Rushingbrook Children’s Choir based in Greenville, South Carolina traveled to Williamsburg, Virginia and then to Washington, D.C. to tour historical and governmental sites. The highlight of their trip was to be a performance in National Statuary Hall. The choir had five songs planned to sing.

The songs were “The Star-Spangled Banner”; “America the Beautiful”; “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”; “I Bought Me a Cat” by Aaron Copland; and “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.” Innocent enough, right? They are kids. There shouldn’t have been anything controversial here. But, we’re talking about Washington, D.C. so naturally what should have been a wonderful treat for the children to remember the rest of their lives turned into an embarrassing situation.

David Rasbach, the founder and director of the Rushingbrook Children’s Choir, spoke to The Daily Signal about a story that made headlines around the country.

Just before the choir started to sing the national anthem, Andrew Tremel, the visitor operations manager at the Architect of the Capitol, stopped them from singing. It turned out to be a temporary delay, though, because Micah Rea, founder and principal of The Rea Group and organizer of the trip, told him that the choir had permission to sign there. Rea told Tremel that the permission came from congressional offices. Tremel spoke into his earpiece and then he told the choir they could sing.

The offices of South Carolina Republican Reps. William Timmons and Joe Wilson had provided documents giving permission, as had the office of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The choir had been invited to sing there while they were visiting the Capitol. A Wilson staffer called McCarthy’s office and confirmed that the choir had permission to sing. That didn’t stop Capitol Police from interrupting the performance.

Video of the event shows the choir singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but it also shows Rasbach, the conductor, cut the singers off before they could finish the fourth verse of the song. Rasbach cut them off because a female Capitol Police officer had directed a congressional staffer to immediately stop the singing, Rasbach told The Daily Signal.

Rasbach said the female police officer insisted that the performance is considered a demonstration, and that demonstrations in the U.S. Capitol are banned. She later said some people were offended, though Rasbach doubted her claim. He said the officer could not have heard from people who claimed to be offended “because her time was consumed with us.”

🚨The Rushingbrook Children's Choir sang the National Anthem in Statuary Hall. a Capitol Police officer stopped them mid-song. Capitol Police claims they didn't stop the choir. The choir director tells the whole story in my exclusive interview here. 🚨https://t.co/ZRNbWy75la pic.twitter.com/ijiq4pw3X8

— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) June 2, 2023

The Capitol Police denied the claim and then the kerfuffle escalated. Accusations of lying flew.

“Recently somebody posted a video of a children’s choir singing the Star-Spangled Banner in the U.S. Capitol Building and wrongfully claimed we stopped the performance because it ‘might offend someone,’” the Capitol Police told The Daily Signal in an email statement. “Here is the truth. Demonstrations and musical performances are not allowed in the U.S. Capitol.”

“Of course, because the singers in this situation were children, our officers were reasonable and allowed the children to finish their beautiful rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner,” the police statement added. “The Congressional staff member who was accompanying the group knew the rules, yet lied to the officers multiple times about having permission from various offices. The staffer put both the choir and our officers, who were simply doing their jobs, in an awkward and embarrassing position.”

“That’s a bald-faced lie,” Rea, the man who organized the trip, told The Daily Signal. “You can see clearly in the video, they literally stopped him before they finished singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”

“That is absolutely, irrefutably wrong,” he added of the statement that the police allowed the choir to finish. “She did everything she could to stop us and not let us continue singing, period.”

“That whole thing is a lie,” Rea said of the Capitol Police statement. “Capitol Police treats us like we’re some Antifa demonstrators, like little 7-year-old kids.”

He further insisted that the congressional staffer did not lie to the Capitol Police—that the offices had indeed granted permission.

Holy mackerel. He’s lying. No, he’s lying.

Rasbach spoke to the female officer after the choir stopped singing. He told her that the children’s first trip to the Capitol would be marred by this disappointment. He said her response was that the children’s singing sounded beautiful and they could go outside to sing. As to the claim that musical performances in the Capitol are banned, some recent examples were cited by Rasbach and Rea. Rasbach had videos of Sean Feucht singing in the Capitol on February 1 and March 10. Rea said that a group of 80 pastors sang in the Rotunda on March 29.

Oops.

The congressmen released a statement when they found out about the argument. McCarthy, Timmons, and Wilson were joined by another South Carolina Representative, Russell Fry. They emailed the statement to The Daily Signal.

We recently learned that schoolchildren from South Carolina were interrupted while singing our National Anthem at the Capitol. These children were welcomed by the Speaker’s Office to joyfully express their love of this nation while visiting the Capitol, and we are all very disappointed to learn their celebration was cut short. We are delighted that the People’s House has been reopened particularly for our children and we look forward to welcoming more Americans back to the halls of Congress.

One glimmer of a silver lining is that the South Carolina delegation has offered to cover all expenses for the Rushingbrook Children’s Choir to return to the Capitol to sing the national anthem “wherever they please.” So, there’s that. What a crazy story.

Now there is an additional bonus. Trump invited the choir Tuesday to sing at his next South Carolina rally.

That will be another once in a lifetime memory created in their young lives. And they will have a much bigger audience, too.