‘I Felt Angry’: Trapped Alone in the Capitol, He Watched the Riot Unfold
The New York Times
Wayne K. Williams, a top aide to the No. 5 House Democrat, was the only member of his staff in the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He was barricaded in his office alone as mayhem reigned.
WASHINGTON — Wayne K. Williams, a senior adviser to Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the No. 5 House Democrat, was the only staff member in his office on Jan. 6, barricaded in a room in the middle of the Capitol as the deadliest attack on the building in two centuries unfolded.
Pandemic precautions and concerns about protests had kept other members of Mr. Jeffries’s staff home that day. Mr. Jeffries, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, was in the chamber. That left Mr. Williams, a 44-year-old native New Yorker, alone in an unmarked office on the first floor of the building, near an area directly under the Rotunda known as the Capitol Crypt.
He would emerge many hours later, as the House prepared to reconvene to certify President Biden’s electoral victory.
