm, were prominently displayed.

While the graphic referred to “all 50 states,” the DeWitt GOP made it clear what the focus was, writing, “American Patriots [sic] will be traveling from across the country to Washington DC Capitol Hill.” The message referred to the “Fight For Freedom” and “Demand for a Constitutional Free & Fair Election.” Confirmed rally speakers included the My Pillow Guy, with groups like Latinos for Trump and MAGA Drag the Interstate involved.

The latter group had helped organized Trump vehicle caravans on highways in the previous months. Those included one in Texas on October 30 that targeted a Biden campaign bus, slowing it to about 20 miles per hour on the highway and trying to “run the bus off the road,” according to a lawsuit. A vehicle with Trump flags “side-swiped” one driven by a Biden campaign staffer behind the bus, and the Trump backer harassed the Biden campaigner after he had to stop the vehicle. The incident caused the campaign to cancel three Central Texas events due to safety concerns. The previous day, Trump supporters had displayed weapons and physically shoved people at Biden get-out-the-vote events in Houston, Corpus Christi, and other Texas cities, with one Trump backer threatening a Biden staffer that he would “fucking kill” him, according to the lawsuit.

Trump tweeted a video of the dangerous bus-slowing stunt with a fight theme song and claimed his “patriots did nothing wrong,” that they were “protecting” the Biden bus “because they’re nice.” Few criticized him for supporting violence because it was the expected response from Trump, one he had done for years.

GOP groups across the country, including in Haywood County, N.C., Benton County, Ore., and Pickens County, Ga., soon spread the January 6th digital flyer. “Operation Occupy the Capitol” quickly became a rallying cry.

Operation Pence Card

Besides making sure a large crowd of angry Trump crusaders arrived in D.C. on January 6, Trump and allies turned the screws on Vice President Mike Pence to go along with their unconstitutional scheme to throw out votes.

On December 22, Army Reserve officer Ivan Raiklin tweeted a copy of a two-page memo to Trump, detailing a plan called Operation Pence Card. It seemed everything Team Trump did needed a military-and-CIA-style “operation” code name. The title referred to the card that Pence was supposed to play on January 6, to flip Biden votes to Trump or at least throw the matter back to states when Congress met for its ceremonial ratification of the election results.

Putting pressure on the vice president through Operation Pence Card became the inside game on which Trump and others focused. Stopping the legal process in Congress that day — even via a violent breach, if necessary—through Operation Occupy the Capitol was the outside game that involved Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and militias.

Rep. Gosar soon referred to a memo from the “top levels” of the White House that explained Pence’s “legal requirement to deny Electoral College votes from states with allegations of widespread fraud.” Rep. Gohmert filed a federal lawsuit against Pence on December 27, claiming that the vice president had the power to approve the alternate electors. On January 1, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle, a Trump appointee who worked in the small East Texas city of Tyler that was known for its roses, dismissed the case, saying Gohmert lacked standing.

Gohmert’s response was ominous. “Bottom line is, the court is saying, ‘We’re not going to touch this, you have no remedy.’ Basically, in effect, the ruling would be that you’ve got to go to the streets and be as violent as Antifa,” Gohmert, a former state judge and far-right Tea Party conservative who had supported Paxton’s suit, said on Newsmax. Other Trump sycophants turned darker. Lawyer Lin Wood tweeted that Pence should be jailed and face “execution by firing squad.” Trump allies seemed to revel in execution fantasies.

Trump continued to strong-arm Pence in person. Pence, to his credit, didn’t budge from the legal position that all he could do was read the results on January 6. More officials started warning of violence on January 6. Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defense Secretary Mark Esper had pushed back for months against Trump’s desires to squash largely peaceful BLM protesters — whose demonstrations were infiltrated by violent Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, Antifa, and others from both the right and left, according to a little-known police report — with the military. Trump wanted to look like a strong ruler, like Vladimir Putin and other dictators he admired.

Olivia Troye, who left her position as homeland security and counter-terrorism adviser to Pence in August, warned on December 28 that violence on January 6 was likely because of Trump. “This is what he does. He tweets, he incites it, he gets his followers and supporters to behave in this manner. And these people believe they are being patriotic because they are supporting Donald Trump.”

Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio justified such concern by soon saying on Parler that the group planned to ditch its traditional yellow shirts on January 6 to go completely black, so they could blend in and even be mistaken as Antifa activists. Some claimed Democrats incited violence at BLM protests, referring to instances such as Rep. Ayanna Pressley saying in August on MSNBC that “there needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there’s unrest in our lives.” Few urged protests to only occur in daylight hours since the problems mostly occurred at night.

Meanwhile, Trump kept promoting his rally on Twitter. On the first day of 2021, he marketed his event five times. Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who was not supposed to work for the post-election campaign, tweeted, “We’re now at well over 100 House members and a dozen Senators ready to stand up for election integrity and object to certification [on Jan. 6]. It’s time to fight back.”

In Louisiana, Couy Griffin, a New Mexico county commissioner and founder of Cowboys for Trump, said at a Trump rally, “We need our president to be confirmed through the states on the 6th. And right after that, we’re going to have to declare martial law.” Others echoed the call for martial law, though some spelled it “marshal,” as if an Old West marshal planned to swoop in and save Trump’s day.

Former Trump aides take over rally planning

By January 1, Caroline Wren, a former deputy to First Son partner Kimberly Guilfoyle, and former Melania Trump aide Caporale took over much of the coordination for the January 6 rally. They scheduled new speakers like the Trumps and planned for a march from the Ellipse to the Capitol to begin well before Congress finished counting electoral votes. Original rally organizers had thought it best to remain at the Ellipse until the counting was completed. They had been trumped.

The closer it got to January 6, the darker and more desperate the messages became on TheDonald.win forum board, Parler, and other Trump supporters’ online hangouts. Some openly spoke about storming Congressional offices and executions.

The warnings were right out there in the open for anyone to read.

A post on Parler instructed rally attendees to send locations and pictures of “BLM and Antifa” to the Proud Boys so they could “get them before they go out to the streets.” Several posted a graphic that contained directions for surrounding the U.S. Capitol complex and markings for underground access tunnels. A meme circulated, reading, “The Capitol is our goal. Everything else is a distraction. Every corrupt Member of Congress locked in one room and surrounded by real Americans is an opportunity that will never present itself again.” Bannon would say something similar on his podcast on January 6.

On January 2, Trump made another so-called “perfect” phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State, shaking him down for votes like a mob boss. Brad Raffensperger, to his credit, refused to go along.

Trump accused an election worker named Ruby Freeman of stuffing ballot boxes. Raffensperger explained that was false, but Trump didn’t listen. Freeman received hundreds of threats by vicious Trump advocates, causing her to have to go into hiding.

On January 4, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a frequent target of Trump and his gang, was accosted by angry crusaders, some of whom carried flag poles with spear tips, as she reached her car after work near the Capitol. They knew where she parked her car, causing suspicions that far-right Congress members slipped these violent backers inside information. They heckled her, asking, “Why do you hate this country?” She told them she loved the country and that was why she worked hard to improve it, trying to keep the mood light “to create enough space” to get in the car and drive away.

That same day, the Anti-Defamation League circulated a report that detailed how Operation Occupy the Capitol was one of five demonstrations planned in D.C. on January 6. The ADL knew who organized the other four rallies or protests: WFAF for Trump’s rally at the White House Ellipse, Texas conservative activist Ali Alexander for a January 6 Capitol rally, the Eighty Percent Coalition for a rally at Freedom Plaza on January 5, and South Carolina activist James Epley for a demonstration on January 5 and 6 that would include a 150-square-foot Constitution copy near the Washington Monument. Operation Occupy the Capitol was “being promoted on social media, but it is not clear who is promoting the event,” the ADL noted. In addition, the ADL detailed numerous ominous, violent messages on social media targeting Congress members.

On January 5, the FBI field office in Norfolk, Va., issued a memo warning of extremist violence in D.C. on January 6. The dispatch reported that Trump backers shared Capitol tunnel maps, discussed meeting to travel to D.C., and posted about committing violence that day. FBI Washington Field Office head Steven D’Antuono would say the missive was sent to the U.S. Capitol and D.C. police. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who would resign January 16, claimed he didn’t see it.

However, acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman would later tell a House committee that the department knew on January 4 “that militia groups and white supremacists organizations would be attending. We also knew that some of these participants were intending to bring firearms and other weapons to the event. We knew that there was a strong potential for violence and that Congress was the target.” Despite that knowledge, leaders did not inform rank-and-file officers forced to battle the mob of the heightened threat, said Gus Papathanasiou, chairman of the Capitol Police Labor Committee.

Trump aides incite followers, then skip out on action

Early on January 5, Bannon urged followers on a Facebook group: “TAKE ACTION. THEY ARE TRYING TO STEAL THE ELECTION.” Then on his podcast, he issued a more curious message. “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” he stated. He added on January 6, “This is the point of attack we’ve always wanted.”

Despite telling others to attend, Bannon would skip the rallies on January 5 and 6. He holed up with other Trump allies at the InterContinental Willard Hotel near the White House.

Longtime Trump aide and dirty trickster Roger Stone, flanked by members of the Oath Keepers militia, spoke at both January 5 rallies, but he would skip the ones on January 6. Stone claimed during one speech that White House officials asked him to lead the march to the Capitol, and he would be “shoulder to shoulder” with the marchers. He wouldn’t. Video would show him outside the Willard Hotel on the morning of January 6 with some Oath Keepers, at least one of whom would reportedly break into the Capitol. In late 2021, Stone would invoke the 5th Amendment before the January 6th committee, then say on Telegram that it was “highly likely” that Bannon gave the order to breach the Capitol.That led some to conclude Stone was trying to muddy the waters so much investigators would not be able to pin anything on him, as well as settle a score in which Bannon testified against Stone in the latter’s 2019 Russia trial.

Other Trump aides followed their cues. Flynn, Navarro, and others told the crowd to attend, then would not take their own advice. Alex Jones and Ali Alexander was among the speakers who would attend the White House rally but not enter the Capitol. Like Stone, Jones said that White House officials had asked him to lead the march to the Capitol.

More young men wearing vests and combat helmets, some carrying weapons, appeared towards the back of the plaza as the January 5 evening rally culminated. A few were Proud Boys, but others wore Three Percenters militia symbols. One holding a bat cut a conversation with a New York Times reporter short. “We know what to do with people like you,” he told him. Police would arrest five that evening for charges that included weapons and assault.

