The angry mob Donald Trump inspired on January 6 and let loose upon the Capitol Building had their blood up. They were on the hunt for former Vice President Mike Pence with chants of “Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!” as a noose hung outside. They hunted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to assassinate her. But there was one more person they wanted to capture, and they came far closer than anyone knew. Until now.
Of course, we understood that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) (D-NY) was on Donald Trump’s enemies list. She even said that she was seconds away from being caught, but when we saw her on video, the ice-cold tale came into focus and caused people to sharply draw their breaths.
For the first time, AOC spoke about how the January 6 Insurrection unfolded. She said that someone was pounding on her office door, and she used her fist to show how. Then, Ocasio-Cortez said that a man beat open the door to her office.
CNN reported how she described it:
‘I hear huge violent bangs on my door and then every door going into my office. Like someone was trying to break the door down.’
‘And there were no voices. There were no yells. No one saying who they were, nobody identifying themselves. I just started to hear these yells of, Where is she? Where is she?”‘
Ocasio-Cortez said she thought that man was an insurrectionist:
‘I thought I was going to die.’
She hid in the office’s bathroom in its furthest corner behind the bathroom’s door. The man was not identifying himself. AOC showed how he slowly opened the door, MSNBC reported:
‘I have never been quieter in my entire life. I held my breath. This was the moment where I thought everything was over.’
Later, Ocasio-Cortez found the man hunting for her was a Capitol Police, but he did not identify himself:
‘[It] didn’t feel right. Things weren’t adding up. [She believed he expressed] anger and hostility. The situation felt so volatile with this officer that I run over, I grabbed my bag and we just start running over to that [secure] building.’
She and her legislative assistance tried a number of doors before they met Representative Katie Porter (D-CA) in the hall, and with a mom’s calm, she took the two to her offices.
There they barricaded the door. Then, they changed clothes in order to be able to better blend in when they left five hours later:
‘All these crazy thoughts go through your mind. Are some offices safer than others because they have White sounding names? Or male-sounding names?’
Text messages the week before the insurrection warned her to be careful on January 6:
‘Those text messages came from other members of Congress. They were not threats, but they were other members, saying that they knew, and that they were hearing — even from Trump people and Republicans that they knew in their life — that there was violence expected on Wednesday.’
AOC concluded:
‘It is just one story of many of those whose lives were endangered at the Capitol by the lies, threats, and violence fanned by the cowardice of people who chose personal gain above democracy.’
The Mueller Report Adventures: In Bite-Sizes on this Facebook page. These quick, two-minute reads interpret the report in normal English for busy people. Mueller Bite-Sizes uncovers what is essentially a compelling spy mystery. Interestingly enough, Mueller Bite-Sizes can be read in any order.
