Around New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, Democratic lawmakers start privately warning each other about violence hitting the Capitol on January 6. Word starts spreading from Republicans and “Trump people,” which could refer to Trump supporters or people close to Donald Trump.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reveals these warnings in an Instagram livestream on February 1.
A week prior to the insurrection, I started to get text messages that I needed to be careful. That, in particular, I needed to be careful about the sixth… Those text messages came from other members of Congress. They were not threats, but they were other members saying that they knew and that they were hearing, even from Trump people and Republicans that they knew in their life, that there was violence expected on Wednesday.
Later on in the video, she calls out specific Republicans who knew what they were doing.
We knew all of this in advance. We knew that violence was planned for the sixth. We knew that that violence depended on the lie, on someone upholding the lie that our elections were fraudulent… These Senators — Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley — knew that it was a lie, and they knew that these violent people needed the lie. Because they thought it would be politically advantageous to them, they chose to tell the lie. All of these things were known in advance.
Source
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M8EIuKfPn8
Photo: Tyler Merbler
