Another Indictment (Part 2)

Trump's Role in January 6th

3%er’s/Insurrectionist’s truck parked right below my first floor terrace apartment

While Trump, like anyone who goes through the criminal process, is innocent until proven guilty, the current evidence we have at our fingertips in the indictment that Jack Smith presented against Trump several weeks ago, for his role in the January 6th insurrection attempted putsch, is beyond damning. (And since I began writing this piece, he has now been indicted for a fourth time in Fulton County Georgia!)

This installment is part two of what January 6th was like for me, as I was at ground zero. If you’d like to read part one, you can do so here.

As I mentioned in my first piece, January 6th left me scarred, and anyone with any sense can surmise that living in Donald Trump’s MAGA-dominated D.C. continued to worsen as we neared January 6th and the end of his regime.

To resume from where I stopped in my first post, I said my stress was mounting hourly about the handover leading up to the Inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20th, 2021.

We were all aware that the GOP’s Big Lie was already on full blast. The Big Lie had already begun well before the election had been called for Biden. Meanwhile, as I mentioned before, Trump’s MAGA cultists continued to pour into D.C. every weekend, bringing violence with them. They preyed on our most vulnerable. On one Saturday, they attacked a trans woman. Another weekend, they attack a cisgendered couple. It didn’t matter who you were. If you were in D.C., you were an enemy to them. Stores in downtown stayed shuttered out of fears of his thugs, thus hurting the local economy.

Every time his cult member came to town, they refused to wear masks, too, despite Mayor Bowser’s mask mandate, which — of course — meant cases would shoot up shortly thereafter. The locals who suffered the most were folks who had to work at Starbucks, McDonald’s, bars, etc. In short, MAGA cultists hurt working-class folks the most. Meanwhile, COVID cases across the US were skyrocketing after Trump lost in November of 2020. It was a grim, dark time for the entire country. As we all can recall, with no fondness, the country was trapped indoors. Except Trump’s cultists weren’t. They insisted everything was fine, just like their cult leader, so they were filling up the hospitals and making many needlessly sick. They were also killing strangers and loved ones by infecting them with a deadly, neurological disease.

In addition, D.C. looked like absolute trash. It seemed that every time we drove by the White House, Trump had thrown up more barriers to distance himself from the rest of us. I’d never seen Pennsylvania Avenue look so trashy, in such disrepair, and so unwelcoming — it was beyond dismal to see the capital of our country in such a state of ruin. Trump had cast his long, ominous, orange shadow across the entire, usually festive feel of the area. (Yes, even the protesters and tents give it a “festive,” radically democratic feel — that’s how democracies, especially near the seat of power are supposed to feel; under Trump, that was all gone).

On a personal note, my partner and I were house searching, and we wound up as far north as Maine. The picture below is when we were headed to Maine at one point. It’s a picture looking east towards one of the coolest cities on the planet: New York City.

In retrospect, rather foolishly, we decided to go back to D.C. from Maine on our second trip there on January 5th. The picture below is of quaint and lovely Rockland, Maine on January 4th, 2021 when we were headed back south.

It was particularly foolish of me to return home because I had been following all the chatter on Parler, Telegram, Twitter, the darker places on the web, etc. So, my concerns about how January 6th was going to play out were warranted. Furthermore, I knew what they had been planning and for a long time. I was also familiar with all the major planners and players — Enrique Tarrio, Ali Alexander, Stewart Rhodes, Ginni Thomas, Alex Jones, and so forth. As I said previously, we lived less than a mile from the White House and the Ellipse, as well as the U.S. Capitol.

When Trump tweeted, “Be there, will be wild!,” below, I knew it was a call to war, and his people listened.

I was listening, too, and I was scared AF.

And his faithful, fanatical cult showed up once again to D.C. on January 6th to help Trump attempt a putsch. As things began to intensify during Trump’s speech, the manager of 1331 Maryland (again, that was the luxury apartment where I resided at the time), came to our terraced-apartment and respectfully asked us to take down our Biden flag.

I agreed to do so but was super pissed about having to do it. He apologized profusely to me, to which I said, “I’m not angry with you. I am angry with why I have to take it down.” I mean, what sort of place had we become, what sort of country had the U.S. turned into, where I couldn’t fly a simple flag expressing my support for a presidential candidate of a major political party? But the fear in the city was palpable that day, and since we were at ground zero, we didn’t want to draw attention to the building.

So, as I took down my flag, Trump kept saying the things he’d been tweeting for months, garbage lies such as this:

Ava DuVernay said it right in one perfect word: LOST

At one point, when I went to the top of our building — it’s one of the tallest in D.C. and had 360 degree views of the entire city — I fooled myself into thinking there weren’t that many cultists there. But then, as I heard Trump’s slurring words ricocheting off the buildings, I saw his slobbish mob begin to move from the Ellipse towards the Capitol. And yikes! It was far, far bigger than I had estimated.

