House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, walks past members of the National Guard as he arrives at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, January 13, 2021, ahead of an expected House vote impeaching US President Donald Trump.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
There’s no Confederate flag there now.
National Guard troops on Wednesday flanked the halls of Congress as the House of Representatives moved toward impeaching President Donald Trump for inciting a violent mob that invaded the Capitol complex a week earlier.
A photographer in the morning captured a striking image of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., walking past Guard members camped on the floor as he headed to a debate over the impeachment.
The show of force comes after thousands of rioters rampaged through the congressional buildings, killing a Capitol police officer, beating and pepper spraying other officers, toting Confederate battle flags, carrying zip ties as they hunted for members of Congress, occupying the Senate chamber and smearing feces on the walls.
Hoyer and other outraged members of Congress decried Trump’s call to supporters shortly before the riot to help him overturn the election of Joe Biden as president.
“Rep.[Liz] Cheney from Wyoming, a conservative Republican, said this: ‘The president of the United States summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,’ ” Hoyer noted on the House floor of Cheney, who will support Trump’s impeachment.
“That is not some irresponsible new member of the Congress of the United States,” Hoyer said. “This is the daughter of the former Republican whip and former vice president of the United States of America. She knows of what she speaks.”