Following the rally, numerous Trump aides convened at a late-night meeting at Trump Hotel for a reported “War Council” meeting. Participants reportedly included sons Don Jr. and Eric, Flynn, Giuliani, Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, Navarro, and agribusinessman Charles Herbster.

What did they discuss? “How to pressure more members of Congress to object to the Electoral College results that made Joe Biden the winner,” according to the Omaha World-Herald. At that late date, the main option to force an election change available was violence and intimidation, even implementing martial law. Democrats controlled the House, which had to support throwing out a state’s electoral votes during the challenges, so that route was not going to happen. The reported participation of Tuberville gained prominance as Trump and Giuliani both would call him at the Capitol in the midst of the attack to lobby him to make more challenges.

There were likely several “War Councils” that evening involving various Trump aides. Bannon, Waldron, and lawyer John Eastman were reportedly among others staying at the Willard. At some point late on January 5 or early January 6, Trump called Bannon and Giuliani at the Willard to discuss Pence’s refusal to go along with his scheme and future steps, reported Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. Trump allegedly described Pence as being “very arrogant” for not succumbing to him and potentially breaking the law.

Waldron had flown to Washington with a 38-page PowerPoint presentation that was given to Congress members and Trump aides, including Meadows. Called “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN,” the plan included recommendations such as “declare national security emergency” and “declare electronic voting in all states invalid.” U.S. marshals and the military should be deployed to seize ballots nationwide.

Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who would become chairman of the January 6th committee, later called the PowerPoint “an alarming blueprint for overturning a nationwide election.”

Herbster would attend the January 6 rally. But like many key Trump sycophants, he would steer clear of the Capitol that day. Amazingly, he would rejoin Trump’s family after the insurrection, flying to Florida, not minding how that might appear following one of the worst days for democracy in American history. Herbster would soon become Trump’s candidate for Nebraska governor in 2022.

‘Dark to light’

As usual, Trump had tweeted into the early-morning hours, including one at 12:08 a.m. that read, “Just happened to have found another 4000 [sic] ballots from Fulton County. Here we go!” After a restless sleep, he grabbed his phone and targeted his vice president with a tweet, hitting send at 8:17 a.m. “States want to correct their votes, which they now know were based on irregularities and fraud, plus corrupt process never received legislative approval. All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!”

Others sent out dark, desperate messages. “Today is 1776,” tweeted Rep. Boebert in a cryptic nod to QAnon-inspired violence. Her fellow Q buddy, Rep. Greene, soon followed up with, “FIGHT. FOR. TRUMP.” Another Trump supporter issued an ominous message, “Today I had the very difficult conversation with my children, that daddy might not come home from DC.”

Outside the White House, Ashli Babbit, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran who owned San Diego-based Fowler’s Pool Service and Supply, numbered among the rally crowd, arriving there early in the morning. While she had voted for Obama, by 2016, she had become a full-blown, conspiracy-mongering Trump supporter. Babbitt was such a passionate QAnon believer that in late December she had directly called Kamala Harris, America’s first woman vice president, a “bitch” and more in a Twitter response.

The previous day, a fellow Q advocate had complained that “flights into DC are being cancelled with no bad weather. The entire world is corrupt.” Babbitt had responded, “Nothing will stop us… they can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours….dark to light!”

That would be her last tweet.

Before Trump spoke to the swelling crowd, Giuliani, Eastman, Reps. Mo Brooks of Alabama and Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, and his sons warmed up the audience. Two weeks earlier, Cawthorn had told students with Turning Point to “lightly threaten” members of Congress who did not agree with them. Brooks used darker imagery than Cawthorn. “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass!” he yelled. “We are not going to let the socialists rip the heart out of our country! We are not going to let them continue to corrupt our elections and steal from us our God-given right to control our nation’s destiny!”

Giuliani spoke about a ten-day review of ballots−but only in states Trump lost — calling for “trial by combat.” Eastman then put more pressure on Pence to send the matter back to state. Jr. talked about how this was “Donald Trump’s Republican Party,” then whined about how transgender women have a competitive advantage in female sporting events, as if that was somehow related to election issues. But to his credit, when the Capitol attack started, Jr. would be among the first to call for a stop to the violence, well before his father.

Eric then confirmed that his father had helped organize the rally with his tweets. He urged the crowd to march to Congress, but like his father and close sycophants, the Trump sons would skip the marching part.

About 11:30 a.m., Trump, rather than prepare for his address, called Pence to twist his arm one last time. “You can either go down in history as a patriot, or you can go down in history as a pussy,” Trump reportedly told his vice president. Pence reiterated that he didn’t have the authority to block the counting of votes. Trump’s mood soured, aides said. He soon took the stage to rant about the “fake news” media, large tech companies, “radical” Democrats, and how he had won the 2020 election. He thanked the military, secret service, and police, calling on them to “come up here with us.” He was, in effect, asking the military, Secret Service, and police to march along, as a “full-blown coup,” author Seth Abramson noted. Fortunately, most declined.

He then spent much time blasting Pence, saying it took more courage for Pence to “do nothing” than send the matter back to states. That was an “extraordinary threat” against Pence, Abramson noted. “Trump is saying Pence is endangering himself” with the mob by not helping Trump steal the election, as he foresees threats by the mob against Pence, Abramson explained. Pence later rightly felt Trump was trying to stir violence against him and his family, which was with him in the Capitol. Trump later made the same threat towards Congress members.

Finally, Trump promised to accompany the mob as they marched to the Capitol. He had been consumed by the idea of leading a historic march along Pennsylvania Avenue, but Secret Service and advisers rejected that due to security reasons. “We’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you,” Trump still vowed. “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness.”

He called on his mob, which numbered about 40,000, to “fight like hell” because “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” By that time, it was a few minutes past 1 p.m. Trump walked, not down Pennsylvania Avenue, but to his armored limousine that would take him to a room near his White House office to watch the fires he had just lit burn.

‘Hang Mike Pence!’

As Trump finished his speech, Pence released a lengthy letter about how he had carefully studied the Constitution and U.S. laws, and believed he did not have the power to “accept or reject electoral votes unilaterally.” While it might not have been the smartest thing to announce as a mob was about to break into his workplace, it was rather courageous.

Before Trump had even finished his speech, as many as 8,000 people around the Washington Monument started marching east to the Capitol, according to the New Yorker. They knew their marching orders. “We’re storming the Capitol!” some yelled.

Some in the mob walking down Pennsylvania Avenue and on the National Mall received news through their phones that Pence had publicly refuted what Trump just told them he could do. As that spread, the mob’s anger intensified. The consensus that Pence was a traitor grew. A man with a megaphone told the crowd that if Pence did not “do the right thing,” they better get their minds right because they were storming the building.

“Once we found out Pence turned on us and that they had stolen the election, like officially, the crowd went crazy,” said Joshua Black, an Alabama man who would be shot in the face with what he thought was a plastic bullet but still reach the Senate floor. “I mean, it became a mob. We crossed the gate.”

By the time most reached the Capitol, some — likely Proud Boys — had built a gallows just west of the Capitol near a memorial for Union Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant. Featuring wooden steps leading to a platform and a noose, the detailed structure didn’t appear strong enough to hold a victim, though maybe a lighter weight one. Throughout the next few hours, one of the favorite chants of the mob would be, “Hang Mike Pence!” Reuters photographer Jim Bourg said he heard several rioters inside asking where Pence was, and that they wanted to hang him outside the Capitol. Others talked about “how the VP should be executed,” he said.

Hundreds at Capitol well before Trump speech

Much of the damage seemed to be done by the militant members of groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who had gathered on all sides of the Capitol hours before the rally mob arrived. They didn’t need to hear Trump’s speech to incite them to violence, though some likely listened on their phones.

A key question was who organized them. Some had more than cursory contact with Trump aides such as Bannon, Flynn, and Stone, as well as far-right media types like Alex Jones; Proud Boys and militia members regularly provided personal security for them. Some knew Congress members like Rep. Boebert and Rep. Gosar. Why were they not at Trump’s rally at the Ellipse? Was the plan to have the rally provide cover, reinforcements, and chaos to help divert attention from the darker portions of Operation Occupy the Capitol? The gallows didn’t seem to be symbolic; many in that crowd really wanted to kidnap and execute Pence and Congress members, and destroy Electoral College ballots.

East of the Capitol across from the U.S. Supreme Court, a crowd of about 300 mostly white red-hat wearers chanted and held signs reading “Stop the Steal” and “Uphold the Law or Commit CCP Treason.” Others waved Trump and “Don’t Tread on Me” flags. They chanted, “We want Trump!”

Just before noon, Proud Boys were photographed marching along First Street in front of the Supreme Court. Some of these same far-right marchers had engaged in violence against Antifa and BLM protesters in D.C. in previous weeks. But on this day, Antifa would not show up to fight them. Some thought part of the plan was to call in the military with a sort of martial law if widespread fights broke out, which could have aided Trump’s side in seeking a ratification delay.

Around 12:30 p.m., Sen. Josh Hawley walked by the crowd of several hundred on the east side of the Capitol. He issued a thumbs up and fist pump in a sign of solidarity. E&E News photographer Francis Chung caught a photo that went viral of the senator’s fist pump.

About the same time west of the Capitol, Officer Hodges observed a confrontation between Trump backers and one of the few counter-protesters. He ran to the corner of 10th Street and Constitution Avenue to observe an African-American man backpedaling away from an angry crowd. “Your mother’s a whore!” one guy yelled at his foe. Police steered the crowd toward the Capitol building, and the counter-protester walked northward in another direction.

About 1 p.m., Jessica Watkins surveyed the growing crowd at the Peace Monument just northwest of the Capitol. A member of the Oath Keepers, Watkins had formed an affiliate militia in Ohio in 2019. Working to reverse an election result she thought was wrong made the 38-year-old Army vet feel alive similar to how she felt in combat in Afghanistan in 2002, bonding with others in a shared mission greater than themselves. Being the co-owner of a bar in the small Ohio town of Woodstock, about 40 miles northwest of Columbus, could be thankless, boring work, especially during a pandemic.

“We have a good group. We have about 30 to 40 of us,” Watkins said into her phone at one point, communicating through the Zello app to others stationed around the building. “We are sticking together and sticking to the plan.”

A male voice responded, “We’ll see you soon, Jess. Airborne.” Authorities noted that the militias coordinated their actions between the forced entry points, with likely one group on the east side of the building and another on the west.

