2:40
- ABC News
- February 5, 2021
House Dems share Capitol attack experience
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., organized the special hour of speeches.
2:40
She said she worries \"every day\" for the lives of her diverse staff.
\"I urge my colleagues to please take what happened on Jan. 6 seriously,\" she said. \"We can do better. We must do better.\"
Some rioters displayed extremist symbols of white supremacy and anarchy. Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo. called the insurrection a \"white supremacist attack.\"
\"Let me say this, this was not a protest,\" said the freshman Democrat -- the first Black woman and first woman of color in Congress from Missouri -- urging her Republican colleagues to \"do right by the Black and brown people you represent.\"
![\"PHOTO:](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/aoc-ht-er-210204_1612484987010_hpMain_4x3t_384.jpg\")
Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., offered an emotional apology to his colleagues, after calling on fellow Democrats to follow him to the Republican side of the chamber during the attack \"so that we could blend in.\"
\"But within moments I recognized that blending in was not an option available to my colleagues of color,\" he said. \"I'm here tonight to say to my brothers and sisters in Congress, and all around the country, I'm sorry.\"
\"I have never understood, really understood what privilege really means,\" he continued. \"It took a violent mob of insurrectionists and a lightning bolt moment in this very room, but now I know.\"
Several of the representatives demanded that they determine how the attack occurred and find the \"truth.\"
\"It cannot be swept under the rug,\" Espaillat said. \"We must find out if there were members of this body who aided and abetted that angry mob.\"
\"I think the importance of this, reliving what we went through, is as I've heard from my colleagues, we must get to the bottom of this,\" Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, said. \"We cannot let white supremacy ... dominate the goodness of what this democracy and this Constitution stands for.\"
Others took the opportunity to call on the Senate to convict former President Donald Trump for inciting the insurrection in his upcoming impeachment trial.
\"The only way to make this right, and help heal our nation, is for the Senate to do the right thing and hold Trump accountable for the insurrection,\" Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., said.
The special session occurred after the House voted Thursday evening to remove Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments.
![\"PHOTO:](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/tliab-aoc-ht-er-210204jpg_1612487224238_hpMain_4x3t_384.jpg\")
Ocasio-Cortez had previously recounted her experience during the Capitol attack in two widely viewed livestreams on Instagram.
During the first on Jan. 12, the congresswoman revealed that she \"had a very close encounter where I thought I was going to die,\" though she didn't detail the incident, citing security reasons.
\"All of these thoughts come rushing to you,\" she said during the passionate, hourlong Instagram live. \"I did not know if I was going to make it to the end of the day -- and not just in a general sense but also in a very, very specific sense.\"
She also said she didn't \"feel safe\" joining other members of Congress in a secure location because \"QAnon and white supremacist sympathizers, and frankly white supremacist members of Congress in that extraction point, who I know, and who I had felt would disclose my location ... who would create opportunities to allow me to be hurt, kidnapped.\"
In a 90-minute video livestream Monday night, she again recalled fearing for her life as she and others were forced to take shelter when a violent mob stormed the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6. At one point, when she was hiding in the bathroom of her office, she said someone banged on the door and entered the room, repeatedly yelling, \"Where is she?\"
\"This was the moment I thought everything was over,\" Ocasio-Cortez said. \"I mean, I thought I was going to die.\"
Ocasio-Cortez said the person entering her office ended up being a police officer, but she was unaware of that as it happened.
\"I felt that if this was the journey that my life was taking, that, I felt that things were going to be OK and that, you know, I had fulfilled my purpose,\" she said, wiping away tears from her eyes.
![\"People](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/house-gallery-capitol-riot_hpEmbed_20210112-195831_3x2_384.jpg\")
Ocasio-Cortez said she felt \"completely unsafe\" later that day when she was barricaded in the office of Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif.
The Capitol siege occurred after a rally held by former President Donald Trump and his allies in Washington, D.C., urging Congress not to certify the results of the November presidential election. Trump urged his supporters \"to fight\" as he continued to push baseless claims of election fraud.
Crowds of people then made their way to the Capitol steps, pushing through barricades, officers in riot gear and other security measures. An angry mob breached the Capitol building, forcing a lockdown with members of Congress and their staff holed up inside. It took hours for law enforcement to clear the building. Five people, including a police officer, died as a result of the siege.
As of Jan. 26, the Department of Justice has identified 400 suspects and have arrested 135 in connection with the attack on the Capitol.
ABC News' Emily Shapiro and Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.
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