The continued unfolding of last week’s white supremacist coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol is now raising questions about the potential complicity and outright danger posed by some members of Congress themselves during the insurrection — even beyond their role in inciting the mob by pushing the lie that the presidential election was stolen from Trump.
On the heels of New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson’s announcement that she tested positive for COVID-19 after sheltering with colleagues at the Capitol who refused to wear a mask, two additional Democratic members of Congress have since revealed they now have the virus — which they attribute to being on lockdown with Republican mask-deniers.
Following those announcements, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D‑Mass.) said on Tuesday that she chose to leave a designated safe room for elected officials during the riot when she clocked that some of her co-workers on the other side of the aisle themselves also posed a safety threat.
“The second I realized our ‘safe room’ from the violent white supremacist mob included treasonous, white supremacist, anti masker Members of Congress who incited the mob in the first place, I exited,” Pressley said on Twitter.
The ease with which the coronavirus was apparently allowed to spread was only one of many seemingly deliberate dangers let loose inside the Capitol on that harrowing day. Pressley’s chief of staff, Sarah Groh, told the Boston Globe that during the incursion she discovered that the panic buttons in her office had been removed.
Read more here: https://www.theroot.com/suspicions-build-in-capitol-attack-as-democrats-call-ou-1846049763