In October 2024, several X posts went viral that claimed U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mentioned she feared being killed or raped when supporters of former U.S. President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. However, in keeping with the posts, these emotions weren’t justified as a result of she allegedly was “not on the Capitol on January sixth.“
Ocasio-Cortez did, the truth is, say she thought she was going to be raped and killed in the course of the Jan. 6 assault. The place was she positioned on the time? It was true she was not within the Capitol Constructing however relatively inside her workplace within the close by Cannon Home Workplace Constructing when the rioters descended on the Capitol. Although that constructing is separate from the Capitol Constructing itself, it’s a part of the U.S. Capitol complex and was additionally evacuated by the Capitol Police.
AOC Instructed CNN She Thought She Was Going to Be Raped and Killed
On Aug. 9, 2021, Ocasio-Cortez sat down for an interview with CNN’s Dana Bush and answered a line of questioning associated to the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. Throughout the interview — which is available on the CNN website — she mentioned:
Ocasio-Cortez: I believe one of many causes that impression was doubled that day, is due to the misogyny and the racism that’s so deeply rooted and animated that assault on the Capitol. White supremacy and patriarchy are very linked in numerous methods. There’s numerous sexualizing of that violence. And I did not assume that I used to be simply going to be killed, I believed different issues had been going to occur to me as nicely.
Bush: So what it sounds such as you’re telling me proper now could be that you just did not solely assume that you just had been going to die, you thought you had been going to be raped.
Ocasio-Cortez: Yeah. Yeah, I believed I used to be.
In the identical interview, she mentioned being a survivor of sexual assault — one thing she has spoken about publicly on many occasions.
Was Ocasio-Cortez within the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021?
Critics of Ocasio-Cortez have lengthy claimed she was not contained in the Capitol when rioters breached safety, and, due to that, she had lied. The truth is extra difficult than that.
Firstly, there is not any proof of Ocasio-Cortez claiming she was contained in the Capitol Constructing. She detailed her expertise in an Instagram Live video that posted Feb. 1, 2021. In that clip, she mentioned she was in her workplace within the Cannon Home Workplace Constructing on the time of the assault. “Members of Congress, apart from, you realize, the speaker and different very, very high-ranking ones, do not truly work in a constructing with the dome,“ she mentioned within the video. “There are buildings proper subsequent to the dome, and that is the place our precise workplaces are.“
The constructing the place Ocasio-Cortez’s workplace is positioned, the Cannon Home Workplace Constructing, is linked to the first Capitol Constructing through tunnels — which rioters were reportedly aware of and mentioned in some of their communications as a spot for locating members of Congress.
Police ordered the Cannon Home Workplace Constructing and different buildings within the Capitol advanced to be evacuated because the rebel unfolded.
There is no proof Ocasio-Cortez encountered rioters face-to-face, and she or he has not claimed that occurred.
In response to the same Instagram Live video from February 2021, whereas in her workplace in the course of the Jan. 6 assault, she mentioned a Capitol Police officer entered her workplace after banging on her door. Ocasio-Cortez claimed he didn’t announce himself as an officer, didn’t have a companion and entered her workplace with hostility. For these causes, she mentioned she thought he was a rioter at first. Till she realized the person was a police officer and may comply with his instructions to evacuate to a different constructing, she hid behind the door of her workplace’s rest room.
“Because the Capitol advanced was stormed and other people had been being killed, none of us knew within the second what areas had been compromised,” Ocasio-Cortez posted on X.
Ocasio-Cortez was not the one member of Congress within the Cannon Home Workplace Constructing on Jan. 6 who recalled being afraid and unsure about what was taking place. Rep. Nancy Mace — whose workplace was in the identical corridor (two doorways down) as Ocasio-Cortez’s — initially told The State, a local South Carolina paper, that she barricaded herself inside her workplace in the course of the assault. “Fearing that Trump supporters she had seen staying at her resort would possibly goal her after she voted to certify the electoral votes, Mace mentioned she determined to sleep in her workplace that evening,“ the article reads. (Later, Mace and Ocasio-Cortez publicly feuded over their completely different reactions to the Jan. 6 assault.)
Different members of Congress, lots of whom had been pressured to take shelter within the major Capitol constructing, have shared their experiences of that day, saying in addition they felt scared, unsafe and offended.
In sum, it is true Ocasio-Cortez was not within the precise Capitol Constructing in the course of the Jan. 6 assault, although there is not any proof of her ever claiming to be there. She was in a close-by constructing, the Cannon Home Workplace Constructing, which is linked to the first Capitol Constructing by tunnels. It is also true that she mentioned she feared being raped or killed in the course of the assault.
