When both branches of Congress met during a joint session on Wednesday to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory, many journalists, law enforcement officials and national security experts feared that violence would occur in the streets of Washington, D.C. But it came as a major shock when a violent mob of pro-Trump extremists stormed the U.S. Capitol, a disturbing series of events recounted by reporters Andrew Egger and Audrey Fahlberg in an article published by The Dispatch the following day.
On January 6, President Donald Trump and his allies — including Donald Trump, Jr., Eric Trump, Kimberly Guilfoyle (Trump, Jr.’s girlfriend and the ex-wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom) and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani — spoke at a demonstration on the National Mall. They called their event the “Save America March,” and Trump, Sr. continued to promote his debunked claims that widespread voter fraud occurred during the 2020 presidential election. Extremists who showed up in support of Trump included the Proud Boys, militia members, neo-Confederates and supporters of the conspiracy cult QAnon.
“The people most determined to start a riot at the Capitol were the ones who were there first,” Egger and Fahlberg explain. “As Trump’s speech dragged on, first a trickle, then a stream of rally-goers peeled off and started to march down the Mall. But by the time the first of them arrived, the mayhem was already underway. Protesters who had forgone the speech had pushed through a series of police barriers onto the lawn and had even scaled a tall scaffold near the steps of the Capitol itself.” Continue reading.
