Think rioting at the U.S. Capitol is a bad idea? Try calling Nancy Pelosi’s office the next day asking to get your stuff back.
According to Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), many people who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection called the House Speaker’s office the next day asking about a “lost and found.”
Raskin told Business Insider that people were “asking whether there was a lost and found because they forgot their phone there, or they left their purse or what have you.”
The staffers answering the calls handed them off to the police, the lawmaker said, who then asked for their names, addresses and other details so they could, in Raskin’s words, “tie up those loose ends.”
More than 700 people have been charged in connection to the assault on the Capitol so far.
It might seem shocking that people who stormed the Capitol one day would have no qualms about calling the next day in search of their lost items, but Raskin said that points to former President Donald Trump’s complicity in the events of Jan. 6.
“When they were told that they were trespassing and invading the Capitol, they said the president invited them to be there,” Raskin said. “They didn’t have any kind of subtle understanding of the separation of powers. They just thought that the number one person in the U.S. government had invited them to be there, and therefore they had a right.”
“It underscores the central role that Donald Trump played in it,” Raskin added.
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