Many looked up to retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. Thomas Caldwell, a 66-year-old Oath Keepers member from Berryville, Va., calling him “Commander.” After retiring from the Navy, Caldwell, who had a top-secret clearance, worked for the FBI. He, Watkins, and others had coordinated their plans for weeks, according to an FBI affidavit. He had floated an idea to have a “Quick Response Team” ferry “heavy weapons” in a boat from a site near the Pentagon across the Potomac River to those at the Capitol, according to the FBI.

Oath Keepers leader Rhodes was among those seen in the crowd near the Capitol, but he denied doing any organizing for the operation. Federal investigators would find that he made at least nine calls to militia members on January 6. “All I see Trump doing is complaining,” Rhodes allegedly messaged to followers that day. “I see no intent by him to do anything so patriots are taking it into their own hands.”

Caldwell wrote in a Facebook message on January 1 that he didn’t expect much help from Rhodes: “I don’t know if Stewie [Rhodes] has even gotten out his call to arms but it’s a little friggin late. This is one we are doing on our own.” So they were either covering leaders’ tracks to keep them from prosecution or those leaders did pretty much sit out the operation.

‘Every single bastard in there is a traitor’

Capitol Police were used to demonstrations and allowed some name calling and even pushing without really responding. But the first line of officers was not ready for this mob.

Many officers didn’t even wear helmets and other riot gear, as supervisors had not adequately prepared those on the front lines. Officers had been issued helmets that morning, but not told why so some left the heavy gear in their lockers.

Around 1 p.m., two men walked towards some lightweight bike-rack style fencing guarded by police near the Peace Monument. William Chrestman, 47, of the Kansas City suburb of Olathe led a small group of Proud Boys closely behind them. A larger crowd followed. With not many officers there, the mob easily swept past the metal barricades.

That was one of the biggest challenges that day, that the police “did not have a fixed perimeter that we could easily defend,” USCP union chairman Papathanasiou said. “The bicycle racks that were put in place did not stop anyone, and they were actually used as weapons against the officers by the insurrectionists.”

An Army veteran and union sheet metal worker, Chrestman wore a green tactical vest, camouflaged pants, black nerd glasses, and a black sweatshirt. In his hand was an axe handle. His group made it to near the front of the crowd. Soon, they confronted another line of officers. One prepared to fire non-lethal projectiles at them. “You shoot, and I’ll take your fucking ass out!” Chrestman yelled at the officer, who didn’t shoot. As police moved to arrest an intruder, Chrestman shouted at cohorts, “Don’t let them take him!” The battle was on.

As they reached barriers where more police stood — some donning riot gear but many not — a few individuals started to throw themselves like dummies against the police line on the western perimeter of the building. About the same time as when the horde breached the outer barriers, some pipe bombs that didn’t detonate were found by federal agents a few blocks away, near the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee. They had been reportedly placed there the previous evening in a planned move. That diverted preciously-needed Capitol officers, who were called as backup to the bomb scenes, from battling the mob.

Suddenly, some in the crowd began to spray chemical gas at officers and even bear mace that extended farther than the tear gas police used. They threw gas grenades, flash bangs, and cherry bombs. Some shot rubber bullets at police, who at times responded in kind. But police soon became overmatched. “They had masks. They were prepared,” an officer told CNN. “They had earpieces. They had radios. It’s not a coincidence that once those bombs were found, they started to advance on us.”

With the communication between the groups on the west and east sides of the Capitol, the eastern perimeter was breached soon after the western one. Officer Dunn was among those trying to contain the mob on the east side. Hearing the urgent radio calls for additional officers on the west side, he quickly donned a steel chest plate and sprinted around the north side of the Capitol to the west terrace.

“I was stunned by what I saw,” Dunn said. “Until then, I had never seen anyone physically assault a Capitol Police or MPD officer — let alone witness mass assaults being perpetrated on law enforcement officers. I witnessed the rioters using all kinds of weapons against the officers, including flag poles, metal bike racks they had torn apart, and various kinds of projectiles.” He joined his colleagues and aided where he could.

By the time Alex Jones arrived at the west side of the Capitol about 1:50 p.m., the scene had degenerated into outright anarchy. Jones had tried to lead the march from the White House, but when he reached the line, there was a large crowd already on its way to the Capitol. Seeing many black-clad, paramilitary types scaling Capitol walls and fighting police, he would later wrongly claim they were Antifa, which the FBI would confirm was false. Some Trump-loving crusaders would be angry at such claims, proud of their conquest, not wanting another group to get the credit.

The violence seemed misplaced to Jones. Or perhaps he knew more about the operation and wanted to publicly disassociate himself from the darker aspects. He grabbed his bullhorn and let the crowd have it. “Let’s not fight the police and give the system what they want,” Jones said, according to a video on Infowars. “As much as I love seeing the Trump flags flying over this, we need to not have the confrontation with the police. They’re gonna make that the story. I’m going to march to the other side, where we have a stage, where we can speak and occupy peacefully.”

Few paid attention to Jones. His rally on the other side was poorly attended.

At one point during the chaos, Caldwell pointed towards the Capitol and yelled, “Every single bastard in there is a traitor! Every single one!”

‘Kill him with his own gun!’

As the crowd pushed closer to the building, Oath Keepers tried to keep their operation orderly, using military-style hand signals and waving flags to signal positions. They inched closer, troopers in helmets and body armor forming a “Ranger File,” marching up the marble steps in single file. Each grasped the jacket collar of the person ahead, a standard tactic in military operations for one main purpose: To gain enough momentum through the group effort to breach a building.

Others in the crowd took notes and kept pushing themselves, chanting “USA!” and “Fight for Trump!” Metropolitan D.C. Police arrived quickly and helped stall the crowd for a little longer. But after some officers from higher positions, including on wooden planks laid across scaffolding being set up for Biden’s inauguration, fired tear gas into the crowd, Trump troopers merely poured water in their eyes and returned to the scrum. Fresh reinforcements kept arriving from Trump’s rally after marching just over a mile from near the White House, with many becoming violent themselves.

A few minutes after 2 p.m., police retreated, and some mob members ran to the entrances just outside the Senate wing. By that time, Officer Hodges and other reinforcements arrived in riot gear. As they walked through the crowd on the northwest side of the building, many booed. “Storm troopers!” a woman yelled. “Traitors!” another added. “Remember your oath!” shouted a man. Another tried to get the crowd to chant, “Traitors! Traitors!”

As they neared the Capitol terrace, a man attempted to swipe Officer Hodges’ baton from his hands. They wrestled for a moment, with the officer winning and pushing the man away. “You’re on the wrong team!” the man yelled. Others attacked the officers, and Hodges pushed several away from colleagues. Some assailants sprayed the officers with mace and even wasp spray.

Someone who had scaled the Capitol scaffolding threw a heavy object that struck Hodges’ head, causing a concussion. Another man then wrestled for the baton, and the struggle took them to the ground. Other officers helped Hodges regain control, and they made it to the terrace amid a fog of crowd-control munitions, mace, and tear gas. They observed American flags, Trump flags, police flags, one reading, “Jesus is my Savior, Trump is my President.”

Some tried to talk to officers. One told Hodges to take off his gear and give it to him to “show solidarity with ‘we the people,’ or we’re going to run over you! Do you think your little pea-shooter guns are going to stop this crowd? No! We’re going in that building!” Another shouted, “Do not attack us! We are not Black Lives Matter!”

As the crowd surged, a fence used to keep attackers out buckled and broke. “A chaotic melee ensued,” Officer Hodges said. “Terrorists pushed through the line and engaged us in hand-to-hand combat…. One latched onto my face and got his thumb in my right eye, attempting to gouge it out. I cried out in pain and managed to shake him off.” He was sprayed with a fire extinguisher and helped colleagues take a large hunting knife from one attacker. There were so many attackers it was “all we could do to keep ourselves on our feet and continue to fall back.”

Inside the Capitol building, officers regrouped and donned gas masks. Hodges ran to an entrance where a line of officers tried to hold off intruders. “Officers were stacked deep, but every so often, one would fall back from the front line, nursing an injury or struggling to breathe, and those who remained would take a step forward,” he said. “It was a battle of inches, with one side pushing the other a few and then the other side regaining their ground.”

Officer Hodges soon emerged on the front line, leaning his back against a metal frame door. An attacker slammed a stolen riot shield against him, trapping him with the weight of numerous bodies behind him. “My arms were pinned and effectively useless,” Hodges said. Foaming at the mouth, a man issued guttural screams as he grabbed Hodges’ gas mask and beat his head against the door. Eventually, he yanked off the mask, grabbed the officer’s baton and hit him in the head with it. Hodges started screaming, and several offices pulled him to safety.

By then, Officer Michael Fanone arrived. Working in the Metro D.C. Department’s drug and special investigations division for almost two decades, he thought he had seen it all. “Yet, what I witnessed and experienced on January 6, 2021, was unlike anything I had ever seen, experienced, or could have imagined in my country,” Officer Fanone said.

After entering the Capitol through a sea of taunting Trump defenders, he and partner Jimmy Albright came upon a line of officers at the entrance to the Lower West Terrace Tunnel. “Hold the line!” yelled Metro D.C. Commander Ramey Kyle, who oversaw the drug and special investigations unit. Capt. Kyle left to take a break and clear tear gas from his eyes. Then he returned to the danger zone.

“Observing Ray’s leadership, protecting a place I cared so much about, was the most inspirational moment of my life,” said Fanone. “I observed approximately 30 police officers standing shoulder-to-shoulder, maybe four or five abreast, using the weight of their own bodies to hold back the onslaught of violent attackers. Many of these officers were injured, bleeding, and fatigued. But they continued to hold the line.”

As Fanone and Albright joined them, it seemed like thousands of attackers were trying to get past them. At one point, Fanone was dragged into the crowd outside. “I got one!” a man yelled. The mob swarmed him, ripped off his badge, and grabbed ammunition. A photo taken from above showed Fanone lying face-down on some steps as the mob attacked him. “Kill him with his own gun! Kill him with his own gun!” some chanted. Several tased him repeatedly to the point he suffered a heart attack.

Fanone thought about shooting some but figured the mob would eventually take his gun and kill him. “I’m sure I was screaming, but I don’t think I could even hear my own voice,” he said. “I remember thinking that there was a very good chance that I would be torn apart or be shot to death with my own weapon. I thought of my four daughters who might lose their dad.”

