Shattered glass. Overturned chairs. Broken furniture. This was some of the wreckage at the Capitol after the violent riot of Jan. 6, captured in newly released photos from a Democratic senator.
“I took these exactly six months ago - the morning after the insurrection,” Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown tweeted Wednesday, noting it was the first time he was sharing the footage. “This is what I saw in the Capitol.”
On Jan. 6, an armed mob of hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol where lawmakers were set to certify the results of the U.S. presidential election, which President Joe Biden had won. Five people died in the riots, including a Capitol Police officer.
It was no “normal tourist visit,” as Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde (Ga.) had tried to describe the events during a committee hearing on the insurrection in May.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Jan. 6 “one of the darkest days in our nation’s history.”
Meanwhile, Senate Republicans blocked the creation of a bipartisan commission to investigate the attack. In response, the majority Democratic House voted last week to create a select committee to investigate “the facts, circumstances and causes relating to the domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol.”
Several lawmakers have spoken out publicly about the violence and trauma of living through the attack.
One month after the insurrection, Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), who served in the U.S. Army, recalled being in the gallery of the House on Jan. 6 and getting notifications that the Capitol had been overrun and that “rioters were everywhere.” Crow said he’d never imagined he’d be back in a situation where he’d be “fearful for my life,” as he had been in the Army.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) recalled the “extremely traumatizing” events of Jan. 6 and thinking she was “going to die” that day.
“We cannot move on without accountability,” the lawmaker said earlier this year. “We cannot heal without accountability.”