The House committee investigating the insurrection presented 10 minutes of footage, some of it never before seen, that was taken from surveillance cameras, a documentary filmmaker, and police body-worn cameras as they opened the highly anticipated series of hearings. Though graphic videos and photos have for the last year and a have shown the violence of Jan. 6, House Democrats seated in the back of the hearing room on Thursday were still visibly shaken as they watched the mob swarm the Capitol building.
“I never imagined that in doing my job, that we would not be safe to do our jobs, and that we would feel so helpless in that moment to protect our democracy,” Rep. Pramilla Jayapal told a reporter while crying during a recess immediately after the committee played the video…
The brutality of some members of the mob was underscored in the testimony of Officer Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer who was knocked unconscious by rioters. She described “slipping in people’s blood” and characterized the day’s events as chaos and carnage. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, who previously testified before the House committee, sat in the front row on Thursday and at one point cried while viewing the video.
“It was just really emotional,” Dunn afterward told reporters. “What kind of creature are you if you don’t feel any type of emotion after that? And seeing people in the video that I know — my friends — seeing them in that predicament and just reliving it, it wasn’t good. It was just tough.”
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