He told those closest to him that he had kids, trying to appeal to any remaining humanity. Some protected him and helped drag him back toward the Capitol, where Albright and others pulled him away from further harm. Besides a heart attack, Fanone was diagnosed with a concussion, traumatic brain injury, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

In another area along the west side of the Capitol, Officer Brian Sicknick battled the Trump crowd. Along with other officers, he was allegedly sprayed in the face with a chemical irritant that could have been bear spray at 2:23 p.m. by Julian Khater of State College, Pa. Khater was seen on video obtaining the spray from associate George Tanios, a sandwich shop owner in Morgantown, W.V. Officer Sicknick, who joined the force in 2008, later collapsed and died the following day at age 42.

While some reports claimed Officer Sicknick was hit with a fire extinguisher, that incident actually occurred to other officers. A video showed a man who authorities said was Robert Sanford, 55, a retired firefighter from Chester, Pa., throwing a fire extinguisher at a group of police officers on the Capitol’s western terrace. The extinguisher struck three helmeted officers in the head, but they all survived. Sanford’s lawyer claimed his client got “caught up in the mob mentality,” but police later found a Proud Boys shirt in his home.

Another officer was beaten with an American flagpole by truck driver Peter Stager of Conway, Ark., according to authorities. Stager claimed he thought the officer was an Antifa member in disguise. His boss said Stager went to the rally because Trump “asked him to.”

U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell was among those who witnessed intruders like Stager use a flagpole against officers. He had been deployed to Iraq as an Army sergeant, but the attack on that day was worse than what he witnessed overseas. “I was more afraid working at the Capitol than during my entire Army deployment to Iraq,” he said. Some Trump apologists shouted at him that he should be “executed.” Others threatened they would go “get our guns.” He heard threats against Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“The physical violence we experienced was horrific and devastating,” Sgt. Gonell said. “The mob brought weapons to try to accomplish their insurrectionist objectives, and they used them against us. These weapons included hammers, rebars, knives, batons, and police shields taken by force, as well as bear spray and pepper spray…. I was particularly shocked at seeing the insurrectionists violently attack us with the very American flag they claimed they sought to protect.” He also heard verbal commands and saw coordinated tactics that showed many attackers had police or military experience.

One of the few officers left with a shield, he spent much time on the frontlines. At one point during intensive combat on the “medieval battlefield,” he thought that “this is how I’m going to die, trampled defending this entrance.” It would take months to recover from injuries that required surgery on his shoulder and foot.

Off-duty police also flashed their badges, expecting to be let through the barriers. While at least one Capitol officer was friendly enough with the intruders to agree to take a selfie, most were disgusted. “You have the nerve to be holding a Blue Lives Matter flag, and you are out there fucking us up,” an officer said he told some mob members. “[One guy] pulled out his badge, and he said, ‘We’re doing this for you.’ Another guy had his badge. So I was like, ‘Well, you gotta be kidding.’”

Arresting people en masse was not an option because police were badly outnumbered and getting beat, an officer said. “Normally in a mass-arrest situation, they comply under arrest. But [the Trump insurrectionists had] already proven to us they wanted to beat our asses. No way arrests could have been affected at that moment.”

Using deadly force at that point was not a smart option, an officer noted. “I didn’t want to be the guy who starts shooting, because I knew they had guns − we had been seizing guns all day,” Officer Hodges said. That included the arrest of Lonnie Coffman, an Alabama man who had a semi-automatic rifle and 11 Molotov cocktails in a vehicle near the Capitol. “And the only reason I could think of that they weren’t shooting us was they were waiting for us to shoot first. And if it became a firefight between a couple hundred officers and a couple thousand demonstrators, we would have lost.”

‘Victory smoke’

While many fought police in the trenches, some scaled the walls to upper terraces and broke windows to gain entrance into the building. Inside, officers rushed to where Pence and members of Congress were, urging them to evacuate.

Trump supporters bust out a window at the U.S. Capitol using bats and other weapons on January 6, 2021. [FBI file photo]

On the lower level, one group reached a door on the far northwest side of the Capitol, overcoming police by using bear spray, police riot shields, and bats to get to that point. Once they reached the windows, they pretty much were left alone. Working on the windows to the door with their helmets, shields, and a long wooden board, a group soon broke through.

Proud Boys member Dominic “Spaz” Pezzola of Rochester, N.Y., was among the leaders of that operation, according to an FBI affidavit. He used a riot shield to clear a large enough opening for people to scoot through about 2:12 p.m., the affidavit stated.

As someone yelled, “Go, go, go,” numerous people jumped through the open window and confronted police inside. Pezzola, 43, a former high school boxer and Marine, accompanied one of the first groups to walk towards the Senate chamber. He and other Proud Boys vowed to kill any member of Congress they encountered, a government witness told an FBI agent.

“[The witness] stated that other members of the [Proud Boys] talked about things they had done during the day, and they said that anyone they got their hands on they would have killed, including Nancy Pelosi,” the agent said. “[The witness] further stated that members of this group, which included ‘Spaz,’ said that they would have killed Mike Pence if given the chance.”

Kevin Seefried, 51, and Hunter Seefried, 23, both of Delaware, entered through that broken window shortly after Pezzola, according to the FBI. The elder Seefried carried a large Confederate flag that he proudly exhibited throughout the hallways alongside portraits and sculptures of American leaders who had fought in the Civil War on both sides. That flag had not flown inside the Capitol building before, but Seefried made it happen some 160 years later.

Pezzola, whose residence would be found with a thumb drive full of instructions on how to make homemade explosives and weapons, later smoked a cigar inside the building. “Victory smoke in the Capitol, boys. This is fucking awesome,” he said in a video. “I knew we could take this motherfucker over if we just tried hard enough.” Among the multiple charges he would face was conspiring to obstruct law enforcement.

Numerous other Proud Boys would be arrested. Hawaii chapter leader Nicholas Ochs, 34, posted a photo of him smoking inside the Capitol on Twitter at 4:13 p.m. He and Nicholas DeCarlo, 30, of Burleson, Tx., were also charged with stealing a pair of police flex handcuffs and writing on the Capitol Memorial Door, “MURDER THE MEDIA.”

Upon hearing the Capitol had been breached, Officer Dunn rushed inside. He made it to the Crypt, an open room that serves as a museum right under the Rotunda in the middle of the building. He stationed himself at the top of stairs to prevent intruders from going down to where officers were getting decontamination aid. After other officers relieved him, Dunn ran upstairs toward the House Speaker’s lobby. He told a group of intruders to leave the building. “President Trump invited us here!” one yelled. “Nobody voted for Joe Biden!” shouted another.

Dunn couldn’t resist responding, “Well, I voted for Joe Biden. Does my vote not count? Am I nobody?” A woman in a pink MAGA shirt yelled, “You hear that, guys, this nig — — voted for Joe Biden!” About 20 people screamed at him, calling him a “fucking nig — -.” No one had ever called Dunn that racial insult on the job before. Other African-American officers told similar anecdotes.

Once inside the Capitol, the intruders splintered into smaller units, spreading throughout the building to different hallways and floors. Many were enraged that Congress prepared to make Trump’s electoral defeat official.

“We’re here for you, Nancy!” one screamed.

“Where’s the traitors?” another yelled. “Bring them out!”

“Treason! Treason! Treason!” some chanted.

As others pounded on doors and tried to break in rooms, a man on a megaphone repeated in a surreal, monotone voice, “Defend your liberty. Defend your Constitution. Defend your liberty. Defend your Constitution.”

One cell began moving from the ground floor up a level to the Senate chamber. Douglas Austin Jensen, a bearded, 41-year-old masonry worker from Des Moines, Iowa, pushed his way to the front of the group. Wearing a QAnon t-shirt over a hoodie, he had spent hours each day for the past four years reading online conspiracy theories. He intentionally positioned himself to be among the first inside the Capitol because he wanted to have his shirt seen on video so that “Q can get the credit,” he later told FBI agents.

By then, Officer Eugene Goodman, a 40-year-old U.S. Army vet, had reached the hallway that led to the Senate chamber. Earlier, while running through a Capitol hall after crusaders breached the building, he noticed Sen. Mitt Romney being led down a hall by an aide towards an approaching mob. He quickly directed Romney to turn back, then kept running.

“I was very fortunate indeed that Officer Goodman was there to get me in the right direction,” Romney later told reporters. In another hallway, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York also came ever-so-close to the mob as he and staffers evacuated.

Soon Officer Goodman was face-to-face with an aggressive crowd led by Jensen. Facing the mob, greatly outnumbered with other officers running around the Senate and House chambers to lock doors and lead officials to safer areas, Goodman had only one real option: Divert the mob to an area where other officers could help.

“Go back! Put your hands up!” Goodman yelled, lightly pushing Jensen. The Iowa man shook his head and pursued the officer up a flight of stairs. Pezzola and others closely followed. “Second floor,” Goodman called on his radio, giving fellow officers his position as he led the angry mob up the steps.

They reached a level where people could access the Senate floor. Grabbing his fallen baton from the floor, Officer Goodman glanced to his left, seeing that the door to that chamber was open and unguarded. He knew he had to divert Jensen and the mob away from that vulnerable door.

Just one minute earlier, Pence had been presiding on that floor. Secret Service agents hustled him outside the chamber to an adjacent room to shelter with his wife and other family members at 2:13 p.m. At that precise moment, Officer Goodman worked frantically to keep the mob away from the door to his left.

He turned to the mob, which stretched down the stairway almost to the first floor. “You all need to go back!” he yelled again. “Don’t follow me!” He pushed Jensen again, this time harder than before. Jensen shook his head again. Goodman retreated and started running to his right down a hallway.

Jensen looked ever-so-briefly to his right, seeing a chair with no one in it by a door. For what seemed like an eternity but was only a few milliseconds, he considered going that way. If he had, he would have likely barged into the Senate chamber, where armed officers protected senators and staff. Some in the mob carried guns inside the Capitol; it wasn’t like police had searched any of the intruders. A gun battle might have ensued with multiple casualties on both sides. Perhaps intruders might have kidnapped senators and dragged them outside to the larger mob.

But Jensen didn’t turn right. He took Goodman’s bait. The doors to the Senate were soon all secured. Down the hallway, Jensen’s gang emerged in a larger room. Four other officers joined Goodman to confront the group, telling them they had to leave the building. That cell had fallen into Officer Goodman’s trap.

An older officer stood squarely in front of Jensen, who later told an FBI agent that he believed he would witness the arrest of Pence and members of Congress once in the building as part of the QAnon Storm. “What’s the point of stopping us at this point?” Jensen demanded, according to video.

