Talk About Burying the Lede, Insurrection Edition

In an otherwise anodyne story about lawmakers impressions during the assault on the Capitol, this little gem is buryed about ⅔ of the way down:

As people rushed out of other buildings on the Capitol grounds, staffers in [Representative Ayanna] Pressley’s office barricaded the entrance with furniture and water jugs that had piled up during the pandemic. [Pressley's Chief of Staff Sarah] Groh pulled out gas masks and looked for the special panic buttons in the office.

“Every panic button in my office had been torn out — the whole unit,” she said, though they could come up with no rationale as to why. She had used them before and hadn’t switched offices since then. As they were escorted to several different secure locations, Groh and Pressley and her husband tried to remain calm and vigilant — not only of rioters but of officers they did not know or trust, she said.

This was not an accident.

This operation prepared weeks in advance, and there were people on the inside. 

More evidence of this is the fact that Congressmen led what appears to be "Reconnaissance Tours" the day before the riots.

It was alarming enough that people complained to the House Sergeant at Arms that day:

More than 30 House Democrats are demanding information from Capitol security officials about "suspicious" visitors at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 5 — a day before violent insurrectionists swarmed the building — that would only have been permitted entry by a member of Congress or a staffer.

"Many of the Members who signed this letter ... witnessed an extremely high number of outside groups in the complex on Tuesday, January 5,” wrote the lawmakers, led by Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.), in a letter to the acting House and Senate sergeants-at-arms, as well as the acting head of the Capitol Police.

The lawmakers, some of who "have served in the military and are trained to recognize suspicious activity," noted that Capitol tours have been prohibited since March as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and they said the tours were so unusual that they were reported to security on Jan. 5, ahead of the following day's violence.

Finally, the orginizer of the "Stop the Steal" ralley, Ali Alexander, was caught ont ape admitting that he coordinated the demonstration with 3 Congressmen, Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Mo Brooks (R-AL) and Paul A. Gosar (R-AZ):

Weeks before a mob of President Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, right-wing activist Ali Alexander told his followers he was planning something big for Jan. 6.

Alexander, who organized the “Stop the Steal” movement, said he hatched the plan — coinciding with Congress’s vote to certify the electoral college votes — alongside three GOP lawmakers: Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Mo Brooks (Ala.) and Paul A. Gosar (Ariz.), all hard-line Trump supporters.

“We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting,” Alexander said in a since-deleted video on Periscope highlighted by the Project on Government Oversight, an investigative nonprofit. The plan, he said, was to “change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside.”

This is beginning to sound like a vast right-wing conspiracy.

If it sounds outlandish, remember that Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and William Casey arranged for the continued detention of the Iranian hostages in 1980 in order to improve Reagan's election chances.

Fomenting an insurrection, and attempting to incapacitate Democratic legislators is really not much of a step beyond the October Surprise.