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I See Why Insurrectionist "Bigo" Barnett Did Not Want Pelosi's Staffer To Testify At His Trial. [1]
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Date: 2023-01-11
"There are staffers trapped in this office suite? Bigo will be kind to them I'm sure. /s"
An aide to then Speaker Nancy Pelosi testified yesterday in the trial of insurrectionist Richard “Bigo” Barnett, and I see why Barnett didn’t want her to appear in court. Basically, Barnett and his fellow insurrectionist had trapped most of the rest of Pelosi’s staff in a windowless room inside the Speaker’s office, and the insurrectionist had broken through one of the doors to try and get to the trapped staffers. The testimony slices and dices the pathetic excuse Barnett is pushing that he “was just looking for a bathroom” when he wandered into the Speaker’s Office.
Emily Berret, a top aide to the former House Speaker, offered harrowing details about the experience she and her coworkers had that day in testimony in the trial of Richard “Bigo” Barnett, the Alabama man who was pictured kicking his feet up on a desk in Pelosi’s office suite. Barnett, who is facing charges including obstruction of Congress, theft of government property, civil disorder, and entering a restricted building with a dangerous or deadly weapon, had tried to block the jury from hearing Berret’s testimony, but to no avail: on Tuesday, jurors heard her account of the chaotic — and, at times, dangerous — day from the staffer who describes herself as Pelosi’s “right hand woman.”…
According to Berrett, she thought the Capitol Police would hold the crowd back, and they would just go through the certification of the election. However, she was warned by security that they may not be able to stop the crowd, so she and Speaker Pelosi may need to moved to a safe location. By 1:30 P.M., security moved Pelosi and Berrett to another location. Unfortunately, the rest of the staff were trapped in the office suite.
“We pulled the Speaker out into the hallway, and we started running,” Berret recalled. She said that the seriousness of the situation dawned on her at that moment, as she saw other lawmakers’ security details also running to get their protectees to safety. Simultaneously, Berret testified, she instructed the staffers who were in Pelosi’s office suite to shelter in a windowless conference room that had two sets of double doors, with the interior set being “more hardened” than the other doors. This was the protocol that she and Pelosi’s security detail had prepared, Berret testified. Berret only learned that the office suite had been breached — and that Barnett had sat himself down in her chair, at her desk — when she saw it all unfold on the television at the undisclosed location to which Pelosi and other congressional leaders had been evacuated. In the rush, Pelosi had left her cell phone behind on the rostrum in the House chamber, and Berret realized that she had left her personal cell phone, along with her purse, at her desk.
And the insurrectionists figured out that there were staffers trapped in the office suite.
“The First Doors Had Broken, So We Knew It Was Bad.” At the same time, Berret said, she was frantically trying to get Capitol Police to evacuate her colleagues, the staff members who had sheltered in the “safe room” — which itself appeared to be on the verge of being breached. “The first doors had broken, so we knew it was bad,” Berret said, adding that rioters were banging on the second, “hardened” set of doors. The eight staffers, meanwhile, had turned off all the lights in the room and set their phones to silent. Berret said she was communicating with them by text message only. “I was trying to tell them everything would be okay, without knowing that,” she testified. “To us, it was a very bleak situation, but I couldn’t tell them that,” she added, noting that Capitol Police were not able to get through the rioters to reach the staffers and get them to safety. After about three hours, police were able to clear Pelosi’s office suite. The staffers were not injured, and Pelosi, Berret, and the others who had evacuated returned to the Capitol shortly before 7:00 p.m. Berret testified that her office had been “trashed,” with blood visible on the floor and furniture. Many items were either broken or stolen.
So while Barnett was sitting at Berret’s desk and wondering “where the bathroom was,” his fellow insurrectionist broke down doors to try and get at the eight trapped staffers. I’m sure that stun gun Barnett had would have come in handy if the insurrectionists had captured Pelosi’s staffers. I know I am being sarcastic, but no sane person would believe that Barnett was just there to find some damn bathroom. The image that flashes through my mind is what we hear about active shooter situations.
And if the jury members have the same flash, I’m betting that they will have no love for old “Bigo.”
By the way, Barnett left a nasty note next to a threatening one on Berrett’s desk:
She also came back to two threatening notes that were left on her desk. “We will not back down,” one note read. “Hey Nancy, Bigo was here, biatch,” said the other note, presumably written by Barnett himself.
Which dumbfuck Barnett verified because he is on videotape telling this tale.
I hope he is convicted.
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[1] Url:
https://dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/11/2146647/-I-See-Why-Insurrectionist-Bigo-Barnett-Did-Not-Want-Pelosi-s-Staffer-To-Testify-At-His-Trial
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