Was the insurrection at the Capitol an inside job? Local lawmakers weigh in

Just because President Trump has been impeached, doesn’t mean there won’t be more people in power held accountable for the insurrection at the Capitol.

House Democrats have called for an investigation into “suspicious” Capitol tours the day before the riot and Massachusetts Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley says all of the panic buttons in her office were “removed” when she went to use them.

One member of Congress has gone as far as saying these tours were reconnaissance missions. Rep. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey released a 13-minute Facebook Live video in which she said she witnessed members of Congress escort people through the Capitol on Jan. 5 and referred to it as “reconnaissance” for the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“Not only do I intend to see that the president is removed,” she said, “I also intend to see that those members of Congress who abetted him — those members of Congress who had groups coming through the Capitol that I saw on January 5 for reconnaissance for the next day — those members of Congress who incited the violent crowd, those members of Congress that attempted to help our president undermine our democracy, I’m going see that they’re held accountable.”

“Footage of the day of the sixth where it appeared that there were Capitol police officers assisting the in the insurrection, there are also tweets and texts and things like that from these individual members of Congress of that and there are also statements by the insurrection leaders that said that they had assistance from those individuals,” said Congressman Stephen Lynch.

Was the insurrection at the Capitol an inside job? Local lawmakers weigh in

Fresh off their flight from DC, we caught up with Lynch outside of Logan Airport and Rep. Seth Moulton on his drive home from the airport. Both saying the President, police, and even their fellow congressmen and women are not above the law.

“For many of them it was the most frightening day of their lives and it certainly was the most frightening day of my life for our government,” said Moulton. “I expect to have tough debates with my colleagues across the aisle. I don’t expect them to be traitors to the United States of America.”

“We’ll reserve judgment until we have all the evidence, but if it is confirmed and those individuals assisted the insurrection and gave people tours of the Capitol and identified offices so that they could be attacked at a later date, they should be punished with sedition,” said Rep. Lynch. “They should be expelled and under the Fourteenth Amendment section four, they should never be allowed to hold the position in the government again.”

Still, even if everyone involved is found, charged, and removed from their position of power, how much trust should we have moving forward?

“Frankly people shouldn’t trust every member of Congress and we can’t trust every member of the police,” said Moulton. “Trust is hard to earn and easy to break and what we’ve learned over the past week is that we have to be careful about who we trust in our government and we have to work as leaders in our government to rebuild trust with the American people.”

“I think there’s reason to distrust people who betrayed the Constitution and betrayed their oath, but I also think there’s there’s good reason to support the people who lived up to their oath to defend the Constitution,” said Lynch.

Both men say politics aside, this is a sad day topping off a sad week.

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