The man who was photographed sitting in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and left with an envelope signed by the speaker is reportedly Arkansas resident Richard “Bigo” Barnett.
The Capitol Hill complex went on lockdown Wednesday after planned “Stop the Steal” protests devolved into a violent breach of the congressional building — smashing windows, breaking into offices, looting rooms, and forcing an evacuation of Vice President Mike Pence and lawmakers as staff and reporters were told to shelter in place.
The man pictured in Nancy Pelosi’s office took a piece of her mail, made it out safely, then posed for a pic pic.twitter.com/UckbTRHZsW
— Kayla Brantley (@_KaylaBrantley) January 6, 2021
While the Capitol was breached, protesters were photographed standing on statues, hanging Trump flags, and taking podiums. The man who sat in Pelosi’s office, identified by a New York Times reporter as Barnett, said that before he and a group of other protesters were “maced,” he “wrote [Pelosi] a nasty note, put my feet up on her desk, and scratched my balls.”
Barnett, whose shirt was ripped opened and who kept shouting about being “maced,” was loudly entertaining fellow protesters with tales of his exploits.
After getting into Pelosi’s office, he said, “I wrote her a nasty note, put my feet up on her desk and scratched my balls.”
— Matthew Rosenberg (@AllMattNYT) January 6, 2021
Barnett said that the crowds he participated in were “unbelievable.”
“We marched down there. They start tear-gassing us. They start roughing up our people. It pissed some people off,” Barnett told 5NEWS. “They went to the front door, and they started demanding to be let inside. I wasn’t even up there at that point. I was climbing the steps to see what was going on. When I got to the top, they had breached the doors and were trying to get in.”
Barnett said that after he put his feet on the desk, he realized that his hand had been cut and that he had bled on one of Pelosi’s personalized envelopes.
“I threw my feet up on the desk at that point,” he said. “I realized some a——- had cut me also and I bled on her envelope, so I picked up the envelope and put it in my pocket, and I put a quarter on the desk cause I’m not a thief.”
Barnett faces potential charges for participating in breaching the Capitol Hill complex.
After the Capitol was breached, President Trump made several appeals for law and order and asked his supporters for peace but still claimed he won the election. Despite calling for peace, Trump in a series of tweets sympathized with and appeared to defend his extremist supporters, saying in a deleted tweet, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots.”
