Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) revealed during her Instagram live on Monday evening that during the Capitol riot on January 6, someone entered her office and she hid in the bathroom thinking it was a rioter. Instead, it was a Capitol police officer trying to evacuate her, but Ocasio-Cortez said he did not help the situation.
Ocasio-Cortez said trouble was brewing days before the riot, which resulted in five people being killed, from Capitol officer Brian Sicknick dying from injuries sustained while fighting off rioters to a woman being trampled on by the large crowd in the mayhem. Dozens of officers were injured during the heavy fighting that took place in and around the Capitol building.
Ocasio-Cortez criticized the officer for not announcing himself and looking at her with "a tremendous amount of anger and hostility."
"Things weren't adding up, like there was no partner there and no one was yelling — he wasn't yelling like, 'This is Capitol Police! This is Capitol Police!' And he was looking at me, and all this anger and hostility," she explained.
Ocasio-Cortez added she thought at first she was reading the situation wrong, but she asked her legislative director what they thought of the encounter. He agreed with her impression of the officer, thinking he would have to fight the officer.
"That is how aggressive the situation was in that moment. We couldn't tell, we couldn't read if this was a good situation or bad situation...Like so many other communities in this country, like just that presence doesn't necessarily give you a clear signal whether you're safe or not," Ocasio-Cortez said.
She said the officer did not give clear instructions on how to get to the building he was telling her and her staff to go to in the chaos.
.@AOC describes a Capitol Police officer bursting into her office, says his presence “didn’t feel right” and that he was looking at her “in all of this anger and hostility.” Her staffer reportedly wondered if he would have to fight the officer. pic.twitter.com/LCj2JmmFP6
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) February 2, 2021