The night before Donald Trump became the first U.S. president to be impeached twice, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Instagram to share new details about her experience during the mob insurrection the president incited on Jan. 6.
The second-term congresswoman shared new – albeit vague – details on Tuesday, Jan. 12, about a close encounter she had pro-Trump insurrectionists that almost cost her and her colleagues their lives.
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that many, many members of the House were nearly assassinated,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I didn’t know if I was going to make it to the end of that day alive.”
Ocasio-Cortez, who represents part of the Bronx, Astoria, College Point, Corona, North Corona, East Elmhurst, Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, Sunnyside and Woodside, said that many members “narrowly escaped death,” when the mob, some of them armed with weapons and handcuffs, stormed the Capitol.
However, Ocasio-Cortez did not go into further detail about the close encounter, citing “security concerns.”
“I don’t know if I can even disclose the full details of that event due to security concerns,” she said. “But I can tell you I had a very close encounter where I thought I was going to die.”
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The congresswoman, who in an October interview with Vanity Fair said that she regularly gets death threats, also took time during the Instagram Live to lay blame at the feet of the president and some of her Republican colleagues who echoed Trump’s lies about a “stolen election.”
“Frankly, he is a traitor to our country,” Ocasio-Cortez said of Trump. “I don’t think there’s any other way you could put it.”
After calling out Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, both of whom objected to the counting of electoral votes confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, Ocasio-Cortez said that she didn’t feel safe being around some Republican members of Congress during the siege.
“There were QAnon and white supremacist sympathizers, and frankly white supremacist members of Congress, in that extraction point who I have felt would disclose my location and would create opportunities to allow me to be hurt, kidnapped, et cetera,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
The congresswoman co-authored and voted in favor of the articles of impeachment passed by the House of Representatives on Wednesday, Jan. 14. The approved article now goes to the Senate for a trial. If a trial is to happen at all, it will likely be after Biden is sworn in as president.
