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There was no one moment when the mob overtook the police at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a half-dozen officers testified in D.C. federal court recently. Instead it was a gradual, inexorable collapse, culminating in an hours-long, violent standoff in a tunnel under the building.
In one of the latest trials for the investigation into last year’s attack, officers who gave vivid testimony of their struggle to defend the Capitol repeatedly said Jan. 6 was unlike the many other protests they had seen in the city. D.C. police officers arriving to the scene with the riot already underway had to fight their way through the crowd to the building. They found a “small contingent” of Capitol Police on the West Terrace “trying to hold the crowd back,” D.C. police Lt. George Donigian testified.
“There was this slow push, that was essentially constant forward movement, pushing us into the building,” he said.
Nine men are accused of joining together to…
This article was written by Rachel Weiner and originally published on www.washingtonpost.com