The officer replied, “This is as far as it’s going to go.”

Jensen responded, “Go arrest the vice president.” The officer ignored him. Confused and not sure what to do, Jensen, Pezzola, and the mob remained in that room for precious minutes, arguing with officers who ignored their comments. That gave senators time to evacuate to safer locations.

At that moment, the country had literally dodged a bullet, analysts noted. “These folks had zip ties [plastic handcuffs]. It’s not unreasonable to say that they were ready to take hostages,” Kirk Burkhalter, a professor at New York Law School and former NY police officer, told a Washington Post reporter. “Officer Goodman really helped to avoid a tremendous tragedy.”

‘Seal them in. Turn on gas.’

While in the Capitol with another cell, Caldwell received some disturbing Facebook messages from associates, according to an FBI affidavit. After Caldwell posted a Facebook message that he was “inside,” someone wrote him: “All members are in the tunnels under capital [sic] seal them in. Turn on gas.”

Trump calls conspiring senator to lobby for longer delay

Back in the White House, Trump appeared to be mostly happy as he observed the violence he had unleashed on TV, some said. He “was voraciously consuming the events on television, enjoying the spectacle, and encouraged to see his supporters fighting for him,” an aide told The Washington Post. Though, according to another account, when the violence began, Trump thought, “Oh, crap.”

Many believed that Trump did revel in the violence, though some supporters said he simply got carried away in the moment. His inaction for more than three hours, however, was not in dispute and disgusted most Republicans and Democrats, alike. “He was not sorry to see his unyieldingly loyal vice president or the Congress under attack by the mob he inspired,” said Ohio Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, a former wide receiver for the Indianapolis Colts who would vote to impeach Trump. “In fact, it seems he was happy about it or at the least enjoyed the scenes that were horrifying to most Americans across the country.”

After watching his fill, Trump walked around the White House halls but appeared confused that others were not “as excited as he was” about his defenders fighting for him, Sen. Ben Sasse told a radio host. “He was delighted. He wanted chaos on television,” Sasse said, citing senior Trump aides. “I don’t have any idea what was in his heart about what he wanted to happen once they were in the Capitol, but he wanted there to be chaos.”

Sasse added that Trump was “addicted to social media and to television and to division,” and he had “planned [the Capitol attack] long before.” Senior White House staff and Cabinet members had “done very good work in restraining some moments when Donald Trump was inclined to do some really crazy stuff.”

But they couldn’t restrain him on January 6. Yet, even as he reportedly celebrated the violence, he couldn’t refrain from some catty remarks about how the mob exhibited a “low class” appearance. He wanted it to be more like Bush’s Brooks Brothers riot of 2000. Perhaps the insurrectionist trio from Beverly Hills, including salon owner Gina Bisignano in a Louis Vuitton sweater, made up for the scraggly bearded Belichick-wannabes in sweatshirts and jeans.

Around 2 p.m., Trump tweeted a video of his speech, adding, “Our country has had enough, we will not take it anymore, and that’s what this is all about.” After his mob breached the Capitol and sent officials scurrying away in fear, Trump tweeted at 2:24 p.m., “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”

Trump then called Tuberville at 2:26 p.m., not long after Pence was evacuated from the chamber. But he mistakenly reached Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, who located Tuberville to hand him his phone. Tuberville talked with Trump about doing additional election challenges for some five minutes until security announced that all senators had to be evacuated to another room. Trump did not call Pence, Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, or Pelosi to check on their safety and ask what he could do.

Giuliani would make a call himself to Tuberville but also reached Lee around 7 p.m. He would leave a detailed voice message for the senator to “try to just slow it down so we can get these legislatures to get more information to you.” McConnell was “doing everything he can to rush it” and not give Trump’s side “a fair opportunity to contest it,” he charged.

“The only strategy we can follow is to object to numerous states and raise issues so that we get ourselves into [January 7],” Giuliani said. “So if you could object to every state and, along with a congressman, get a hearing for every state, I know we would delay you a lot, but it would give us the opportunity to get the legislators who are very, very close to pulling their vote.”

Several Congress members, including close ally McCarthy, called Trump to request that he publicly tell his mob to leave the Capitol. At first, he wouldn’t even take the calls. McCarthy was told by an aide that Trump was distracted watching television. McCarthy then called Jared Kushner to make a desperate plea.

When Trump finally took McCarthy’s call, he reportedly claimed the intruders were Antifa. After McCarthy told him they were his supporters, the president responded, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.” A shouting match ensued. McCarthy told him rioters were breaking into his office through the windows, allegedly adding, “Who the fuck do you think you are talking to?”

Many, including Fox News hosts Hannity and Ingraham, texted Meadows to get Trump to call off his thugs. At 2:38 p.m., Trump tweeted, “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!” Trump had allegedly resisted adding the final phrase. Some 140 Capitol and D.C. police officers would suffer injuries, with Officer Sicknick dying and at least 15 others having to be hospitalized.

That caused the First Son to text Meadows that his father had to “condemn this [shit] ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough.” Meadows responded, “I’m pushing it hard. I agree.” When nothing happened, Jr. texted Meadows again.

“But hours passed without the necessary action by the President,” noted Rep. Liz Cheney, who would become vice chair of the January 6th committee. “For 187 minutes, President Trump refused to act when action by our President was required, essential, and indeed compelled by his oath to our Constitution.”

Sen. Graham called Ivanka, who had gone to the Oval Office as the battle began and tried to reason directly with her father. At 3:15 p.m., the First Daughter tweeted, “American Patriots − any security breach or disrespect to our law enforcement is unacceptable. The violence must stop immediately.” Many would criticize her for calling the rioters “patriots.”

Some noted the delay seemed to be by design. “To us, it may have felt like chaos and madness, but there was method to the madness that day,” Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, the lead House prosecutor in Trump’s ensuing impeachment trial, later said. “And when his mob overran and occupied the Senate and attacked the House and assaulted law enforcement, he watched it on TV like a reality show. He reveled in it.”

Republican McConnell agreed, saying, “A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him. It was obvious that only President Trump could end this. Former aides publicly begged him to do so. Loyal allies frantically called the administration. But the president did not act swiftly. He did not do his job. He didn’t take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed and order restored. Instead, according to public reports, he watched television happily as the chaos unfolded. He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election.”

Melania Trump, who had, according to Chief of Staff Stephanie Grisham, stopped her husband from engaging in even crazier behavior before, also refused to do anything to quell the violence. Her chief of staff texted Trump as the first crusaders began fighting police at 1:25 p.m. to ask if she wanted to tweet “that peaceful protests are the right of every American, but there is no place for lawlessness and violence.” Just one minute later, Grisham received a curt reply: “No.” The First Lady went back to working on a photo shoot of a new rug and would later echo her husband’s voter fraud lies.

“So many times over the years I had pushed back on the caricature of Melania Trump as some sort of Marie Antoinette,” Grisham wrote. “But that day, as the city of Washington, D.C., descended into violence that had once seemed unimaginable, I finally saw the doomed French queen.”

‘This is because of you!’

As mob members closed in on the doors to the House floor, Speaker Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland were evacuated around 2:15 p.m.

Three minutes later, Rep. Boebert apparently signaled on Twitter to fellow QAnon cultists, some of whom were roaming the Capitol looking for Pelosi, that “The Speaker has been removed from the chambers.” She later claimed the message was fine since she did not reveal Pelosi’s exact location, but others said it was still inappropriate to even issue such a message about Pelosi in general terms with the angry mob in pursuit. Boebert did not tweet a similar message about other members, including herself.

Rep. Gosar continued to speak at the podium about alleged voter fraud charges in Arizona, as the commotion outside the chamber sounded more ominous. Some representatives frantically glanced at the doors, seeing nervous looks on plain-clothed police standing there. But Gosar seemed immune to the scene. He didn’t like not having colleagues’ full attention, even when most knew the mob had penetrated their workplace.

“Mr. Speaker, can I have order in the chamber?” Gosar asked, as if nothing was happening outside the doors. He would soon post a photo of Trump backers climbing a Capitol wall on Parler and say, “Americans are upset.”

Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern, who had taken over as floor leader, banged on the gavel. “The House will be in order,” he stated.

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips wasn’t having it. He pointed at Gosar and other Republicans. “This is because of you!” Phillips yelled, according to video. There would not be order in that chamber for hours.

At 2:18 p.m., Rep. Brooks tweeted, “Rep. Gosar… details massive AZ election fraud… DOORS LOCKED! CAPITOL COMPLEX BREACHED! CHAMBER DOORS LOCKED. SPEAKER LEAVES!” Two minutes later, he added, “Rumor: ANTIFA fascists in backwards MAGA hats. Time will tell what truth is.” The following day, Brooks would walk that back after reports showed Trump supporters storming the Capitol, claiming that “citizens in America” were forced “into a box” of either fleeing, submitting, or “fight[ing] back with violence.”

As tempers flared, Capitol Police at 2:19 p.m. issued a security threat and ordered staff and Congress members to move inside the nearest office with emergency equipment and visitors. They were to silence their phones, remain quiet, lock the doors, and stay away from doors and windows. The Senate took the order more seriously, evacuating every member by 2:30 p.m.

Staffers, including those working for Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, carried boxes of Electoral College certificates. Some feared that one goal of the mob was to destroy those documents. While federal law mandated that the sealed certificates from states be transported to Congress in mahogany boxes lined with leather, there were backup copies sent to governor’s offices, federal courts, and the National Archives. But it would have delayed the process even more if officials would have had to send the backups,which could have taken days to arrive.

The Senate parliamentarian’s office, where the boxes were stored at one time, would be among the most targeted by the intruders. They ransacked that office, dumping files on the floor and overturning furniture. That suggested mob members were searching for those boxes of certificates. Pelosi’s office would be similarly vandalized, showing signs of a related hunt.

At 2:24 p.m., Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger tweeted, “This is a coup attempt.” A decorated Air Force Lieutenant Colonel who flew missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, he immediately recognized the operation. Kinzinger had voted against Trump’s first impeachment but would support his second, to great pushback by Republicans.

The House, curiously, resumed its meeting at 2:26 p.m., even as trespassers stormed into Pelosi’s suite of offices and fully occupied the National Statuary Hall, a chamber that housed statues of prominent Americans between the Rotunda and House chamber.

