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Graphic New Videos Show Violence at US Capitol Last Month

Ken Bredemeier

   WASHINGTON - Prosecutors at former U.S. President Donald Trump's Senate
   impeachment trial laid out their case against him Wednesday, showing
   graphic, previously undisclosed videos of the mayhem that erupted at
   the U.S. Capitol last month as lawmakers certified Democrat Joe Biden's
   victory in the November election.

   The videos showed hundreds of insurgents -- Trump supporters the former
   U.S. leader had urged to go to the Capitol to try to stop the official
   certification of his reelection loss -- storming through the building
   and into both chambers of Congress. Some of the rioters rifled through
   documents lawmakers had left behind as they fled to safety.

   Some of the rioters, the January6 videos showed, shouted that they were
   trying to find former Vice President Mike Pence to hang him because he
   had rejected Trump's demand that he block the certification of the
   Electoral College outcome so that Trump and Pence could remain in power
   for another four years.

   Other surging protesters hunted for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, leader
   of the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and longtime
   Trump opponent, to kill her, the videos showed.

   The demonstrators stormed into her office, but, the prosecutors said,
   authorities had already whisked her away from the Capitol to safety,
   while some of her staff huddled in a nearby conference room behind a
   locked door.

   "The mob was looking for Pence because of his patriotism in order to
   execute him," House impeachment manager Delegate Stacey Plaskett, a
   Democrat from the U.S. Virgin Islands, told the 100-member Senate
   hearing, referring to the vice president's looming certification of
   Biden's victory.

   Another impeachment manager, RepresentativeEric Swalwell, a California
   Democrat, narrated one video captured from a security camera inside the
   Capitol, telling lawmakers, "Most of the public does not know how close
   you came to the mob" before escaping to safety.

   "We all know that awful day could have been much worse," Swalwell said.

   Earlier, the lead House impeachment manager, RepresentativeJamie
   Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, contended that Trump was "no innocent
   bystander" to the violence.

   Raskin and other Democratic lawmakers said Trump laid the groundwork
   for the storming of the Capitol over a period of weeks leading up to
   the election with dozens of unfounded claims that the only way he could
   lose was if the election was rigged against him.

   Raskin alleged that Trump, by urging hundreds of his supporters to
   "fight like hell" in confronting lawmakers at the Capitol on January6,
   ignited the mayhem that left at least five people dead, including a
   Capitol Police officer.

   "He incited this attack," Raskin told the Senate, which will decide
   whether Trump should be convicted of a single article of impeachment
   brought by the House, which accuses him of "incitement of
   insurrection."

   "He clearly surrendered his role as commander in chief and became the
   inciter in chief," Raskin argued. He contended that Trump, now out of
   office after his four-year term ended and Biden was inaugurated
   January20, "was singularly responsible" in exhorting his supporters to
   try to upend Biden's victory.

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