During an Instagram Live Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) recalled her experience from the Capitol riot and said she received warnings a week prior.
During the hour-long live session, AOC revealed a week prior to the attack, she was receiving many text messages from people, including other members of Congress, telling her that she needed to be prepared for violence on the day of the Electoral College certification. She added that those text messages came from other members of Congress, they were not threats, but they were other members saying that they were hearing talks from some Trump supporters and Republicans of possible violence on January 6.
During the live session, she said that when Trump supporters began clashing with police outside the Capitol, she was looking on her phone to book a place for lunch for herself and her legislative director. Soon after they heard someone violently banging on her office door, "like someone was trying to break the door down." She said she through her office and into the bathroom, hiding against the wall behind the door. "Then I just start to hear these yells of, 'Where is she? Where is she?,'" Ocasio-Cortez said. "This was the moment where I thought everything was over." But the person banging turned out to be a Capitol officer who told her to go to another building and spotted Rep. Katie Porter and stayed in her office with her staff for the remainder of the lockdown.
Claims made by AOC are probably true. Even though we cannot verify whether she received texts or not, there was enough chatter that something "big" will happen on January 6, during President Joe Biden's certification. Trump supporters, including QAnon followers and Proud Boys, had been urging to do something big since Biden was announced as the winner of the election. As BBC notes, "to those who closely follow conspiracy and extreme right groups online, the warning signs were all there".
BBC reported that "Michael Chertoff, former secretary of homeland security under President George W Bush, blamed the Capitol Police, who reportedly turned down offers of assistance from the much larger National Guard ahead of time. He characterized it as "the worst failure of a police force I can think of and I think it was a very foreseeable potential negative turn of events,." Chertoff further added, "To be blunt, it was obvious. If you read the newspaper and were awake, you understood that you've got a lot of people who have been convinced there was a fraudulent election. Some of them are extremists and violent. Some of the groups openly said, 'Bring your guns'".
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