by Sharon Rondeau
(Mar. 15, 2021) — On January 19, The Post & Email published a firsthand account from two women who attended the January 6 rally at the Ellipse in Washington, DC which was followed by an incursion at the U.S. Capitol approximately 1.5 miles away.
The instigators of the “riot,” many news outlets immediately claimed and continue to report, consisted of a “mob” of Trump supporters participating in an “insurrection” to protest the reported results of the November 3 election deeming Democratic candidate Joe Biden the winner.
On the evening of November 3, Trump had clearly been leading in such bellwether states as Florida, Iowa and Ohio — all of which he ultimately won — as well as in the “swing” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and Nevada. By the morning of November 4, however, Biden took the lead in the aforementioned “swing” states after having been declared the winner in Arizona with approximately 600,000 votes yet to be counted.
Since that time, Trump and his surrogates have claimed he won the election “in a landslide” and, prior to January 20 when Trump left office, appeared determined to prove it. Various analysts, bloggers and statisticians have stated that all metrics were such that Trump would and did win re-election or that full forensic audits should be conducted in specific states.
An unprecedented number of mail-in ballots were counted after Election Day in violation of state law in Pennsylvania, while for the first time, Wisconsin election clerks accepted unverified absentee ballots in which the voter was not required to show identification or prove that he or she was “indefinitely confined,” a decision later found to be in violation of the law by the state’s supreme court.
In Georgia, signature verification was not carried out in accordance with state law, and the statewide signature audit promised by Gov. Brian Kemp in December was never reported to have been completed. Trump had maintained that had signature verification been done in Georgia, hundreds of thousands of invalid ballots would have been disqualified and he would have won the state handily given that he and Biden were separated by fewer than 13,000 votes.
One lawsuit claimed the number of potentially invalid mail-in ballots to be at least 96,000 votes.
Mandated by the Electoral Vote Count Act of 1887, January 6 is the day Congress meets in joint session to officially tally the certificates submitted by each of the 50 states’ governors reflective of the December 14 votes cast by designees to the Electoral College. Reports of widespread fraud, ballots counted beyond the statutory deadline as well as transported across state lines, the prohibition of observers during local ballot-opening and other irregularities ultimately did not delay the Electoral College process nor the press’s November 7 declaration that Biden won the election.
“A violent mob loyal to President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday and forced lawmakers into hiding, in a stunning attempt to overturn America’s presidential election, undercut the nation’s democracy and keep Democrat Joe Biden from replacing Trump in the White House,” the AP reported on January 6 after the Capitol was closed due to the incursion.
Shortly after noon that day, Trump arrived at the gathering of his supporters at the Ellipse, where he reiterated reports of widespread fraud in various states which, according to the numbers of questionable ballots he cited, would have resulted in a different election outcome. Stating, “I’ll be there with you,” Trump urged those in attendance to “walk down to the Capitol…to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated. I know that everyone will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard…”
In a never-before-seen second impeachment of the president by the House of Representatives, Trump was charged with “willfully inciting violence against the Government of the United States” by his words on January 6. On February 13, the Senate did not obtain enough votes to convict, with “removal from Office” then being a moot point.
As a result of “medical emergencies,” NBC reported, three Trump supporters died on January 6. However, Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt was shot at close range by an officer after she entered the Capitol through a window. It is unclear whether the others were present at the Capitol during the “riot” or if their medical episodes arose elsewhere or at other times.
A fifth casualty, U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, was initially said to have occurred during the incursion after reportedly sustaining injuries from a fire extinguisher allegedly used to “beat” him. That account has been discredited, according to The Washington Times on March 3 and Breitbart News, citing a New York Times article later retracted. A CNN report dated January 9, 2021 makes the contradiction that Sicknick both died at the scene and “collapsed after returning to his division office,” quoting a statement allegedly issued by the Capitol Police.
Two officers who responded to the incursion died by suicide, according to testimony provided by Acting Metropolitan Police Chief Robert J. Contee, CNN reported January 27.
All major media have maintained Trump’s claims that the election was “stolen” from him are “false,” and no outlet appears to have investigated any of the claims made by dozens of eyewitnesses during sworn testimony to legislative committees in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona.
An organization based in Connecticut, FightVoterFraud.org, received an unexpected influx of fraud reports following the election, after which founder Linda Synkowicz reported having referred credible reports to “Federal Law Enforcement.”
