By Mike Lillis and Scott Wong, The Hill
The House Democrats prosecuting Donald Trump‘s impeachment case unveiled harrowing new video footage on Wednesday lending a new perspective to just how close the rioters came to then-Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. senators as they breached the Capitol on Jan. 6.
The new footage, released on the second day of Trump’s Senate trial, takes advantage of Capitol security cameras positioned around the complex, depicting both the violent intentions of the mob and the heroics of several Capitol Police officers, including Eugene Goodman, who had diverted the mob away from senators on the chamber floor.
The new footage aims to drive home the Democrats’ argument that the former president had purposefully stirred up his supporters with claims of a stolen election, then encouraged them to march on the Capitol to block the vote certifying the victory of his opponent, Joe Biden.
The video shows a group of violent Trump supporters overwhelming Capitol Police and charging through a barricade set up at the West Front of the Capitol. In previously unreleased audio of internal Capitol Police dispatches, officers can be heard frantically warning of breaches and calling for reinforcements.
“They’re throwing metal poles at us,” one officer shouts.
At 1:49 p.m., the breach was formally declared a riot.
Among the revelations from the new footage: Goodman is seen racing down a second floor hallway toward the Senate chamber, where he bumps into Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who is fleeing toward the Rotunda. Goodman appears to redirect Romney back toward the chamber — and safety.
Watch new video from The Hill.
Some of the new footage was taken from the dozens of Capitol security cameras that are positioned inside the Capitol building and connected House and Senate office buildings, as well as around the Capitol grounds.
Until now, video from those security cameras had not been shown to the public. The FBI has taken possession of most of those videos as part of its ongoing investigating into the Jan. 6 assault.
Some of the rioters who broke into the Capitol have indicated they were planning to assassinate Pence for refusing to block certification of Biden’s victory, as Trump had asked him to do.
But Secret Service did not evacuate Pence out of a room connected to the Senate chamber until 2:26 p.m., 37 minutes after the initial breach, according to new security footage shown by the prosecutors.
The clear timeline reveals just how close a call it was for Pence.
The new security footage also reveals eight members of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) staff fleeing their offices and ducking into a conference room, which had the advantage of being double-doored. There they huddled beneath a desk and waited.
The cameras captured rioters arriving in that hallway seven minutes later, and one of them slamming into the outer door, breaking it in. The inner door was never breached.
Impeachment managers played the audio of a phone call from one of Pelosi’s aides, seeking help from the Capitol Police.
“They’re pounding the doors trying to find her,” the aide is heard whispering into the phone.
Pelosi herself, second in line to the presidency, was escorted off the House floor and evacuated out of the Capitol complex and to an undisclosed, off-site location due to the severity of the threat against her.
“The Capitol Police deemed the threat so dangerous [to Pelosi] that they evacuated her entirely from the Capitol complex,” Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.), one of the impeachment managers, told the senators.
“We know from the rioters themselves that if they had found Speaker Pelosi,” Plaskett said, “they would have killed her.”
After spending the first three and a half hours of day two paying varying levels of attention, Republican senators were riveted by the new security footage of Pence being evacuated from his Senate office. Democratic and Republican lawmakers watched intently as the managers played footage showing Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) staff barricading themselves in an office minutes before a group of rioters walked down a hallway.
