At the U.S. Capitol, Milling Crowd Sparked Riot in a Few Crucial Minutes

The outer security cordon had been breached, and the first siege of the nation’s Capitol by American citizens had begun.

Under Siege

An ordinarily uneventful Congressional proceeding—the recording of electoral-college votes—descended into violent tumult Wednesday.

At 1 p.m., the Senate and House of Representatives convene a joint session in the House chamber (1) to ratify President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College win. After an objection is raised to Arizona’s electoral votes, the lawmakers split into their separate chambers for debate.

Police escort House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), second in line for the presidency, out of the House chamber (1). Officers stand with guns drawn as the mob outside bangs on the locked doors. At about 2:45, people inside the chamber hear gunfire.

Before long, both chambers are evacuated and police rush lawmakers, staff and media to secure locations.

Rioters break through barricades and reach the Capitol’s west-side stairs (2), where police spray them with chemical agents. As senators debate the objection (3), rioters push their way into the building.

Rioters wander the halls and Rotunda (4), carrying flags—including at least one Confederate battle flag—and inflicting damage across the complex.

Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Charles Grassley (R., Iowa)—the Senate’s president pro tempore, so third in the line of succession for the U.S. presidency—are escorted out, and police seal off the Senate chamber (3).

At some point, an unidentified female protester is shot (5) by police; she later dies.

At 1 p.m., the Senate and House of Representatives convene a joint session in the House chamber (1) to ratify President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College win. After an objection is raised to Arizona’s electoral votes, the lawmakers split into their separate chambers for debate.

Police escort House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), second in line for the presidency, out of the House chamber (1). Officers stand with guns drawn as the mob outside bangs on the locked doors. At about 2:45, people inside the chamber hear gunfire.

Before long, both chambers are evacuated and police rush lawmakers, staff and media to secure locations.

Rioters break through barricades and reach the Capitol’s west-side stairs (2), where police spray them with chemical agents. As senators debate the objection (3), rioters push their way into the building.

Rioters wander the halls and Rotunda (4), carrying flags—including at least one Confederate battle flag—and inflicting damage across the complex.

Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Charles Grassley (R., Iowa)—the Senate’s president pro tempore, so third in the line of succession for the U.S. presidency—are escorted out, and police seal off the Senate chamber (3).

At some point, an unidentified female protester is shot (5) by police; she later dies.

At 1 p.m., the Senate and House of Representatives convene a joint session in the House chamber (1) to ratify President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College win. After an objection is raised to Arizona’s electoral votes, the lawmakers split into their separate chambers for debate.

Rioters break through barricades and reach the Capitol’s west-side stairs (2), where police spray them with chemical agents. As senators debate the objection (3), rioters push their way into the building.

Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Charles Grassley (R., Iowa)—the Senate’s president pro tempore, so third in the line of succession for the U.S. presidency—are escorted out, and police seal off the Senate chamber (3).

Police escort House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), second in line for the presidency, out of the House chamber (1). Officers stand with guns drawn as the mob outside bangs on the locked doors. At about 2:45, people inside the chamber hear gunfire.

Before long, both chambers are evacuated and police rush lawmakers, staff and media to secure locations.

Rioters wander the halls and Rotunda (4), carrying flags—including at least one Confederate battle flag—and inflicting damage across the complex.

At some point, an unidentified female protester is shot (5) by police; she later dies.

At 1 p.m., the Senate and House of Representatives convene a joint session in the House chamber (1) to ratify President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College win. After an objection is raised to Arizona’s electoral votes, the lawmakers split into their separate chambers for debate.

Rioters break through barricades and reach the Capitol’s west-side stairs (2), where police spray them with chemical agents. As senators debate the objection (3), rioters push their way into the building.

Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Charles Grassley (R., Iowa)—the Senate’s president pro tempore, so third in the line of succession for the U.S. presidency—are escorted out, and police seal off the Senate chamber (3).

