‘There Would Have Been Gunfire At That Point’: January sixth’s Scariest Moment
This is an exclusive excerpt adapted from “Storm at the Capitol: An Oral History of January 6th” by Associated Press reporter Mary Clare Jalonick. The book draws on personal interviews by the author, testimony, court documents and other public sources to compile a definitive account of the hours leading up to, during, and just after rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
This excerpt begins just after 2 p.m., in the moments that the first rioters broke into the Capitol on the first floor of the Senate side of the building. The Senate was still in session one floor above, and Vice President Mike Pence had just been pulled out of the chamber. As the rioters made their way across the first floor and toward a stairwell that led up to the chamber, they were stopped by Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman. He was alone as he confronted the angry mob.
The voices in this excerpt are compiled from personal interviews and court documents.
In the Senate press gallery on the third floor, longtime Washington Post reporter Paul Kane was watching the proceedings when he saw Pence pulled from the chair.
Paul Kane, reporter, The Washington Post: I jumped up and ran out of the chamber into our office portion of the gallery, and I just kind of ran through — I don’t know if it was like full sprint, fast walking, whatever — and I was yelling, “They just pulled Pence out of the chair! They just pulled Pence out of the chair!”
Igor Bobic, reporter, HuffPost: Up until that point, I didn’t really notice anything was wrong until Paul, out of nowhere, came barreling through the press gallery from my right to the left, screaming, “Pence just left the chair!”
Kane: I then went down the steps to the second floor because I wanted to figure out whether or not Mike Pence was being pulled out of the chair because there was danger. Or maybe he just had a pee break.
Bobic: As soon as I saw Paul, who’s this veteran who’s been there for decades, screaming that, I got up and followed him downstairs.
Kane: Igor was the only other reporter who came down, and we stood there for a split second, like, where is he? What’s going on? And we heard this loud crash one floor below us.
Bobic: I didn’t know where it was coming from. I just knew it was downstairs. People shouting and yelling, which is not something you normally hear in the Senate halls. I kept going downstairs to the first floor.
Kane: I kind of froze. I did not want to see cops beating up protesters. That was what I thought in my brain — I thought everything was so secure in our building. And I had no notebook, I didn’t have my phone, I was just useless. Igor had his phone, and he looked at me and bolted down the steps.
Bobic: I remember opening my iPhone camera and debating for the briefest second, as I’m sprinting down these marble stairs, whether I should put it in video or photo. Because I knew that we’re not allowed to take videos in the halls. In that split second, I kept it on the video camera.
Kane: I didn’t know until later that night, or even the next day, in the fog of everything. I realized that Igor did one of the most important historical things of that day that anyone in the media did—he hit record on his video and went down those steps. And it was not cops roughing up protesters.
The crowd confronting Officer Goodman was loud, and they advanced quickly. Doug Jensen, [a QAnon believer who earned a five-year prison sentence for his actions on Jan. 6 and was eventually pardoned by Trump], pushed to the front of the crowd, his “Q” shirt leading the way.
Officer Eugene Goodman, US Capitol Police: It’s a small sort of hallway. It’s tight. The archway that exits that little hallway is even tighter, about the size of a doorway. And so it’s really a confined space.
Doug Jensen, Iowa: The reason I made sure I was at the front was because I wanted that “Q” to be on TV. I wanted Q to get the attention.
Goodman: They were there to interrupt the process.
Jensen yelled and gestured at Goodman, shaking his head as he walked toward him. The crowd followed behind, shouting. Bobic was on the stairwell, recording the interaction on his iPhone.
Goodman: I put my hand on the weapon. It means compliance. Back up. They kept advancing.
Bobic: They were sort of threatening him, and he was wanting them not to go forward.
Goodman: I had a large group of people yelling. They are angry. I’m outnumbered. One guy has the sharpened point on the flag, and I’m boxed in. I have no out other than the stairs from this point.
Bobic: They were yelling, “Where the hell are they? Where the f are they? We’re doing this for democracy! You’re on our side!”
Senators and staff were still in the chamber, and Vice President Pence was huddled in an office nearby. Goodman bolted up the stairs, with Jensen immediately behind him. One of the rioters yelled, “Keep running, motherfucker!” Goodman stopped at a landing, turned around, and raised his baton.
Jensen: He pulled his baton out at the top of those stairs, and I was like, hit me, I’ll take it. I’ll take it for this country, you know.
Bobic: There was this mad scramble up the stairs, and I’m trying not to fall over backwards and eat it while this mob of a dozen, maybe twenty guys is advancing up the steps menacingly. And at that point, I still had no idea what was going on outside. I just thought it was this group of people who got in.
Running up the second half of the stairway, Goodman called for assistance— “Second floor!” Jensen and the rioters kept up the chase.
Goodman stopped at the top of the stairwell and turned around. The officer briefly glanced toward the closed door to the Senate chamber, which was now just feet away from the crowd. There was no security posted outside. Goodman led the crowd to his right, away from the door.
Jensen: I had no idea where I was going. I was being directed.
Inspector Thomas Loyd, U.S. Capitol Police: If the demonstrators had gone to where Officer Goodman looked over his left shoulder, that leads you to the rear of the Senate lobby, where the vice president and the senators were located.
Bobic: I think he did very well in the sense that he didn’t announce in their presence that there was a breach by the Senate doors or anything like that. He didn’t use any identifying language.
Loyd: The doors that lead into the Senate — back of the Senate chamber, the Senate lobby — are made of nothing but glass, mostly glass. So they’re easily breachable. And if those doors had been breached, more than likely there would have been gunfire at that point.
Excerpted from “STORM AT THE CAPITOL: An Oral History of January 6” by Mary Clare Jalonick, copyright ©2026 by Mary Clare Jalonick. Used with permission of PublicAffairs, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
