Riot Left 5 Dead, Extensive Damage to U.S. Capitol Complex
They showed us, you know the shooting and all that stuff that went on at that point. I said, ‘OK, we gotta go!’ And we just went back to our buses. – Mario Innocenzi
At about 2:40 a.m. on Jan. 6, Mario Innocenzi opened a Facebook Live broadcast.
“Good morning, patriots,” Innocenzi said. “Just want to let you guys know that we are packing up, getting all set up to get to D.C. this morning.”
Innocenzi, who lives in the Chardon area and operates barber shops in Parma and Middlefield, is founder of the Geauga County Conservative Club. In his video, he said he was on his way to meet a bus that would take a group of patriots to the nation’s capital to let their voices be heard. About 55 people from the Chardon area joined him.
Last summer, Geauga County Juvenile Probate Court Judge Tim Grendell appointed Innocenzi to the Geauga Park District Board of Commissioners. Innocenzi also stepped into the public eye when he took a large role in Geauga Cares4U, a charitable organization Grendell and his wife, state Rep. Diane Grendell, set up during the Republican primary last March to provide relief for those suffering the impacts of COVID-19 closures.
On Jan. 6, Innocenzi and his group — which included Chester Township Trustee and former Geauga County Commissioner and county Tea Party President Skip Claypool — joined a rally headlined by President Donald Trump at the Ellipse, a park near the White House, and subsequently marched down Constitution Avenue toward the U.S. Capitol complex.
Related coverage: Innocenzi Says FOX 8 Video ‘Taken Out of Context’
At the rally, Trump repeated claims about the validity of the Nov. 3, 2020, election he lost to President-Elect Joe Biden. He urged Congress and Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of an election he claims were fraudulent. However, no court has found evidence to support those claims.
“Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us. And if he doesn’t, that will be a sad day for our country because you’re sworn to uphold our Constitution,” Trump said before asking the crowd to walk to the Capitol complex to “cheer on” those in Congress who were joining his challenge.
“Say a prayer for all of us patriots going to D.C. Make sure there’s peace, and no violence, and just let our voices be heard,” Innocenzi said as he drove toward the waiting bus in the early morning.
Unfortunately, the mob that later stormed the U.S. Capitol had other ideas. The violence left five dead — including a United States Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, 42, and four rioters.
Pipe bombs were found near the headquarters of both the Republican and Democratic national committees. Authorities also discovered a truck stocked with explosives and weapons a few blocks from the Capitol complex.
Many in the group were afterward identified by journalists, social media users and federal authorities as members of various online Trump-supporting extremist groups, including several who self-identify as followers of the Q-Anon conspiracy theory, which claims Trump is secretly fighting an international sex-trafficking cabal run by, among others, Democrats and prominent members of the media.
National media coverage showed some in the crowd wearing shirts with the slogan “MAGA Civil War January 6, 2021” and a gallows, complete with rope noose, was erected in front of the Capitol complex. At one point, the crowd chanted “Hang Mike Pence.”
‘What We Saw Was Peaceful’
Innocenzi, in a phone interview the day after the attack, again said he did not support the violence that took place.
He said at one point he heard bangs and saw smoke as part of the Capitol police response to the attack on the Capitol complex.
“I started getting calls from my kids, you know what I mean, saying, ‘Hey dad, there’s all kinds of riots going on,’” he said. “Well, I’m right there, there’s no riot going on. Just a handful of goofballs, knuckleheads making a nuisance out of their selves — from where we were standing, you know.”
He was never closer than about 200 yards to the building, Innocenzi said, adding he grew alarmed when he saw people climbing on scaffolding set up for Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
In a Facebook video, Innocenzi can be heard complaining about people throwing fireworks near the Capitol building.
He said in a phone interview Jan. 7, as he and his group, which included several elderly people, made their way back to buses, they met up with others who used their phones to show them some of the scenes of violence inside the Capitol complex.
“They showed us, you know the shooting and all that stuff that went on at that point. I said, ‘OK, we gotta go!’ And we just went back to our buses,” he said. “I hope they get arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They had no business in that building.”
In a phone interview Jan. 11, Claypool also condemned the violence and said he believes it was caused by “Antifa,” a loosely-organized left-wing group whose name is an abbreviation of “anti-fascist.”
“There was an element, but it wasn’t part of our (group), that were trying to gin things up. It was not part of our group,” Claypool said. “I don’t know who they are. Some people say Antifa, some people say Black Lives Matter.”
