Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has told how she feared the Capitol cop who was sent to evacuate her from her office during the January 6 riot because he looked at her ‘with hostility’ amid accusations she ‘exaggerated’ her experience because she was never actually in the building that was stormed, and after accusing Sen. Ted Cruz of trying to have her ‘murdered’.
On January 6, Dem. Rep. AOC was in her office in the Cannon Office Building – which was evacuated but not breached – when rioters stormed the Capitol Building 0.3 miles away. In an Instagram Live video on Monday night, she tearfully described fearing for her life as she hid behind the bathroom door in her office. She did not know at that point, she said, if the rioters had breached her office too.
Reenacting how she sheltered in place, she told her followers how she watched a ‘white man in a black beanie’ walk into her office, yelling ‘where is she?!’ He was a Capitol cop who had come to evacuate her and get her to safety.
But even after being told he was a cop, AOC says she was suspicious of him because he had ‘no partner’, was ‘yelling’ and looked at her ‘aggressively’. She thought he might have been there to hurt her, she said, and that her staffers agreed.
The cop told her to run over to the Longworth House Office Building, where they pounded on the door of Rep. Katie Porter and begged to be let inside.
After the January 6 riot, AOC tweeted that Sen. Cruz and other Republicans had been trying to have ‘her murdered’ by allegedly inciting it.
On January 13, she said she ‘thought she was going to die’ and ‘many of us narrowly escaped death’.
Now, she is being accused of dramatizing her experience. Among those who chimed in on Thursday was Republican Rep. Nancy Mace who said: ‘I’m two doors down from AOC and no insurrectionists stormed our hallway’.
AOC hit back, calling her ‘disgusting’ and pointing out that she too feared for her life.
Mace replied: ‘I have not once discounted your fear. We were ALL terrified that day. I’m stating the fact that insurrectionists were never in our hallway… because they weren’t. I deal in facts. Unlike you, apparently.’
AOC’s office is in the Cannon House building which is 0.3 miles from the Capitol Building itself. All of the Capitol buildings were placed on lockdown but the mob only ever breached the Capitol Building
In her February 1, 90-minute Instagram Live, AOC reenacted hiding behind the door of her office bathroom, terrified that an insurrectionist was coming for her. It was a Capitol cop in a ‘beanie’ yelled ‘where is she?!’ He had come to evacuate her but she thought he was thereto hurt her, she said
Others compared her to Jussie Smollett, the Empire actor who was accused of lying about being attacked by Trump supporters.
The hashtag #AlexandriaOcasioSmollett started trending and people said she too had lied about the events of the day.
Carlson, on his Fox News show, said: ‘The only subject she really cares about – herself.
‘There she is again.
‘Defender of the common man, yammering on about the only subject she really cares about – herself.
‘Wallowing around in Lake Me like it’s interesting to anybody but her. Narcissism on parade.
‘The perfect symbol of a culture dying from self-involvement.
‘We’ve said that before and we’ve laughed as we did.
‘But actually it’s not funny. People will believe this crap.
‘Some already do.’
She hit back at them and said the insurrectionists were ‘trying’ to get in to office building and that they were trying to reduce her trauma.
In her 90 minute video, AOC described her interaction with the Capitol cop dramatically.
She reenacted hiding behind her bathroom door and peeking through the gap between the hinge and the wall.
‘I see this white man in a black beanie… he yells “where is she?!”
‘I have never been quieter in my life…This man is a Capitol Police officer.
‘But the story doesn’t end there… there was no partner, there was no yelling “Capitol Police.”
‘It didn’t feel right. He was looking at me with a tremendous amount of anger and hostility and things weren’t adding up,’ she said.
The Capitol cops that day were outnumbered by more than 10,000.
The entire Capitol was put on lockdown and people were told to shelter in place – including those in the offices where AOC was.
‘He was looking at me and all of this anger and hostility and at first, in my brain and in my mind, I thought OK I just came from this super intense experience just now, maybe I’m reading into this.
‘Maybe I am projecting something on to him.
‘I talked to G, my legislative director, and he said, “no I didn’t know if he was there to help us or hurt us either.”
‘G was actually like…this man came with so much hostility that G was sizing him up and didn’t know if he was going to have to fight him.
‘That is how, like, aggressive the situation was. We couldn’t even tell, we couldn’t read if this was a good situation or a bad situation.
‘Like so many other communities in this country, just that presence doesn’t necessarily give you clear signal if you’re safe or not,’ she said.
The cop told them to run across the street to the Longworth House Office Building, she said, where Porter’s office was.
AOC tweeted that her story was one of many of people whose ‘lives that were put at lives at risk’
Tucker Carlson on Wednesday night slammed AOC, saying she was trying to make the story about herself. ‘People believe this crap?’ he asked
‘We can hear, the buildings were not secure yet, that we can like hear all of these rioters behind the glass of the door.
‘I hear the hinges cracking… you can hear all of this screaming.
‘The yells only get louder and louder… so we run to this member’s office start knocking on the door.
‘I realized I had passed by Katie Porter’s office.
‘I saw Katie going into her office just like holding a cup of coffee because all of these developments were happening so quickly… some people were at different urgency levels,’ she said.
AOC was savaged online and accused of lying about the entire ordeal
Porter corroborated her story and said she consoled her while AOC opened closet doors and told her how she wanted to live to become a mother.
‘I just hope I get to be a mom. I hope I don’t die today,’ Porter recounted Ocasio-Cortez as having told her.
AOC, in her video, then went on to slam the people telling her to apologize to Ted Cruz for claiming he tried to have her murdered.
‘The reason I’m getting emotional in this moment is because these folks who tell us to move on, that it’s not a big deal, that we should forget what’s happened, or even telling us to apologize, these are the same tactics of abusers.
‘I’m a survivor of sexual assault, I haven’t told many people that in my life.
‘As a survivor, I struggle with the idea of being believed.’
She gave no details about the assault or when it took place.
The New York congresswoman drew parallels between the lawmakers seeking to ‘move on’ from the Capitol riot and the denial tactics used by abusers.
‘They’re trying to tell us to move on without any accountability, without any truth-telling, or without confronting the extreme damage, loss of life, trauma,’ she said.
AOC previously accused Senator Ted Cruz of ‘trying to have her murdered’. She was talking about the riot which she says he, among others, instigated
‘When we go through trauma, trauma compounds on each other.
‘There’s no, something really big happens to you and then you deal with it and you move on, and then when something else happens to you, you deal with that.
‘Whether you had a negligent parent, or whether you had someone who was verbally abusive to you, whether you are a survivor of abuse, whether you experience any sort of trauma in your life, small to large.
‘These episodes can compound on each other.
‘All of your traumas can, kind of, intersect and interact.’
She said those telling people to move on were using the same tactics as abusers.
‘She specifically called out some Republicans, including Ted Cruz, who she says encouraged the violence.
‘Some of the representatives who actually encouraged people to threaten members of Congress… are actually asking me to apologize for saying and speaking truth to what happened.
‘These are the tactics that abusers use…
‘And how I feel is, not again.
‘I’m not going to let it happen to me again…
‘I’m not going to let it happen to our country,’ she said.