Soon after Pelosi was escorted out, her staffers ran into a conference room that had interior and exterior doors and barricaded themselves. Minutes later, intruders rampaged outside the exterior door. Some threw their bodies against the door, trying to break inside. One did, but left after seeing the interior door. Staffers heard them calling for Pelosi as they ransacked her office. One staffer hiding under a table whispered to another, “We need Capitol Police [to] come into the hallway. They’re pounding on doors trying to find [Speaker Pelosi].”

A large group gathered near a door to the Speaker’s Lobby, attached to the House chamber, the last line of defense before they could reach the floor. A man in a hoodie and sunglasses addressed the mob, “Well, we came this far. What do you say?”

“Drag ’em out!” another yelled.

The hooded ringleader nodded and yelled, “Hang ’em out!” The gallows awaited. More chants, “USA! USA!”

The House finally recessed at 2:29 p.m. More members were evacuated, passing within about 50 feet of the mob that was behind a barricaded glass-paneled door that the hooligans were smashing with wooden flagpoles and helmets, to descend some stairs at the end of the Speaker’s Lobby. At least one insurrectionist shot lawmakers the finger with both hands. “Break it down! Break it down!” they chanted.

Inside the chamber, police barricaded the House doors with furniture and pointed their guns at the doors. Members who remained back, waiting their turn to evacuate, removed their labels identifying them as Congress reps. Most crouched in the aisles and tried to block out the sounds of attackers banging on House doors. Some fiddled with their gas masks, having been told that intruders had sprayed gas in the hallways.

While many lawmakers cowered, a few stepped up to reassure others and prepare for possible combat. Arizona Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq war, calmly explained to colleagues how to operate their gas masks. “Breathe slowly when you put it on,” he advised, “or you will pass out. That is how people can die from wearing these.”

Then the 41-year-old took off his jacket in preparation for insurrectionists who were trying to enter the House chamber. “I thought I’d have to fight my way out,” Gallego said.

Shot heard ‘round the Capitol

As insurrectionists continued to pound on the glass portion of the Speaker’s Lobby doors, Ashli Babbitt positioned herself at the front of the line. She had entered the Capitol building easily enough, with the doors breached before she arrived from the White House rally. She followed a cell to the House chamber, and fate put her first in line to leap through the broken window to where House members sheltered.

She and others yelled at the officers on the other side to step aside. Most officers did, but plain-clothed Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd moved to a corner of the hallway, still pointing his gun at the door. There were still at least 60 Congress members and staff in the chamber, and he was the last line of defense against a mob of thousands.

The mob busted a wider opening in the window. It was now or never. With a Make America Great Again flag draped around her shoulders, Babbitt climbed onto a ledge near the opening at 2:44 p.m. As she leaned forward to propel herself through the window, some noticed the gun pointing at her from a corner in the other side. “Gun!” several yelled.

“Get back!” Lt. Byrd yelled repeatedly. But Babbitt wasn’t listening. Perhaps the noise in that hallway drowned out Byrd’s commands. Perhaps Babbitt heard them and didn’t care. The lieutenant fired once, later saying it was done as a “last resort.” Babbitt fell back, struck in the neck, blood everywhere.

Police rushed through the door to give first aid to Babbitt, who was lying on the floor. The shot seemed to shock the Trump crowd. They stopped further damaging the windows and doors. No one else attempted to enter the Speaker’s Lobby. As officers carried Babbitt out on a stretcher, some invaders followed them and left the building. Many more wanted to but couldn’t because the mob pushed them forward.

Lawmakers still in the chamber heard the shot. Several defended Lt. Byrd’s use of lethal force. Police and U.S. Justice Department investigators later determined that shot was justifiable, and charges would not be filed against him. “The mob was going to come through the door. There was a lot of members and staff that were in danger at the time,” Oklahoma Republican Rep. Markwayne Mullin said. “His actions will be judged in a lot of different ways moving forward, but his actions I believe saved people’s lives even more.”

As Rep. Adam Schiff exited the chamber and descended stairs with other members, he heard the glass shattering and a loud explosion that was the gunshot fired at Babbitt. Along with Pelosi and AOC, Schiff was probably among most Trump defenders’ top three targets. The California Democrat would join the January 6th select committee after being one of the lead investigators in Trump’s first impeachment and a lead manager of his second.

On the way to an undisclosed hiding place under the building, a Republican member told Schiff, “You can’t let them see you.” Another agreed, saying, “I can talk my way through them. You’re in a whole different category.” Schiff was touched by the concern at first, but then thought if they hadn’t falsely attacked him for four years, he wouldn’t have to be worried about his security.

Lt. Byrd later told NBC News that he was doing his job to protect the remaining members of Congress, who included Republicans and Democrats. “If [Trump intruders] get through that door, they’re into the House chamber and upon the members of Congress,” said Byrd, a 28-year veteran of the Capitol Police and the ranking official in charge of protecting the House floor. “I know that day I saved countless lives. I know members of Congress, as well as my fellow officers and staff, were in jeopardy and in serious danger. And that’s my job.” He would be forced from his home by threats from Trump supporters and a family business lost income.

Babbitt would later die at a hospital. Some QAnon followers, including Lin Wood, would claim Babbitt’s death was somehow faked as a “false flag” encouraged by the Deep State for whatever reason. Others would hold her up as a martyr to the cause. A lawyer would say the family planned to file a civil lawsuit against Capitol Police.

In another Capitol hallway, 58-year-old Pennsylvania gym owner Dawn Bancroft, who wore a MAGA ski cap and entered the Capitol through a broken window, said she had been looking for Pelosi “to shoot her in the friggin’ brain.” Riley June Williams, 22, repeatedly told people to go “upstairs” via a special staircase that led to Pelosi’s office, as if she had intimate knowledge of the building layout, according to the FBI. The Harrisburg, Pa., home healthcare worker reportedly helped steal a laptop from the Speaker’s office that she hoped to sell to the Russians, a charge her lawyer denied.

William Calhoun Jr., an Americus, Ga., lawyer who had just recently converted to Trumpism over issues like gun control, would brag online that he had found Pelosi’s office and helped kick in the door about 2:50 p.m. In the preceding weeks, he had posted dark material on Parler and other sites about shooting “communists,” how D.C.’s gun ban was “very illegal” and would only be enforced based on “how many armed Patriots show up.”

As the mob made its final push into the Capitol, some “were bleeding pretty badly” from the combat with police, Calhoun wrote on Facebook. But they were rewarded since “we physically owned the Capitol,” he wrote. “The first of us who got upstairs kicked in Nancy Pelosi’s office door and pushed down the halls towards her inner sanctum, the mob howling with rage. Crazy Nancy probably would have been torn into little pieces, but she was nowhere to be seen. Then a [SWAT] team showed, and we retreated back to the rotunda and continued our hostile takeover of the Capitol Building.”

In Pelosi’s office, assailants destroyed furniture and pictures, threw papers and other objects on the floor, and vandalized her nameplate. Richard Barnett, a Gravette, Ark., rioter who called himself a “white nationalist,” occupied Pelosi’s chair with his shoes on her desk. He stole some of her mail but claimed he left a quarter. Tucked in Barnett’s waistband was a 950,000-volt stun gun the FBI identified through photos.

Over in the Senate wing, intruders made it onto the chamber floor. “Where the fuck are they?” one queried.

“While we’re here, we might as well set up a government,” another suggested.

“Where’s fucking Nancy Pelosi?” Wrong chamber, no one said.

As an insurrectionist sat in Pence’s chair on the rostrum and yelled that Trump won, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Larry Rendall Brock Jr., believed to be a member of the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, told him to get out.

“No, this is our chair,” his younger cohort replied.

“I agree with you, brother, but it’s not ours,” Brock reasoned. “We’re a democracy. [The chair] belongs to the vice president of the United States.”

“But he isn’t here,” the occupier argued.

“But we can’t be disrespectful,” Brock responded.

“Yeah, don’t disrespect − they can steal an election, but we can’t sit in their chairs?”

“You have to understand, it’s an IO [information operation] war. We can’t lose the IO war. We’re better than that,” Brock pleaded. Most ignored him. One guy continued to record documents he rifled through with his phone, saying, “There’s gotta be something in here we can fucking use against these scumbags.”

Brock, a Grapevine, Tx., resident who wore military garb and held zip-tie cuffs, would face further questions. A federal prosecutor would accuse him of wanting to “take hostages… to kidnap, restrain, perhaps try, perhaps execute members of the U.S. government.” That day, he reportedly posted on a social media feed, “Patriots on the Capitol. Patriots storming. Men with guns need to shoot their way in.”

Nashville bartender Eric Munchel, 30, and his mother, Lisa Eisenhart, 57, would also face questions from the FBI. Munchel was photographed with Brock in the chamber holding zip-tie cuffs as well. Decked in black paramilitary fatigues, combat boots, a tactical vest and face gaiter, he fancied himself an American revolutionary and might have stashed guns outside the Capitol to possibly use later, prosecutors said. He also might have carried a taser inside.

In a later search of Munchel’s home, police found assault rifles, a sniper rifle with a tripod, shotguns, pistols, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. His mother was also in the chamber wearing a tactical vest and holding a zip tie. Munchel told a reporter that the breach was like “flexing muscles” to “show them we can,” while Eisenhart said she would “rather die a 57-year-old woman than live under oppression.”

After Brock and Munchel left, Jacob Chansley, the QAnon Shaman, entered the chamber wearing no shirt, Norse mythology tattoos, face paint, and a furry, horned hat. Earlier, he had rallied the troops like a modern-day Samuel Adams who wore horns and sported tattoos and forgot his shirt and almost his pants, yelling at the base of the Washington Monument: “We got ’em by the balls, baby, and we’re not lettin’ go!”

Once inside the Capitol, he yelled commands into a bullhorn “to take out” members of Congress, refusing an officer’s request to use the device to order his gang to leave. He sat in Pence’s chair on the Senate floor, sweaty, shirtless, in the midst of a deadly viral pandemic, led a weird prayer, and left a threatening note.

Garret Miller of Richardson, Tx., entered the Rotunda with a rope in his bag, posting a photo of him there wearing a red Trump cap, according to authorities. He had a darker threat to Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: “Assassinate AOC.” He would also be among those to threaten Lt. Byrd, saying on January 10 they would “hug his neck with a nice rope.”

‘Going down a rabbit hole’

Rosanne Boyland grew up in a small town in Georgia. In recent years, she spread the gospel of QAnon. Some tried to reason with her. But she would not listen. When Trump put out the call to come to D.C., the 34-year-old answered. Family members begged her to reconsider. But she was drawn.

