Police expel protesters from Capitol steps after clashes

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Supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol today in an attempt to reverse their electoral defeat, forcing Congress to postpone a session that would have certified President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

Guns in hand and tear gas, police evacuated lawmakers and tried to clear the Capitol building of protesters, who flooded the halls of Congress.

A protester took the Senate stage and shouted, “Trump won those elections.”

Protesters overturned barricades and clashed with police as thousands descended on the Capitol grounds.

Washington Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee said the rioters used chemical irritants to attack police. Several policemen were injured and a civilian was shot, he said.

Biden, a Democrat who defeated the Republican president in the Nov. 3 election and who will take office Jan. 20, said the protesters’ activity “borders on sedition.”

The former vice president said that protesters storming the Capitol, breaking windows, occupying offices, invading Congress and threatening the safety of duly elected officials, “is not a protest, it is an insurrection.”

He urged Trump to demand “an end to this siege” on national television.

In a video posted on Twitter, Trump repeated his false claims about voter fraud, but urged the protesters to leave.

“You have to go home now, we have to have peace,” he said, adding, “We love you. You are very special.”

Twitter Inc later restricted users from retweeting Trump’s video and tweeting “due to the risk of violence.”

Police pulled the protesters off the Capitol steps, according to the video, and were working to get them out of the building.

Vice President Mike Pence, who had chaired the joint session of Congress, had already been escorted out of the Senate.

The chaotic scenes unfolded after Trump, who before the election refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost, addressed thousands of protesters and repeated unsubstantiated claims that his contest had been stolen due to irregularities and fraud. widespread electoral.

Lawmakers had been debating a latest effort by pro-Trump lawmakers to challenge the results, which was unlikely to be successful.

Critics had called the effort by Republican lawmakers an attack on American democracy and the rule of law and an attempted legislative coup.

Officers drew their weapons when someone attempted to enter the Chamber chamber

The top two Democrats in Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, called on Trump to demand that all protesters leave the Capitol and its grounds immediately.

Capitol Police told lawmakers in the House chamber to remove gas masks from under their seats and ordered them to drop to the floor for their safety. Officers drew their weapons when someone tried to enter the Chamber chamber.

Several hundred members of the House, staff and the press were later evacuated to an undisclosed location.

Election officials from both parties and independent observers have said there was no significant fraud in the Nov. 3 contest, which Biden won by more than 7 million votes in the national popular vote.

It has been weeks since states completed certification that Biden won the election by 306 electoral college votes to Trump’s 232.

Trump’s extraordinary challenges to Biden’s victory have been rejected by courts across the country.

Trump had lobbied Pence to scrap election results in states the president narrowly lost, though Pence has no authority to do so.

“Our country has had enough and we will not take it anymore,” Trump said at the rally.

Certification in Congress, normally a formality, was expected to drag on for several hours as some Republican lawmakers made an effort to reject some state counts, starting with Arizona.

Republicans and Democrats, who had been bitterly divided over that effort, called on the protesters to stand down.

“This is not American and it has to end,” said House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Trump ally who supported the Republican effort to challenge the results.

That attempt was unlikely to be successful, as even many Republicans objected.

“If this election were annulled on mere accusations from the losing side, our democracy would spiral into death,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who helped give Trump some of his greatest achievements.

Schumer called the challenges in Congress from Trump’s allies “an attempted coup” and said, “Congress does not determine the outcome of an election. The people do.”

Outside the Capitol, members of far-right militias and groups, some in bulletproof vests, mingled with the crowd.

A suspicious device was found outside the Republican National Committee headquarters, less than a block from the Capitol complex, and detonated by a bomb squad, according to a spokesperson.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered a city-wide curfew beginning at 6 p.m.

National Guard troops, FBI agents and the United States Secret Service were deployed to help the overwhelmed Capitol Police.

The violence unfolded on the same day that Trump’s Republicans lost a majority in the Senate by losing two runoff elections in Georgia.

“We will never give up,” Trump previously told thousands of cheering supporters on a grassy expanse near the White House called The Ellipse.

“We will never concede. It doesn’t happen.”

Trump asked Pence to revoke the election results while presiding over the debate in Congress. “If not, I will be very disappointed,” Trump said.

The United States Constitution does not give Pence the power to unilaterally revoke election results, and the vice president said in a statement that he could neither accept nor reject electoral votes unilaterally.



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