When I returned from the top of the building to our first floor apartment, our next door neighbor knocked on our door. I answered. He told us he and his boyfriend had taken down their #BLM flag after the manager requested them to do so. He told me, “We did it this time since there does seem to be a valid threat.” (Apparently, there had been a racist neighbor who had made several complaints about it — shortly thereafter the racist neighbor moved out).

I told my neighbor that they had asked us to do the same with our Biden-Harris flag. He then added, “Well, so you know, we got management to agree that if things get really bad, we can all head up to higher ground and stay in vacant apartments on higher floors.” As he said that, the chants outside grew louder and more frenzied.

I then realized we were totally surrounded by the insurrectionists and their massive Trump flags and paraphernalia at that point. Their trucks, no doubt, as we now know, were also filled with all sorts of weapons. I was livid and exhausted by these people invading our city — they were hurting and infecting our community. They had been terrorizing us, especially the most vulnerable in D.C. for months, so as the mob from the Ellipse began heading towards the Capitol, I went out onto my terrace and I screamed, “He lost! Trump FUCKING lost! GET OVER IT!” I felt both exhilaration and terror, realizing they were probably armed and within earshot of me. And that’s right around the time the Capitol was being breached. I truly understood — I felt it, not just in my bones, but in my bone marrow — that we were in real danger. Strangely, my partner was on a call with work. It seemed to contradict what was unfolding in real time around us.

Mind you, when I filmed Trump’s speech at the Ellipse, it was 12:43. 6 MINUTES LATER a pipe bomb, which we later learned was planted on January 5th, was discovered at the RNC. (Even worse, there were two pipe bombs. The other one was planted at the DNC — Vice President-elect Harris was at the DNC when that explosive was discovered. Both bombs were later detonated by the police. The suspect has never been found. They are still on the loose; many speculate online that it’s Congresswoman Majorie Taylor Greene).

Around the same time I was observing the Ellipse, GOP leaders were being swarmed by Trump cultists on the Hill. The cultists were demanding that they not certify the vote. Many GOPers, however, were insisting that they had to do so as they swore an oath to God and the Constitution. Things were getting dicier by the second, as the Trump mob was growing increasingly agitated and becoming more intoxicated by violence. As already mentioned, we were trapped inside our apartment, having recently received an email from our 1331 apartment manager, informing us to stay calm and keep an eye out for any message about fleeing from the first floor. Naturally, we weren’t planning on going anywhere, at least not at that point.

(Apologies — I gotta take my basset for a short walk and need to take a breather from reliving this day; here’s an obligatory pic below of my gorgeous show dog).

I’m back . . .

Anyway, as I was saying, by 1400 hrs, the mob had smashed the windows of the Capitol. Secret Service tried to take Vice President Pence away — he was trying to simply ceremonially certify the vote. We later learned he was resistant to leaving the Capitol and was in a parking garage below the building itself. Madame Speaker Pelosi was also taken off the floor of the house. I was watching all of this in my apartment on television, knowing I was less than a mile from all of these events. I was paralyzed.

At that point, I didn’t understand where the f—k the National Guard was . . . “Why aren’t they helping? Where are they? Why haven’t they been called up?” I kept asking over and over again. Little did any of us know that the attack against the Capitol, against a free election, against democracy itself, would carry on for another four hours. My biggest concern at that point were the great people who worked at our apartment complex. How the hell were they going to get home safely?

The city was officially a war zone and actually now looked the way Tucker Carlson always falsely described D.C., B’more, San Francisco, etc. Except it was his listeners who were inciting terror and fear into us. It was his listeners shitting and pissing all over the halls of Congress, destroying things in their way. (Carlson knows these facts; he just doesn’t care).

Finally, at 15:31, a police presence from Virginia appeared from the south, coming up from I-395. They were the first sign of movement from that area since the insurrection began. I muttered to myself, “A little too late . . .”

To be honest, the rest of the day was a total blur. My anxiety was worse than it had been in a long time. (I used to suffer from panic attacks years prior to that but then I went to therapy and nipped it in the bud). That day, those panic attacks came back in full force. But that panic was justified. I know, if things had gone in a different direction, I would have either had to have fled with my partner — most likely on foot — or I would have wound up being torn to shreds, or even worse been killed. There is no doubt, it would have been a bloodbath.

Sadly, many people didn’t make it out alive in the aftermath. For example, we later learned that Officer Sicknick died. Later that night, a huge caravan of officers from Virginia came up to pay him their respects around 0400 hours on January 7th. I was up at that time because I simply couldn’t sleep, so I caught the caravan of police cars. It was intensely moving and incredibly mournful.

I just got done describing one of the last days under Donald Trump’s regime. It was after he had lost the election. He knew he had lost; we know that with the facts we have collected at this point. Now imagine, for a moment, Trump is back in power. I don’t think anyone of us want that. In short, there is no way in hell Donald J. Trump can be anywhere NEAR the White House, or anywhere near power, even as a manager at a Chuck E Cheese, ever again.