'Lock the Gallery Doors!': Congressman Describes Being Inside Capitol During Jan. 6 Riot

The moments after a large group of Donald Trump supporters breached the U.S. Capitol doors on Jan. 6 were filled with panic, fear and much chaos.

That's the scene laid out by California Rep. Adam Schiff in his upcoming book, Midnight in Washington, in which he recounts the the moments before the insurrection — and what transpired among the elected officials gathered inside to certify the presidential election.

In an excerpt of the book published last week by Vanity Fair, the 61-year-old Democrat details how Capitol Police shouted at lawmakers to put on oxygen masks and to "be prepared to get down under your chairs if necessary."

Schiff writes in the excerpt that he was confused at the time, not fully understanding the danger that awaited outside the chamber where lawmakers were preparing to ratify the election of now-President Joe Biden.

Still, Schiff and others in Congress complied with the police instructions, removing rectangular canvas pouches containing plastic oxygen hoods from beneath their seats.

"These hoods didn't resemble the gas masks you see police wearing during a riot; instead, they were a large polyethylene bag that you pulled over your head, with a small motor attached to circulate and filter the air," Schiff writes. "As you removed the hood from its packaging, the motor began running, and suddenly there was a din of dozens of these hoods buzzing, which only added to the growing sense of alarm."

As the lawmakers grew increasingly frightened, the situation became more stressful, with Schiff writing that a fellow representative — Minnesota's Dean Phillips — took aim at those who had enabled Trump's false claims about election fraud.

"This is because of you!" Phillips yelled at Rep. Paul Gosar, Schiff writes.

"Other members tried to settle things down and not allow the recriminations to spread, but Phillips wasn't wrong. We were here for what should have been the ceremonial certification of the 2020 presidential election results, but instead we were now in danger," Schiff writes.

Shouts of "lock the gallery doors!" cried out as the rioters grew closer to the room.

Soon, on the instruction of law enforcement, the group began exiting the chamber via an escape route behind the speaker's chair. As lawmakers poured out the doors, Schiff writes, the stayed behind to allow others to go first.

Then he heard the crowd banging on the doors to the chamber.

From the excerpt: " 'You can't let them see you,' a Republican member said to me. 'He's right,' another Republican member said. 'I know these people, I can talk to them, I can talk my way through them. You're in a whole different category.' In that moment, we were not merely members of different political parties, but on opposite sides of a much more dangerous divide."

As Schiff continued exiting the building, he writes, he spoke to a freshman lawmaker who "had grabbed a wooden post with a hand sanitizer dispenser attached to it and was carrying it like a club."

Asking the lawmaker if he was that concerned, Schiff got a startling response: "I think I just heard gunshots."

From the book: "He was right—only fifty feet away from the stairs, on the other side of the lobby, Ashli Babbitt, a fourteen year veteran of the Air Force, had just been shot to death by a Capitol Police officer. In all the commotion, I had just assumed it was a tear gas canister."

Schiff's account of the events of Jan. 6 mirror others.

In earlier interviews with PEOPLE, Rep. Jason Crow said that, fearing for his life, he made a call to his family as the Capitol was under siege.

"Right after I saw the Capitol police lock the chamber and preparing the barricade, I made the decision to call my wife," Crow, a 42-year-old former Army ranger, said. "I told her we were trapped, encircled, and I told her to tell the kids I love them. I thought we might have to fight our way out. She told me she loved me and asked me not to be a hero — that my obligation was to the family, to our children."

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who had been in her office in a building near the Capitol, had a similar experience.

"You have all of those thoughts where, at the end of your life, and all of these thoughts come rushing to you. And that's what happened to a lot of us on Wednesday," Ocasio-Cortez, 31, said in an Instagram Live session filmed a week after the insurrection. "I did not know if I was going to make it to the end of that day alive."