One of our January 6 interviewees further described how events unfolded that day, beginning with the various organizations she observed distributing literature. She and her companions arrived at the Capitol after the incident, she reported on January 17 for our January 19 article. “We got there about 2:15 or 2:30, and I have pictures of me going all the way up to the top of the Capitol stairs, and there were all what I believe were the Capitol Police, all in black, with gas masks and shields,” one of our two interviewees told us then. “That’s as far as we went, although we weren’t prevented from going to the top. So people were walking up and down. As a matter of fact, when I saw all the benches, I thought, ‘Oh, they prepared for us — there are places to sit.’ But there was no perimeter, no barrier, no bicycle rack; there were no signs that said, ‘Don’t go beyond this point’; none of that. The punchline is if the president stopped speaking at five past one, and it takes old men with canes and old and disabled people with wheelchairs and walkers — a lot of those people, after the president’s speech, either had lunch back at their hotel room or probably had lunch before they walked to the Capitol. It was a leisurely walk, as if you were at a carnival at the Big E. They weren’t physically capable of rushing over there. These were regular people with their Trump hats on and their flags – they were just patriotic, peaceful people, over a million of them.”
Even then, emerging evidence appeared to indicate the “riot” to have been pre-planned, including by some with an animus toward Trump.
References to “AJ” are to radio host Alex Jones.
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I saw strewn on the Capitol grounds a 90-page book. There were other groups there: OAN; those who support life in the mother’s womb; a group called “The Truth is in the Game”; those advocating morality and “one nation under God”; there was another group called, “God Chose Trump.” They were passing out pamphlets; people had no interest in hurting anyone. There were people advocating how the virus was being used as a weapon. There was one called “Right on time: discover the truth for yourself.” Then there were the Asians, who were all over the place. There had to be hundreds and hundreds of Asians passing out pamphlets. It was so peaceful; there were people from all walks of life, from babies in carriages to the elderly.
When I got up to the top of the Capitol steps, I started to cough from remnants of the pepper spray the Capitol Police used. My friend stayed at the bottom since she has asthma and other physical issues. The guy who had his feet on Pelosi’s desk was walking down the steps with a cavalier attitude. He had an envelope in his hand that was Pelosi’s stationery, and he was mocking her that he even left her a note. He’s been on the news; his face has been circulating. I didn’t have my camera, and the people I was with weren’t inclined to record him.
The guy Sullivan from Utah was arrested and found to have been involved in other nefarious activity throughout the whole summer. Since they rushed to judgment, now they found out that people were there at 11:00 at the Capitol. They were storming through 20 minutes before Trump even finished his speech. By the time Alex Jones and his entourage got there, everything was wide open. It was like, “Come on in.”
What’s so telling is here I am, back at my hotel room after I filmed AJ, and I see AJ and his entourage going through. Somebody was filming it from on high because I could see AJ’s bald spot on his head. Now if I hadn’t been with AJ and his entourage I wouldn’t even know who those people were just walking onto the grounds, but since I had already just videotaped AJ and his entourage, my eyes got right onto that moment of him walking through. Now I haven’t seen that footage since. It’s somebody within the government as far as I’m concerned. Somebody was on high, either on a building; you know how snipers are on buildings — watching this from on high and documenting and filming the whole thing. That’s from my vantage point: call it women’s intuition; call it the gospel according to me; call it whatever you want. From the pieces of the puzzle that I put together, it had to be an inside job because the Capitol Police were ushering these people in. They weren’t saying, “Go back.” Even with the black Capitol policeman who was running up the steps, somebody was on high filming him running up the steps. So who was on high filming this?
There were probably some innocents, like me, walking up to the Capitol; I’m an innocent. I don’t see any gates; I don’t see any signs; I don’t see any mounted police. I don’t see any police on motorcycles. I see a lot of cop cars running up and down the street with their sirens, but as far I can see it was like the Keystone Kops; they weren’t going anywhere; they were just making noise. Any cops I saw when I was walking back to my hotel — we got back to the hotel at 5:00; when we were walking back it was still daylight. There were some cops on the side, and I believe XXXXX (one of my companions) even interviewed one of them.
When we got back to the hotel — two of my companions were already there watching the news — and I came in, and one of them said, “Do you believe it? We’re called ‘domestic terrorists.'” So here we were back at the hotel, and the Capitol had already been vandalized.