Via NBC News: A tense new Jan. 6 video shows Republican congressmen admonishing rioters trying to enter House chamber.
Dramatic, newly released video shot by a Jan. 6 rioter shows the confrontation between two Republican members of Congress and Capitol rioters trying to breach the main door into the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives. The videos show rioters staring down the barrels of guns through broken glass as they tried to force their way inside.
The eight-minute video, shot by Capitol rioter Damon Beckley and introduced as evidence ahead of his sentencing, was released to the media coalition late Friday in response to a request from NBC News. Federal prosecutors are seeking more than three years in federal prison for Beckley, and his sentencing has now been rescheduled for Feb. 9.
Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, and then-Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., can be seen speaking with rioters through the broken glass.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” Nehls says.
“We’re coming in one way or another!” one rioter says.
“I’ve been in law enforcement in Texas for 30 years, and I’ve never had people act this way,” Nehls says. “I’m ashamed!”
But now?
Nehls has changed his tone in the three years since Jan. 6, even calling the death of Ashli Babbitt — the rioter who was shot by a Capitol Police officer as she jumped through a door near the House floor — “murder.”
Way to back the blue.
I would note that both Nehls and Markwayne voted against certifying the 2020 election.
On the one hand, it boggles the mind that anyone who was in that building on that day could have voted against the election results after the attack. On the other, it is also rather obviously people putting their own power positions above the good of the country.
More via Texas Monthly, Troy Nehls Defended the House Floor From Rioters. Then He Got to Work Defending Trump.
In the immediate aftermath of January 6, Trump distanced himself from the rioters, and Nehls called their behavior criminal and un-American. But he told me Monday that “a majority of the people in the Capitol that day had no intention to turn into criminals or insurrectionists.”
[…]
When we talked Monday, Nehls refused to blame Trump for what happened on January 6. He told me to listen to Trump’s speech that day and cited the president’s call “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Nehls is intrigued by a theory propounded by Revolver News, a right-wing website run by Darren Beattie, a former Trump speechwriter, that federal informants and undercover agents incited violence at the Capitol on January 6 to discredit Trump. It’s a theory that PolitiFact dismissed as “rife with holes, inaccuracies and circumstantial speculation,” and a New York Timesfact-check described as “without evidence.” But it has been picked up and spread widely by Infowars’ Alex Jones and Fox’s Tucker Carlson. Does Nehls actually believe the riot might have been an “inside job”? “I do believe that we need to continue to examine the evidence,” he said. “I’m telling you something is fishy.”
Sigh.
BTW, if we need even more confirmation of what a lot of participants thought they were doing that day, note the following.
In the video, one rioter tells the officers and representatives on the other side of the door “there’s going to be a bigger Civil War and a lot of bloodshed” if they didn’t overturn the election.
“I drove 14 hours to get here and stood in the cold for three and a half hours to find out that Mike Pence is a f—— traitor, man. And I voted for that f—— dude,” Beckley says in the video. “He could’ve done the right thing and certified those legislators, electors, and we wouldn’t be standing here with a 9 mm pointed at me right now!”
And as we continue to discuss Trump’s role in all of this, let’s not forget that in the middle of the Capitol being assaulted, he tweeted the following:
In a 2:24 p.m. tweet, Trump wrote: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”
