Rep. Connolly calls for impeachment of Trump, describes experiences during siege of Capitol

Rioters attack the U.S. Capitol during a siege inspired by Trump aimed at overturning the election. [Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg]

Following the siege on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by an angry mob incited by President Trump, Rep. Gerry Connolly is calling for Trump to be impeached and for use of the 25th Amendment to have him removed from office. 

Connolly, a Democrat who represents the 11th District, which includes much of the Annandale area, was on the House floor on that day when Congress was counting the votes to confirm the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. 

“The siege of the U.S. Capitol was an act of violent insurrection against a coequal branch of the federal government,” Connolly said, “incited by the words and actions of a president desperate for power and incapable of coping with perceived humiliation or defeat.” 

Although Trump has just a few more days in office, “he can still do damage,” Connolly said. “He’s unhinged and he’s unfit.”

Chaos in the Capitol

Connolly spoke about his experiences during that siege at a luncheon Jan. 8 hosted by Network NOVA, a grassroots political organization based in Mason District. 

As he was heading to the House gallery, someone on the speaker’s staff told him to go to the House floor instead, “that we were going to have to shelter in place on the House floor,” he recalled. “That shocked me.” 

“I could hear pounding getting closer,” he said. No one knew what was happening. “We were hearing that they had managed to get into the building, and that was alarming. I don’t think we realized until very late in the game how close they were to the House chamber.” There were about 150 members of the House in the chamber at that point. 

“I saw the speaker escorted off the floor very rapidly. Then I saw members of the sergeant at arms staff secure the doors from the inside meaning we were being locked inside,” he said. 

A representative from the Capitol Police told the group to get gas masks ready but not put them on yet. “I was shocked,” Connolly said. He didn’t know there were gas masks under the desks. At that point, the mob had breached the rotunda and statuary hall and were within a few hundred feet of the House chamber.

“What we didn’t realize was the mob was coming from two directions – from the statuary hall on the Republican side of the floor but also from the corridor outside the speaker’s lobby on the Democrat’s side,” he said.

They briefly resumed the debate but were then told that “we had to evacuate immediately and that we needed to move very fast, that danger was very close.” 

“I realized that whatever was going on was now out of control and that danger was really imminent,” Connolly said, although he remained calm and hung back to let others out first. 

“As I was in the last group exiting the floor of the House chamber, I turned to my left, which was the Democratic side of the speaker’s lobby, and the two doors that allow you to enter the speaker’s lobby were barricaded. And there were all these faces and hands pounding at the windows. And that is about five feet from the House chamber floor.”

“They were clearly menacing and threatening and it was shortly after I left to go on the evacuation downstairs to the subbasement that a woman tragically attempted to come through that window and was shot and killed,” he said.

Democracy prevailed

Connolly was in a group of about 150 members of Congress and staff who sheltered in the Longworth Building. They couldn’t leave for about three-and-a-half hours, not knowing what was going on and hearing reports of gunshots.

“We didn’t know if the mob was shooting,” he said. “We also knew they had plastic handcuffs, presumably to hold people hostage and detain them, presumably members of Congress.” 

“There was a lot of criticism about the Capitol Police response, deservedly so on a macro level,” he said, but “there were a lot of heroic actions by the police and the sergeant at arms personnel.” 

Despite the insurrection, members of Congress felt they needed to resume the vote count. “Threat and intimidation and violence cannot be allowed to prevail,” he said. So once the mob was cleared out, they confirmed the vote at 3:32 a.m.

“It is important for American democracy that all of us have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to this threat,” Connolly said. “We didn’t allow Trump and his ilk to represent America. We didn’t allow them to take over America.” 

“After the horror of Wednesday, we have to celebrate the fact that democracy did prevail,” he said. “We did take back control of the Capitol. We did resume our business, and we fulfilled our constitutional duty – in the threat of violence and in the chaos of a premeditated insurrection incited by the president of the United States.” 

Republicans share the blame

“With our own eyes, we saw Donald Trump whip a crowd of his supporters into a frenzy outside the White House and urge them to march to the Capitol,” Connolly wrote in an email to constituents. “So there’s no question that Donald J. Trump lit this flame. But don’t forget that it was Republicans in Congress who handed him the match.”

“House and Senate Republicans have spent months lying to their supporters, pushing the outlandish claim that this election was rigged and stolen from the president,” Connolly said. “That was and is a lie. They have spent months pushing the outlandish claim that Congress and the Vice President could somehow overturn the legitimate will of the people. That was and is a lie.”

“Over the coming days, there will be an intense effort among White House staff and congressional Republicans to erase the president’s fingerprints from this attempted coup,” he said. “That effort is an insult to the intelligence of the American people, and it will fail. We know where the responsibility lies.”

“To that end, it is inescapably clear that we cannot endure another second of Donald Trump’s presidency, let alone another two weeks,”  Connolly said. “Congress has the tools at its disposal to remove the president from office, and we must now use them.”