Boyland and friend Justin Winchell drove the 650 miles to the White House almost nonstop. At the rally, Boyland was among those carrying a Gadsdan flag, designed in 1775 by Christopher Gadsden, leader of the South Carolina Patriot movement and a brigadier general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. A rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike sit in a yellow field with the words, “Don’t tread on me.” The flag was increasingly popular among those protesting for gun rights.

After Trump told people to march to the Capitol, Boyland and Winchell answered that call, too. By the time they reached the building, many had already breached it. Boyland ended up in a second-level terrace on the west side of the Capitol that hadn’t been penetrated. A mass of bodies pushed forward starting around 2:40 p.m., trying to force police to retreat, in a tunnel used by presidents to exit the Capitol to reach their inauguration podium.

“Stop pushing, somebody’s going to get hurt,” one rioter said on a YouTube video. Both sides used chemical gas, battling for more than two hours, with reserve participants arriving from the Ellipse rally in waves. Boyland, wearing American flag sunglasses, was seen on the video among the mob near the door shortly after 4 p.m.

Around 4:20 p.m., police made a major push, sending many in the crowd surging back, falling down the steps. Winchell, wearing a blue hoodie, was visible at the top of the steps, pulling people away and searching for Boyland as more tumbled towards them.

“They basically created a panic, and the police, in turn, push[ed] back on them, so people started falling,” Winchell told a CBS affiliate station. He finally found her and tried to pull her out, but another guy fell on her. “Another guy was just walking [on top of her],” Winchell said. “There were people stacked two, three deep… People just crushed.”

At one point, Boyland could be seen lying on her side in front of the door as men fought above her. A couple of men finally dragged her to the steps, and police performed CPR on her. She was pronounced dead at a D.C.-area hospital at 6:09 p.m.

Justin Cave, Boyland’s brother-in-law, told a reporter that Trump’s “words incited a riot that killed four of his biggest fans.” The other two Trump crusaders who died that day were Kevin Greeson, 55, of Athens, Ala., and Benjamin Philips, 50, of Bloomsburg, Pa. Greeson, who called for violence against Democrats on social media, reportedly had a heart attack while observing the mob outside the Capitol, dying at 2:05 p.m. Philips, a computer programmer who organized a charter bus to the rally, died of a stroke. Neither entered the building.

At least one elite athlete broke into the building. Klete Keller, a two-time U.S. Olympic Gold Medal winner in swimming, was photographed inside the Capitol and later arrested. The 38-year-old wore a U.S. Olympic team jacket inside and was among the tallest insurrectionists at 6-foot-6. He pleaded guilty to one charge, admitting that he obstructed police efforts to make intruders leave the building and yelled, “Fuck Nancy Pelosi!” and “Fuck Chuck Schumer!”

When they could not locate members of Congress, some Trump crusaders took out their rage on journalists. Several mob members dressed in black approached New York Times photographer Erin Schaff in a Capitol hallway and asked who she was. They grabbed her media pass, noticed her affiliation − a newspaper that Trump often criticized and referred to as the “failing” New York Times and “enemy of the people” − and angrily threw her to the ground.

“I started screaming for help as loudly as I could,” Schaff wrote. “No one came. People just watched. At this point, I thought I could be killed and no one would stop them.”

They pried a camera away and broke a lens on another, before leaving her alone. She ran into Pelosi’s suite, observed trespassers vandalizing her office, and walked to her balcony. As she observed the crowd from the balcony, a man next to her said, “This will be the start of a Civil War revolution.”

Police started to deploy pepper or tear gas, and she ran to the third floor, hiding in a hallway. Police found her and didn’t believe she was with the media since her pass had been stolen. Two other photojournalists vouched for her, and they barricaded in another room.

Trump rioters shoved Associated Press photographer John Minchillo over a short ledge on Capitol grounds, according to a video. Some thought he was with Antifa, though he showed press credentials. Being a media professional could have been considered worse than being with Antifa to some Trumpites.

Shomari Stone, a broadcast journalist for NBC’s D.C. affiliate, showed a segment of more violence against journalists committed by Trump rioters, who destroyed equipment and chased reporters outside the building around 5 p.m. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my 20-year career,” Stone wrote on Twitter.

Some yelled, “CNN sucks!” as they destroyed Associated Press equipment. “Start making a list and put all those names down, and we start hunting them down, one by one,” a man shouted. “Traitors to the guillotine!”

Where’s the National Guard?

More than two hours after Trump’s mob breached the Capitol’s outer perimeter barricades, D.C. police phoned military officials to more forcefully request National Guard backup than previous requests. Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn, the Army’s deputy chief of staff for operations and Mike Flynn’s brother, was among those in the teleconference meeting.

D.C. acting chief Robert Contee later said he was “stunned” by the U.S. Army’s response.”The Army staff responded that they were not refusing to send them, but wanted to know the plan and did not like the optics of boots on the ground at the Capitol,” he said. Pentagon officials said the request was handled appropriately.

Defense Secretary Miller and Gen. Milley spoke with Pence, not Trump, CNN reported. Police from counties surrounding D.C., including Montgomery, Fairfax, and Prince George’s, arrived at the Capitol around 3:30 p.m., before the Guard. The reinforcements deployed tear gas, smoke grenades, and batons to methodically oust the mob.

Miller didn’t approve additional assistance from National Guard troops in Virginia and Maryland until 4:41 p.m. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany would later tweet that Trump immediately “directed” the Guard to respond, which many called false.

Around 3 p.m., Trump tweeted again, asking “everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order.” But he did not instruct them to leave. By then, the crowd around the Capitol was estimated at some 25,000, with several thousand of them roaming the interior hallways.

Shortly before 4 p.m., former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who ran Trump’s transition team in 2016 and helped with his campaign in 2020, told an ABC broadcast that he had tried to reach the president without success for 25 minutes. “The president caused this protest to occur. He’s the only one that can make it stop,” Christie said. “He has to come out and tell his supporters to leave the Capitol grounds and allow the Congress to do their business peacefully. Anything short of that is an abdication of his responsibility.”

Not all Trump allies called on him to stop the violence. At 3:30 p.m., Arizona GOP leader Kelli Ward tweeted, “Congress is adjourned. Send the elector choice back to the legislatures.” Rep. Gallego pointedly responded, “Fuck you we are. Democracy will not die tonight.”

At 4.06 p.m., Biden appeared on TV. “At this hour, our democracy is under unprecedented assault unlike anything we’ve seen in modern times,” Biden said, somberly. “The scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect a true America, do not represent who we are. What we’re seeing are a small number of extremists, dedicated to lawlessness. This is not dissent, it’s disorder. It’s chaos. It borders on sedition. And it must end, now. I call on this mob to pull back and allow the work of democracy to go forward.

“You heard me say before in different context, the words of a president matter, no matter how good or bad that president is. At their best, the words of a president can inspire. At their worst, they can incite. Therefore, I call on President Trump to go on national television now to fulfill his oath and defend the Constitution and demand an end to this siege…

“Like so many other Americans, I am genuinely shocked and saddened that our nation − so long the beacon of light and hope for democracy − has come to such a dark moment. Today’s reminder, a painful one, that democracy is fragile and to preserve it requires people of goodwill, leaders with the courage to stand up, who are devoted not to the pursuit of power or the personal interest, pursuits of their own selfish interest at any cost, but of the common good. Think what our children watching television are thinking. Think what the rest of the world is looking at….

“Notwithstanding what I saw today and we’re seeing today, I remain optimistic about the incredible opportunities. There has never been anything we can’t do when we do it together. And this god-awful display today was bringing home to every Republican and Democrat and independent in the nation that we must step up.”

In a room far below the violent scenes in the Capitol, sheltering senators loudly applauded. On Twitter, many noted, “This is what leadership looks like.” One wrote, “Why is the person the Terrorists mobbing and vandalizing the Capitol and Republicans in Congress refuse to admit has been elected President acting like a President and the sitting President they support acting like a Terrorist?”

At 4:17 p.m., Trump finally directly told his crusaders, via a video posted to Twitter, to go home. But he muddled the message by insisting the election was stolen. “I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order… Go home. We love you. You’re very special.” That was the best of three takes, according to aides.

Rally organizer Alexander filmed himself from a site overlooking the Capitol violence that still occurred around 4:30 p.m. “I don’t disavow this,” he said. “I do not denounce this.” Bannon didn’t denounce the violence either, but he claimed he and Trump had nothing to do with it, despite his statements showing he did know about it beforehand.

Some insurrectionists got the message. Chansley was among those to immediately leave the building, escorted by police or the National Guard. Others seemed confused by Trump’s message to leave. They had expected a military putsch, even executions. With police reinforcements and Guardsmen driving them out, the Trump defenders finally left. Few were arrested. Most were allowed to simply walk off into the night.

But at 6:01 p.m., after the curfew began, Trump couldn’t help but ramp up the division again. “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!” Twitter would soon ban him indefinitely.

In the Rotunda, Officer Dunn joined some other officers to vent about the emotional events. “How the fuck can something like this happen?!” Dunn yelled. “Is this America?”

Radical Republicans continue to push lies

At 8 p.m., Congress resumed its session. It wasn’t long before Rep. Matt Gaetz returned the scene to normalcy, namely partisan division.

In a five-minute address on the same House floor near where a Trump supporter who tried to break in was shot and killed a few hours earlier, the panhandle Florida rep blamed the insurrection on Democrats supposedly riling up the crowd by supporting violence at BLM demonstrations. And Antifa supposedly infiltrating the mob. Moreover, he praised Trump after he had incited his crusaders to violence.

“This morning, President Trump explicitly called for demonstrations and protests to be peaceful,” Gaetz claimed. “The Washington Times has just reported some pretty compelling evidence from a facial-recognition company showing that some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters. They were masquerading as Trump supporters. And in fact, they were members of the violent terrorist group, Antifa.”

The Times would correct the story the next day after the facial recognition company informed editors it had not identified mob members as Antifa. Chansley, one of those who far-right conspiracists claimed was with Antifa, denied that on Twitter.

Once Gaetz finished, Republican House members loudly applauded. Others followed with similar charges, despite the FBI proclaiming that Antifa was not involved. Some blamed Democrats who allegedly made Trump’s mob feel like outcasts and racists, while supporting violence at BLM protests. Biden, Obama, and other Democrats had condemned the protest violence numerous times in columns and public speeches, as early as May 2020. Some said they could have done more, including urge BLM to only protest in daylight.

