Thread by @ellievhall

Just got to Capitol Hill with @pdmcleod. We’ll be covering everything going on here for @BuzzFeedNews

Outside the Capitol. This is madness. I’ve never seen anything like this.

Trump supporters chanting, “USA” as they storm the Nation’s Capitol

Outside the US Capitol: Trump supporters have swarmed the scaffolding set up for Biden’s inauguration

I’d estimate 15% of the people here are masked. I just saw a woman without a mask wearing a hat that said “socialism distancing.”

Found another Notre Dame grad 🙃

Just talked to a man who said he was tear gassed inside the Capitol a few minutes ago. Seeing more people who’ve been gassed. One man said he jumped on a member’s desk with a group of others.

In the shadow of the Ulysses S. Grant memorial, Trump supporters storm the US Capitol.

Outside the Capitol, Trump supporters took all the equipment from a news media crew (hearing it was AP) and are looking for ways to set it on fire.

“We are at war. We’re coming for bodies.”

Police moving in across the Hill. A few Trump supporters have started picking up parts of the barricades and throwing them at the cops.

Just heard someone with a megaphone demand martial law, so that’s fun.

Police in riot gear just pushed Trump supporters off the Capitol lawn. There was a brief altercation between a man and law enforcement. See @pdmcleod’s feed for details (he was closer).

And now there’s some sort of love-themed police serenade sing-a-long outside the Capitol:

Police pushing Trump supporters further away from the Capitol now. An announcement about curfew was just played on speakers:

Oh good, people have and are sharing alcohol with strangers. This bodes well.

Police continuing to push Trump supporters back from the Capitol, towards the Mall.

Didn’t manage to get this on camera, but people have been chanting “Traitors get the rope,” at the police.

There are children here.

Things are pretty much at a standstill on the Hill right now. It’s crazy cold.

As police push Trump supporters back, one man yells, “Wait ‘til we come back with rifles.”

The @BuzzFeedNews team of me and @pdmcleod left Capitol Hill shortly after the tweet above. Things were calm, police presence increased, and empty buses had arrived, which can indicate that detainments/arrests are imminent.

(Reporters are exempt from curfew. But still.)

Glad to report that I’m home, I’m safe, and I’m enjoying puppy cuddles as I try to wrap my head around what happened today and the things I saw.

It was hard to get a signal on the Hill today due to the number of people gathered, so I wasn’t able to upload everything I saw in real time.

Here are more things that happened as Trump supporters swarmed the Capitol today.

A prayer service formed outside the Capitol. “Even though they’ve tried to dethrone our leaders, Father God, you are still the King of Kings and Lord of Lords... Forgive the coward, forgive the unbeliever, forgive the sinner, forgive those who are worshipping Satan in this hour.”

Trump supporters yelling at their compatriots to “hold the line” as Capitol Police pushed them away from the building.

Trump supporters were targeting reporters on Capitol Hill today.

I saw it happen a number of times and was able to film a group confronting a camera crew and forcing them away.

“Get the fuck out of here, fuck the media.”

Even as COVID-19 cases surge across the country, the vast majority of Trump supporters on the Hill today weren’t wearing masks.

It was especially jarring to see so many maskless elderly people and children.

A still from the last video I took today:

A maskless woman in a Trump 2020 hat with a “China virus survivor” pin drinks a soda in the shadow of the Capitol.

I’ve reported on many, many protests in my 6+ years in DC. I was in the streets covering the Black Lives Matter protests last summer.

The difference between how law enforcement treated Trump supporters today and how they treated BLM demonstrators last year is staggering.

One example: I saw a number of Trump supporters throwing steel bars from dismantled barricades and other items at riot police. No action from law enforcement.

During the BLM protests, projectiles at police = tear gas.

https://twitter.com/ellievhall/status/1266907954038689795

To clarify: I know that tear gas was deployed today. I saw it being deployed. I talked to people while they were rinsing it out of their eyes.

I’m comparing specific examples of actions and consequences I observed today with actions and consequences I observed last summer.

The DC Police Department publishes all "unrest-related arrests" on their website.

They made 69 arrests yesterday.

During the first four days of BLM protests in DC, they arrested an average of 106 people a day.

mpdc.dc.gov/page/may-2020-…

When BLM protesters tried to get past a police barricade, they were met with tear gas and rubber bullets.

When Trump supporters tried to get past a police barricade, they made it.

Why were police prepared for violence from one group and not the other?

(I took the first picture of cops firing rubber bullets at a BLM protest that turned into a riot last year. Second image is a still from @ElijahSchaffer’s video of the initial breach of the US Capitol grounds yesterday.)

Also, it's total BS to say that law enforcement had no warning.

In the days leading up to Jan. 6, Trump supporters online were QUITE LITERALLY SAYING that they were going to DC and planned to storm the Capitol.

https://twitter.com/pdmcleod/status/1345123867673702401