Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told Insider on Friday that members of the pro-Trump mob called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office the day after the riot looking for ‘lost and found’ items they left behind on Jan. 6.
According to Raskin, rioters were calling “asking whether there was a lost and found because they forgot their phone there, or they left their purse or what have you.”
“The officers quickly got on the phone and said, yeah, just give us your name, your address, your social, you know, and we’ll tie up these loose ends,” Raskin said. “But what’s so fascinating to me about that there really were people who felt as if they had been summoned to Washington by the president.”
Members of the pro-Trump mob ransacked the speaker’s suite of offices during the attack.
Staffers for Pelosi were forced to barricade themselves in a conference room and hide under a table.
Raskin, a member of the House select committee investigating the riot told Insider that the insurrectionists’ self-incriminating phone calls demonstrates a problem facing the Jan. 6 panel.
“When they were told that they were trespassing and invading the Capitol, they said the president invited them to be there. They didn’t have any kind of subtle understanding of the separation of powers. They just thought that the number one person in the US government had invited them to be there, and therefore they had a right,” Raskin said.
“It underscores the central role that Donald Trump played in it. But it does create a problem for assigning guilt at different levels of conduct,” he added.
