I discovered a fascinating Politico article about defenders of the House chamber. I'll quote extensively from the article and not clean up all the quote marks.
“The idea was just to try to delay. I honestly didn’t believe we were going to keep them out of the chamber. I was 100 percent convinced that we were going to pile up at the door,” said Mullin. “It is all about time.”
Nehls (R-Texas), a former sheriff and military officer with five decades of military and law enforcement experience, ran over to Mullin, asking if he needed help.
“We have a choice. I’m with you, brother,” replied Mullin.
Mullin then broke two wooden upright hand sanitizer stations and handed a block of the wood to Nehls, giving both of them makeshift weapons...
“We didn’t know if it’s three people 30 people or 200 people. You just don’t have any way of knowing, and not knowing was unsettling,” said Fallon, who previously served in the U.S. Air Force.
“I thought, ‘We’re going to get in a street fight on my third day in Congress because we’re going to defend this place,” Fallon added, noting that they began shoring each other up...
Nehls looked through a cracked door window where rioters were attempting to break in and saw a man carrying a flag on a long wooden pole that was sharpened on the end, which he believes penetrated the window and caused the sound.
“It took an enormous amount of force to shatter that glass. You can see some remnants on top of the furniture — the little white sprinkling of dust from where the glass came in,” Nehls said.
Mullin then confronted the insurrectionists on the other side of the door through the tiny holes broken in the glass: “I said, ‘Is it worth it?”
When one rioter expressed confusion, he yelled again: “You almost got shot. You almost died. Is it worth it?’”
While some of the rioters paused temporarily after hearing Mullin’s warning, it wasn’t long until an agitator in the group began shaking the door again, yelling obscenities and shouting: “This is our House. This is our House. And we’re taking our House back.’”
Mullin shot back: “This is our House, too. That is not going to happen.”
Nehls then stepped in to attempt to deescalate the tense situation.
“I told the individuals on the other side of the door that they shouldn’t be doing this. ‘This is not the way we should be handling business. This is un-American, unnecessary and dangerous.’ And there’s no reason they should be doing this,” Nehls recalled. “I said, ‘You should be embarrassed of yourselves.’”
One of the rioters remarked that Nehls was wearing a Texas face mask and yelled at him: “You should be with us! You should be with us!”
To which Nehls replied: “No, sir, I cannot support what you’re doing right now.”
At about the same time, roughly 100 feet away, an officer shot and killed 35-year-old Ashli Babbitt, a former Air Force veteran who kept trying get inside the speaker’s lobby — where several lawmakers were — despite warnings that a gun was drawn.
The speaker’s lobby where the officer fired is directly adjacent to the House floor. People inside the chamber could clearly hear the gunshot.
Mullin said the officer who fired the fatal shot later entered back into the chamber and appeared “visibly distraught.”
“I hugged him and I said, ‘Sir, you had to do what you had to do,’” Mullin said.
Mullin and others who fought off the insurrectionists say if rioters had reached more doors leading into the House chamber, rather than just the one, then the situation could have ended far differently.
“He had to take someone’s life, but in return he probably saved a whole bunch of people’s lives,” Mullin said, praising law enforcement as the heroes that day...
Also reported is how one congressman decided to call his wife with a possibly final 'I love you.' Probably many others did that too.
My big question now: Are these Republicans still talking this way about Jan. 6, or have they whitewashed it? Are they still supporting Trump? Probably most of them are.
This is a sick outcome. The courage and principles that were so necessary on Jan. 6 were forgotten. It seems the partisan power is more important at the end of the day.
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