When rioters stormed the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a joint session of Congress was assembled to count electoral votes certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. A number of local officials were on hand that day including Congresswoman Kathleen Rice and Congressmen Tom Suozzi, Lee Zeldin and freshman Andrew Garbarino. In an interview conducted last year roughly two weeks after the insurrection, Garbarino shared his experience of having already been told to stay in his office, lock the door and stay quiet.
“When people asked if it was as bad as it was on TV, I said it was worse,” he explained. “You had a lot of people there demonstrating for whatever reason they believed and you had a couple of hundred people who turned the whole thing into an attack on the Capitol. It’s sad, because these tens of thousands of other people just wanted to be heard. And now, they won’t be, because the assault on the Capitol tainted every concern they had. That’s who I feel bad for—the people who wanted somebody to listen to them. They wanted to be heard. And now, they’ll forever be tainted with this.”
In a separate interview, Rice recalled being “…barricaded in an office with a colleague just one floor below where the rioters broke in on the west side…there were insurrectionists in the building…I didn’t realize that some of them had maps, how to get to certain offices, get to the House and Senate floor. I’m forever grateful to the Capitol police.”
While Zeldin never shared his first-hand experience, he did release a statement later that day stating, “This should never be the scene at the U.S. Capitol…There must be zero tolerance for violence in any form.”
Suozzi was in the House Gallery when insurrectionists arrived and recalled, “A mob storm[ing] the Capitol, [breaking] down doors, [making] death threats and for a time being, put[ting] our democracy on pause.”
In the aftermath, Congress reconvened to certify the election results, five people died and 138 officers were injured. Trump was impeached a second time and a year after the insurrection, a select committee appointed by House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi made up of Democrats along with two Republicans—Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney—is conducting an investigation. Requests for comment from the Garbarino and Zeldin offices on the one-year anniversary of the insurrection went unanswered as of press time. Suozzi’s public statement included, “One year since that day, the work to uncover and hold accountable those who enabled the January 6 attack continues. The stakes are too high. We cannot allow the January 6 attack on the Capitol to fade into the memories of the American people.”
Rice responded directly to the Anton Media Group with the following statement.
“One year ago, domestic terrorists attempted to violently overturn a free and fair election. They failed. Today we thank the U.S. Capitol Police, DC Metro Police and other law enforcement officers who protect us every day. I hope all 147 of my colleagues who voted to overturn the results are able to reflect on how their decision put those officers in jeopardy. We also thank the bipartisan January 6 Committee for its work to find out who instigated the attack, who failed to stop it and who continues to cover it up. We owe it to the American people to find out which of their elected leaders is trying to subvert our democracy.”