Police escort House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), second in line for the presidency, out of the House chamber (1). Officers stand with guns drawn as the mob outside bangs on the locked doors. At about 2:45, people inside the chamber hear gunfire.

Before long, both chambers are evacuated and police rush lawmakers, staff and media to secure locations.

Rioters wander the halls and Rotunda (4), carrying flags—including at least one Confederate battle flag—and inflicting damage across the complex.

At some point, an unidentified female protester is shot (5) by police; she later dies.

The seeds of Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol were planted steadily over weeks, as Mr. Trump refused to accept his defeat by Democrat Joe Biden in the Nov. 3 presidential election. Mr. Trump urged his supporters to come to Washington to protest on Jan. 6, when Congress was due to convene and formalize the election result; he promised it “will be wild.”

Later in the day, after the mob stormed into the Capitol building in a riot that resulted in five deaths, Mr. Trump urged his supporters to “stay peaceful.” A Capitol Police officer died of injuries sustained in the attack, a woman was fatally shot by police and three others died of medical emergencies.

Momentum for action built among many who had come to Washington over the course of Wednesday’s chilly morning.

As the Trump supporters gathered on the grassy National Mall, a slightly built man with a bullhorn walked around telling people to march to the Capitol once Mr. Trump finished a speech he was scheduled to make later that morning. Another man said he wanted to enter the building by force. Others began spreading the word.

At a rally on the Ellipse, just south of the White House, before Mr. Trump’s speech, other speakers encouraged the crowd to take their anger over Congress’s refusal to rescind the election results to its source.

The president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani called for “trial by combat.” The president’s son Eric commended the crowd for its willingness to “march on the Capitol.”

“Let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue,” President Trump instructed the crowd at the end of his remarks Wednesday, urging them to make their way toward Congress.

As he spoke, a halting surge toward the Capitol had already begun, as small groups of demonstrators walked down Pennsylvania Avenue and the National Mall, converging on a small roundabout at the base of Capitol Hill, a little after 12:30 p.m.

There they milled about the street beneath the Civil War-era Peace Monument, looking past a curbside police barricade and a second line of metal barricades to the West Lawn of the Capitol, where five blue-jacketed Capitol Police officers stood at the top of a small flight of steps with their hands in their pockets. Radios blared the concluding minutes of Mr. Trump’s speech, and some in the crowd took selfies with the Capitol in the background.

Some expressed confusion about where to go. “I guess this is the place,” one middle-age man in a brown hooded sweatshirt said.

By 12:45 p.m., a few had begun to call over the fences, heckling the Capitol police.

Three minutes later, the contingent of orange-hatted demonstrators standing nearby, many outfitted with helmets, camouflage and body armor, began to march down First Street NW toward the roundabout, chanting “F— Antifa.”

The identities and affiliations of the group in orange hats weren’t immediately clear. Federal authorities investigating the attack on the Capitol are trying to determine the identities of individuals and organizations responsible. Federal authorities dismissed suggestions from some Republican politicians that left-wing groups might be responsible for the rioting. The authorities said they are still investigating whether the rioters were part of coordinated right-wing organizations, or if they primarily acted on their own.

After the group wearing orange hats and military-style vests joined the fray, the confrontation took a more aggressive turn. The crowd, its numbers steadily amplified by people streaming in, began to rock the first line of police barricades at curbside, quickly knocking it down. They proceeded up the first flight of four steps to the remaining metal barricade—the only thing remaining between the rioters and the police and Capitol complex beyond. A few other police officers came running across the lawn to provide aid to the original five colleagues at the fence line.

At 12:53 p.m., the protesters overwhelmed the police line, knocking down the barricades, driving the police uphill and surging by the hundreds onto the Capitol grounds and toward the western front of the building.

With the cordon breached, police tried to take up new positions at the base of the building and on the temporary dais constructed for the presidential inauguration on Jan. 20. Against them was a crowd that was growing larger and more emboldened.

Cheers went up as the first vanguard surged onto the Capitol lawn. When a single Capitol police cruiser raced past behind the crowd, its siren blaring, one demonstrator called out tauntingly: “Where were you before?”

