Rep. Fitzpatrick reflects on Jan. 6: 'It's hard to imagine us .. more polarized than on that very day, but it .. has not gotten better'

On that Wednesday one year ago, Bucks County Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick braced for what he knew would be a tough day for reasons that were personal — not political. 

A year earlier, his older brother, former Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick whose political shoes Brian stepped into in 2016, died after a long cancer battle. His family were gathered at his parents’ Levittown home to support each other on what they knew would be a difficult anniversary.

Fitzpatrick was with them in spirit, but physically he was at work in the U.S. Capitol. The joint session of Congress was scheduled to certify the 2020 presidential election results, a ceremonial, but necessary, process marking the start of a new executive administration.

With the anniversary of his brother's death, Fitzpatrick wasn’t alarmed when he was besieged with text messages and voicemails from family and friends all asking him the same question, “Are you OK?”

“I thought they were just checking in with that,” the 48-year-old Republican lawmaker said last month.  

After former FBI colleagues started messaging him with the same question, Fitzpatrick finally responded to one.

“I’m like, ‘What are they talking about? I actually responded to one of them and they said, 'You haven’t seen what is going on outside?'” 

“I said, ‘No.’”

Dissent into Chaos

The former FBI agent was among the 100 lawmakers, media members and others attending the ceremony, completely unaware that hundreds of angry pro-Trump protesters who believed the former president's false claims of election fraud had stormed the Capitol grounds seeking to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. .

The onslaught took Fitzpatrick by complete surprise. His office faces the interior courtyard so he had no view of the thousands of participants in the March to Save America, which was taking place at the Ellipse within the National Mall just south of the White House.  

When he walked from his office in the nearby Cannon building through the underground tunnel leading into the House a little before 1 p.m. he didn’t notice people in the vicinity.  

Less than an hour later, though, when the House Sergeant at Arms and a Capitol police officer interrupted the process for certifying the winner of the Electoral College vote, Fitzpatrick knew something serious was happening.

“We all knew emotions were running high from the people who were in D.C. that day. We all knew the significance of this day,” he said. “To see a very serious constitutional responsibility and proceeding be interrupted, they don’t do that casually.”

Then came the five words no one in the chamber ever expected to hear, Fitzpatrick said:  “The Capitol has been breached.” 

The officers told everyone the situation was under control, but Fitzpatrick was immediately skeptical. 

“Those two statements don’t make sense. If you breach the Capitol, then the genie is out of the bottle. At that point, it’s very hard to contain. Especially knowing how many people were in the city that day for that speech.” 

Then-Vice President Mike Pence recessed the certification proceedings. Everyone remained in the building. Time seemed to stop. Officers returned to provide updates and urge people to remain calm.

But people weren’t staying calm, especially the ones in the second-floor gallery, Fitzpatrick said.

“They were the ones really at risk. We at least had in and out ability on the (House) floor. They were stuck up there and didn’t know what was going on,” he said. “There is no ladder that goes down from the balcony to the floor.”

As people were evacuated off the House floor, Fitzpatrick could hear yelling and people banging on the now barricaded Speaker’s lobby doors, which is on the lower level about 30 feet from where he was, Fitzpatrick said.

One sound that Fitzpatrick heard and recognized was a single gunshot shortly before a Capitol police officer ordered members to put on the gas masks stored under members’ seats.

Outside, law enforcement had begun using tear gas inside the building to slow the surge of rioters.

“That was the most distressing point of the entire morning. It sounded like a battering ram trying to beat down the doors,” he added. “You don’t know where they’re at, how many there are, how many law enforcement are holding them back.” 

Unimaginable, unprepared

A Capitol police officer escorted the group out of the chamber and eventually into an undisclosed bunker where three-fourths of Congress and others including journalists were isolated for roughly four hours, Fitzpatrick said.  

“It was very chaotic. Clearly there were no preparations for this,” the congressman added. “Nobody ever thought that anybody would ever do something like this and nobody ever thought the police would not be prepared for something like that and both were the case that day.”

During their shelter-in-place, Capitol police provided regular updates on the unfolding situation. The last one, like the first, was five words:  “The Capitol has been secured.” 

As the representatives headed back to the House chambers where the certification process was reconvened, Fitzpatrick was awestruck at the damage the rioters left behind.

They had smashed the back door to the center aisle of the chamber, the one the President uses when he enters the House.  The door where members enter to get to the House floor was destroyed. Broken glass covered the Speaker’s Lobby floor where a Capitol police officer shot and killed insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt when she climbed through the broken window.

“Seeing that damage, that is when it really sunk in,” Fitzpatrick said. 

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Later that night, Fitzpatrick was reunited with his staff who had hidden inside another representative’s office until they were moved to a secured room. They talked about how they felt about what happened. 

Together with the congressman they wrote a response for social media to the events that transpired earlier that day.

In the Tweet posted at 8:54 p.m. the Republican congressman called the riots “nothing short of a coup attempt.”  He accused former President Trump of lying to his supporters and inciting them to violence and described the rioters as “criminals and thugs who should all be in jail.” 

Hatfields & McCoys

While his words sounded angry, Fitzpatrick said that sadness was the main emotion behind them.

“Sadness was the first feeling that I had for our country that things would ever come to that,” he said. “We are a country that prides ourselves on law and order. We are a country that prides itself on the rule of law. This is what separates democracies from banana republics.”  

Its enemies believe the only way to defeat America is from inside America, Fitzpatrick said. That happens when the government erodes its public trust and political stability and turns citizens against each other.

“That is what I saw that day, American on American, and that is why I used the word sad,” he added.

A year later, those feelings of sadness linger for Fitzpatrick. He believes the political divide that ignited and fueled the Capitol riots remains a serious threat to the country's stability.

“It pains me to say that, again, it's hard to imagine us being more polarized than on that very day, but it certainly has not gotten better.”

He also doesn’t see the work of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol as promoting healing and unity among a fractured nation. 

Fitzpatrick was among 35 House Republicans who broke ranks voting in favor of a proposal calling for a full bipartisan/bicameral and independent investigation of the  attack.

The commission would have been modeled on the panel that investigated the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It included an equal number of Republican and Democrat members and no active members of Congress. But Senate Republicans blocked the plan, effectively killing it.

Fitzpatrick later voted against the creation of the current House Select Committee citing as reasons its uneven split between Democrat and Republican members and its inclusion of active House members. He said those two factors further erodes public trust in the investigation and perpetuates perceptions of unfairness and partisanship.

“Many people don’t have faith in the election system and we need to work on it. It’s a very sensitive issue,” Fitzpatrick said. “It’s important we investigate, but the second we make this partisan and political we are further driving wedges in this country.”

As for the lessons learned from the insurrection attempt, Fitzpatrick suggested it is not only that actions have consequences, but that as Americans, we need to understand and address the motivation behind the actions.

“Regardless of what you think about the claims being made in any situation, you have to hear it and you have to listen to it and heed it,” he said. “With many people, perception is reality. We have to understand if our democracy is going to survive, we have to listen to everybody so we don’t have people turning on each other.” 

With the 2022 midterm election season in full swing, Fitzpatrick, who faces a primary challenge from at least two GOP candidates in his bid to retain his seat, believes it’s incumbent upon voters to seek out candidates with a record for compromise for the greater good.

“We have enough bomb throwers and saber-rattlers that are constantly throwing red meat to their base, but if that is the new model, our country can’t survive.” he said. “We become the Hatfields and the McCoys and we take each other down from within.” 

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