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Video Dept.

A Reporter's Footage from Inside the Capitol Siege

By The New Yorker

January 17, 2021

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Luke Mogelson followed Trump supporters as they forced their way into
the Senate chamber.

When Luke Mogelson attended President Donald Trump's speech on the
National Mall, in Washington, D.C., on January 6th, he was prepared
for the possibility that violence might erupt that day. Mogelson, a
veteran war correspondent and a contributing writer at The New Yorker
, had spent the previous ten months reporting on the radical fringe
of Trump supporters, from anti-lockdown militias to fascist groups
such as the Proud Boys. After Election Day, he interviewed Trump
supporters who showed up at ballot-tabulation sites, and who believed
the President's lies that the results had been "rigged" and his
victory "stolen." At one post-election pro-Trump rally in D.C.,
Mogelson witnessed racist violence against Black residents of the
nation's capital. At another event, he watched the host of the
white-supremacist Web program "America First" declare, "Our Founding
Fathers would get in the streets, and they would take this country
back by force if necessary. And that is what we must be prepared to
do."

After Trump's incendiary speech, Mogelson followed the President's
supporters as they forced their way into the U.S. Capitol, using his
phone's camera as a reporter's notebook. What follows is a video that
includes some of that raw footage. Mogelson harnessed this material
while writing his panoramic, definitive report, "Among the
Insurrectionists," which the magazine posted online on Friday. (It
appears in print in the January 25th issue.) His prose vividly
captures how the raging anger and violence of the initial breach of
the Capitol was followed by an eerily quiet and surreal interlude
inside the Senate chamber, where Mogelson watched people rummaging
through desks and posing for photographs. Although the footage was
not originally intended for publication, it documents a historic
event and serves as a visceral complement to Mogelson's probing,
illuminating report.

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View all stories
 
Rioters at the Capitol
The Presidential Transition
 
Among the Insurrectionists

The Capitol was breached by Trump supporters who had been declaring,
at rally after rally, that they would go to violent lengths to keep
the President in power. A chronicle of an attack foretold.

By Luke Mogelson

 
A photo collage of Donald Trump with the White House in the
background.
The Presidential Transition
 
The Trial of Donald Trump Must Tell the Full Story of the Capitol
Insurrection

We need a truth-finding mission rather than just a punitive
undertaking, and it requires the support of President-elect Biden.

By Masha Gessen

 
"That's Not Who We Are" Is the Wrong Reaction to the Attack on the
Capitol
Video
 
"That's Not Who We Are" Is the Wrong Reaction to the Attack on the
Capitol

Andrew Marantz talks about why such sweeping statements, issued by
many public figures after a mob of Trump supporters rioted in the
halls of Congress, can stand in the way of necessary change.

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