For an hour, from about 1:15 p.m., the two sides battled along the west side of the building. Rioters climbed the inaugural scaffold, some using bullhorns to urge those behind to move forward.

A line of Capitol Police in riot gear jogged in from the north, and attempted to hold the rioters at ground level, arraying across the front of the well beneath the inaugural platform. One story above, police attempted to stop rioters from coming up the narrow path of exposed stone stairs that lead to the terrace outside the Rotunda and the chambers of the Senate and House of Representatives.

Bottles flew up from the rioting crowd toward police on the inaugural dais. Flash-bang grenades fired into the crowd by the police at the stand’s base let off plumes of white smoke; some in the farther reaches of the crowd on the Capitol lawn laughed. Some rioters staggered back from the center of the crowd to douse their eyes and faces after being hit with chemical irritants.

Soon the far-right talk conspiracy theorist Alex Jones appeared atop a vehicle parked on the Capitol lawn with a bullhorn, out of range of the police projectiles. He called on the rioters to stop attacking police and to move to the east side of the building.

“Let’s march around the other side and let’s not fight the police and give the system what they want,” he said.

Meanwhile, a band of the rioters pressed up the ribbon of stone stair just to the north of the inauguration scaffold. Some climbed inside the scaffold itself and began to rip away its white fabric cladding, waving Trump flags from within as they did.

On a stone landing midway up the stairs, police tried to stop the climbers with long bursts of what appeared to be pepper spray. A man in a blue jacket took a long blast of chemical irritant and hunched immobile for several minutes, but didn’t retreat.

Rioters then used canisters they had brought to spray what appeared to be chemical irritants at the officers. Slowly, the police line gave.

Around 2:10 p.m., the rioters overwhelmed the police, driving through them to the top of the stairs and spilling out across the stone terrace. Others began to clamber up the massive granite walls themselves. Some already on top whooped and waved flags.

The Trump supporters had taken the West Front of the Capitol. The chambers of the Congress were mere feet away, protected by an outnumbered band of police and a handful of glass-paned doors.

As rioters made their assault on the west side, hundreds of other protesters circled around to the east. There, shortly after 2 p.m., they pushed past a barricade and police guarding the entrances, pounding at the doors and breaking glass panes.

Rioters from the west pushed their way into the Senate on the north side of the Capitol, according to videos posted on social media, taking staff, reporters and police inside by surprise. Around the same time, another group charged up the steps of the House side, smashing a window and pushing through a doorway into the building.

By 2:35 p.m., hundreds of people had crowded onto the Capitol steps in the center of the east side of the building, singing the national anthem.

Less than 30 minutes later, many of the people who had stormed the House side of the Capitol began emerging.

A man who said he went inside said he and others had done so as a political statement. “Now they’re afraid of us,” he said. “When the people are afraid of the government, you have tyranny. When the government is afraid of the people, you have freedom.”

As D.C.’s 6 p.m. curfew neared, the crowd began thinning out. Reinforcements, decked out in riot gear, arrived to help the beleaguered law enforcement. Officers pushed the remaining rioters out of the Capitol complex.

At dusk, three men in camouflage stood alongside the pedestrian path outside the Senate chamber, swigging water and chatting about their afternoon inside the Capitol. They had roamed through hallways, battling the Capitol police, one said, ransacked offices and saw the marble figures in Statuary Hall adorned with Make America Great Again hats.

The man was leaving with a souvenir: a transparent, plastic riot shield, marked with insignia of the U.S. Capitol Police. Asked if he had acquired it from a cop, the man replied, “I took it from him.”

—Brett Forrest and Sadie Gurman contributed to this article.

Corrections & Amplifications
The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones urged Trump supporters not to attack police and to move to the east side of the Capitol. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said Mr. Jones urged rioters attacking the Capitol to move forward. (Corrected on Jan. 8)

Write to Ted Mann at [email protected] and Andrew Restuccia at [email protected]