While he takes conspiracies with a grain of salt, Claypool said he thinks there was a violent element “intentionally injected” into the otherwise peaceful effort to challenge the result of the 2020 election.
“What you have to be careful of is to send the message that people like me and Mario and all the old farts … down there are the kinds of people that would beat up a policeman. That is not true,” Claypool said.
As of Jan. 11, a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice said 13 individuals have been charged so far in D.C. federal court related to crimes committed at the Capitol.
Approximately 40 were charged in Superior Court, the DOJ said.
Those arrested include Alabaman Lonnie Coffman, owner of the truck containing explosive devices found a few blocks from the Capitol. Richard Barnett — who was photographed with his feet resting on the desk of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and outside the building brandishing a piece of her mail — was charged with knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority; violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds; and theft of public money, property or records.
Jacob Anthony Chansley, a horn-wearing, face-painted, spear-wielding 33-year-old who was photographed near Pence’s chair in the U.S. Senate chambers, was also arrested Jan 9. Chansley turned himself into the FBI as he drove to Arizona after the attack.
According to a DOJ court document, “Chansley stated that he came as a part of a group effort, with other ‘patriots’ from Arizona, at the request of the President that all ‘patriots’ come to D.C. on January 6, 2021.”
‘An Indelible Stain On Our Democracy’
Inside the Capitol complex, lawmakers were rushed out of the building when it was breached by a mob of protesters. While the U.S. Senate was not convened, members of the House were on the floor in the process of certifying state electoral votes.
Some were trapped in a viewing gallery in the House chambers as Capitol police barricaded the door of the chambers and stood with their guns pointed outwards. Others were waiting in the House Speaker’s lobby — directly outside the House chambers — when a violent group of attackers began smashing windows in an attempt to reach them.
Graphic video published online shows the moment when U.S. Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, 35, attempted to climb through the broken window. Babbitt, draped in a Trump flag, was shot by a Capitol police officer firing from inside the Speaker’s lobby.
Due to COVID-19 restrictions limiting the number of House members on the floor, Congressman Dave Joyce (R-Bainbridge Township) said he remained in his office in a separate part of the Capitol complex. Joyce asked his office staff to work from home due to concerns raised in recent security briefings about protests scheduled for the day, according to his office.
When a colleague was forced to evacuate their office, Joyce said he opened his office to the lawmaker and their staff. The group huddled in Joyce’s office for roughly six hours, with the door locked, window blinds drawn and cell phones silenced.
While the congressman awaited word from his daughter, who works in another part of the Capitol complex, notifications came of multiple explosive devices found around the city, he said.
Late in the night, once Capitol police cleared the Capitol complex, the House and Senate chambers resumed their debates. Joyce voted against the objection to Arizona’s electoral votes, ensuring they would be certified.
After that vote, Joyce was told the Senate was unlikely to sign onto any other objections, so he took his daughter home to safety. He said he was unable to return to the Capitol in time to vote against objections to the electoral votes due to roadblocks and police activity following the chaos that had occurred earlier in the day.
In his weekly newsletter Jan. 10, Joyce said what occurred that day “will forever be an indelible stain on our democracy.”
However, he added, he was proud Congress pressed forward in its Constitutionally-mandated certification of electoral votes, in spite of the chaos.
“By doing so, we proved to the American people that truth, law and order, and democracy triumphed while falsehoods, violence and chaos failed,” Joyce said.
He went on to list facts related to Trump’s claims of fraud surrounding the election.
The election was not stolen, Joyce said, adding while some credible reports of fraud need to be investigated, Biden’s margins of victory were too wide to change the outcome of the election.
Trump had the legal right to address allegations of fraud and irregularities in court, but the President and other elected officials lied when they led their constituents to believe objections to the electoral votes presented to Congress on Wednesday could reverse the election results, Joyce said.
“I say all this as someone who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and who voted for his re-election in November. But each time the people of Ohio’s 14th Congressional District elected me to represent them in Congress, I swore an oath to God to uphold the Constitution,” Joyce said. “I consider that oath both a great honor and a great responsibility and I refuse to be bullied into violating it by threats of my political demise.”
Joyce said he objects to unconstitutionally inserting Congress into the center of the presidential election process, which would not only delegitimize the Electoral College, but also steal power from the people and the states.
“I am proud to have stood with those who upheld our Constitution on Wednesday so, as Abraham Lincoln said, ‘that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.’”
Read Joyce’s full statement online at www.geaugamapleleaf.com.