Gosar continued to tweet about nonexistent voter fraud, blaming the violence on those who refused to “allow an audit” of election results in a few states Trump lost. The violence backfired on those who thought it would intimidate Congress. Trump loyalists like Kelly Loeffler, Bill Hagerty, and Marsha Blackburn rescinded their vows to object to the certification. Still, others such as Ted Cruz, Hawley, Gaetz, and Gosar delayed the process.

At 9:58 p.m., the Senate rejected the objection to Arizona’s certification, 93–6. Cruz, Hawley, and Tuberville were joined by Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, John Kennedy of Louisiana, and Roger Marshall of Kansas in support. Some 121 House Republicans voted to throw out Arizona’s results, though 83 GOP members sided with 220 Democrats to deny that. Around midnight, Hawley objected to Pennsylvania’s results, triggering another two-hour delay. The Senate made quick work of a 92–7 vote to oppose the objection. The same senators supported it, except for Kennedy, while Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Rick Scott of Florida sided with the Hawley gang.

For some reason, the House was allowed to debate the Pennsylvania results for longer than two hours, not voting to reject the objection until shortly after 3 a.m. Only 64 Republicans voted against it, while 138 approved throwing out the results. Michigan GOP Rep. Peter Meijer said that several Republicans feared for their safety and succumbed to the Trump mob’s intimidation tactics. Far-right Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland almost provoked a fight with the bigger, younger Colin Allred, a Democrat from Texas who was an NFL linebacker, because he objected to another Democrat calling him a liar. Harris would number among the QAnon wing to vote against awarding medals to police officers.

By the time Biden’s victory was official at 3:41 a.m. on January 7, White House Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger joined Grisham to number among the first administration officials to resign. Others such as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao soon followed. DeVos wrote in her resignation letter to Trump, “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation.”

While Congress members engaged in meaningless talk about nonexistent voter fraud, Chief Contee held a midnight media conference. Besides the deaths and pipe bombs, police had found a cooler from a vehicle on Capitol grounds that contained Molotov cocktails. They confiscated numerous handguns and rifles. Several who breached the Capitol said they stored weapons in nearby vehicles and other places.

Contee said that only 52 people were arrested that day, mostly for violating curfew. That compared to 289 arrests for a BLM protest in D.C. on June 1 that involved little violence by demonstrators, who were tear gassed, shot with rubber bullets, and beaten with batons to clear space for a Trump photo op near the White House.

Meanwhile, state capitals across the country experienced protests that same day. Some 3,000 miles away, about 100 attacker — some armed, others carrying Trump flag — breached a fence of the residence of Washington Gov. Jay Inslee in Olympia. They reached his door but did not try to break inside. In Salem, Ore., pro-Trump protesters fought with police and burned an effigy of Gov. Kate Brown outside the state Capitol.

In Phoenix, a mob set up a wooden guillotine with a Trump flag outside the statehouse. An anonymous group released a statement that said in part, “If the Constitution, our way of life, and the Freedoms that we hold so dear are threatened by internal or external enemies, we will rise to the challenge and defend this great nation by all means necessary.”

Rep. Gosar took time out from objecting to people’s votes that evening to speak to the Arizona crowd via Facetime from the building that fellow Trump defenders had just trashed. The blood of Ashli Babbitt still lingered just outside the House chamber. What appeared to be blood smeared on a marble bust of Zachary Taylor had yet to be scrubbed off. Bullet holes had pierced an exterior window of an East entrance door, but not the inner glass pane. The offices of Pelosi and the Senate parliamentarian stood in shambles, photos and documents strewn on the floor, furniture overturned. Items like a laptop were missing. “TRAITORS” and other graffiti remained scrawled on interior doors. Broken glass, cigarette butts, debris, powder remnants from tear gas and pepper spray, the smell of urine, littered the Capitol hallways.

A large placard outside Hoyer’s office honoring legendary civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, who had passed away in 2020, lay in ruins. The display had featured Lewis’ photo and a popular quote: “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just; you have to stand up, speak up, speak out, and find a way to get in the way and get in trouble. Good trouble. Necessary trouble.”

Hoyer would tweet a photo of the memorial on January 7, adding, “While rioters shamefully destroyed this tribute to my brother John Lewis yesterday, let his words continue to echo in the halls of Congress and in our hearts. Let us always stand up, speak up, and speak out against injustice and for our democracy.” He would put up a new one within a week.

Those like Gosar apparently thought they saw voter fraud and were standing up, speaking out, getting in trouble. The problem was it wasn’t for a real injustice; it was for a gigantic lie, to keep a wannabe authoritarian in power. It was for bad trouble, not good. Did they really believe there was voter fraud? Or were they doing what more powerful people who financed them wanted them to do?

“I’m so proud of you for being out there,” Gosar stated to his supporters, including the guillotine makers, still several hours away from Biden’s official victory. “Gotta love you for keeping the fight.”

Violent rhetoric or locker-room talk?

Trump and his apologists often say his rhetoric, such as him telling the January 6th mob to “fight like hell,” is no different than a football coach urging his team to “fight.” Sports and its metaphors have long been part of the political culture, the lingo. It’s natural to be competitive, to want to win, be it a sports contest, business award, or political campaign. Obama embraced basketball. Bush baseball. Reagan and Ford football. Yet, those former presidents understood that at some point, politics works best when you stop and listen to others and compromise to reach some of your goals. They understood the rhetoric could go too far.

Trump has never understood that concept of politics. He likes even more violent sports than football — wrestling, hockey, boxing. Though he never got his hands dirty and plays one of the least violent, golf. He always wants someone else to do the nasty work, though he loves to watch them do it.

At his rallies and in private, he has often voiced support for violence. During a November 2015 rally in Birmingham, Ala., Trump said of a BLM protester who was beaten and kicked by backers, “Maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.” At a January 2016 rally in Sioux Center, Iowa, Trump famously declared, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose voters.” At a February event in Las Vegas, Trump said he’d “like to punch” a protester in the face. That same month in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he urged the crowd to “knock the crap” out of protesters. “I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees,” he stated. After a supporter elbow-punched a protester at a North Carolina rally in March, Trump didn’t pay his legal bills.

Trump reveled in people he didn’t like being violently targeted. In September 2020, he mocked MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi, who was shot in the knee with a rubber bullet while covering a BLM protest. “Nobody cared, [police] didn’t care. They moved him aside,” Trump said during a rally. “It was the most beautiful thing.” Soon after the kidnapping plot against Michigan Gov. Whitmer was foiled the following month, Trump downplayed it and led a rally crowd in his patented “Lock her up!” chant.

The violence — physical, mental, emotional — continually dominated Trump’s campaigns. In researching Operation Chaos, I was amazed how many violent incidents surrounded his events, and I likely only unearthed a small percentage of them. Violence is a natural extension of Trump’s personality, a part of his DNA. He didn’t just wink and nod at supporters who punched political foes and journalists. He reveled in it. His face lit up in enjoyment like nothing else he discussed.

That’s why when Trump and allies said the Capitol attack was not that bad, was little more than some tourists strolling through the hallways of the landmark structure, to them, it wasn’t. It was normal. They had seen this before at their rallies, at their town squares, on the outskirts of their campaigns. It was nothing new.

It was just another day, another event to exploit to their benefit. The officers and people who died, the police who were injured, their supporters who risked everything — their jobs, their careers, their lives — to fight the police and breach the Capitol to give Trump a little more hope for power, only to be prosecuted, forgotten, even vilified by the Trumpists, were merely collateral damage, necessary casualties to the cause of Trumpism.

Since January 6, 2021, enablers like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham have reportedly consoled Trump that he didn’t mean to incite a riot, that the day merely got out of hand. Others don’t buy that line. We still don’t know how much Trump, Bannon, and others knew about the plan to violently breach the Capitol, or if any of them were directly involved in that plot, even ordered the breach. Trump’s history of supporting violence, the links between groups like the Proud Boys that engaged in violence and top aides, the trend of subversive operations to have key figures lead through code words, and the reports that he reveled in the Capitol attack lend many to believe Trump and top lieutenants were more involved than they let on.

We do know that, like the rally supporters who punch a protester, Trump will not follow through with his promises to pay legal bills. He will entice people to commit violence and crimes for him — hello, Michael Cohen — then leave them to face the music alone once some consequences arise. Attorneys for alleged Proud Boy Pezzola, one of the first to break into the Capitol who remains behind bars, put it succinctly: “Many of those who heeded [Trump’s January 6th] call will be spending substantial portions, if not the remainder of their lives, in prison as a consequence. Meanwhile, Donald Trump resumes his life of luxury and privilege.”

While many Capitol attack participants have been slapped with relatively light sentences, some have received substantial prison terms, including 63 months for Robert Scott Palmer, 54, who threw a wood plank and fire extinguisher at officers. QAnon Shaman Chansley got 41 months after claiming all he did was “walk through an open door, dude.” Prosecutors said he did much more than that.

Back safely at his Florida resort, Trump told reporters in the aftermath that he didn’t want his supporters to fight police and breach the Capitol, despite cheering them on and waiting for more than three hours before telling them to leave. He wrongly claimed the police “were ushering people in.” He mostly blames the violence on Pence, Barr, Democrats, and others. Not his supporters who he called “special” and said he loved right after they violently ransacked the Capitol, injured 140 officers, tried to find and kidnap, even hang, Pence and Congress members, tried to locate the Electoral College ballots to destroy, stole items like a laptop, wrote “MURDER THE MEDIA” and other graffiti on interior doors, smeared what appeared to be blood on valuable artwork, literally pissed in the hallways of the nation’s top legislative landmark. Not his allies like Bannon, who was criminally indicted and held in contempt for ignoring a subpoena to testify before the January 6th committee, as he keeps working to organize Trumpists to take control of local election boards and community councils to help steal future elections.

Not himself. Never himself.

Last June, Officer Fanone approached Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, one of the Trump allies who claimed the events of January 6th were little more than a “normal” visit by tourists, though they cowered in secret rooms with colleagues that day rather than greet those supposed tourists. The Congress member would not even shake the officer’s hand after he risked his life to save his ass.

“I feel like I went to Hell and back to protect [Congress members]. But too many are now telling me that Hell doesn’t even exist — or that Hell actually wasn’t all that bad,” Officer Fanone said. “The indifference shown to my colleagues and I is disgraceful.”

Operation Chaos is available in a newly updated 296-page print version at Amazon. The book, which made some Amazon Bestseller lists for several weeks, is also in electronic form at Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, and other retailers.

January 6th Truth Seekers

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