An organizer of a Trump caravan from Indiana has said about 30 people from Bartholomew County traveled to Washington, D.C. last week and were on the U.S. Capitol grounds during the Jan. 6 insurrection, but they did not enter the building nor were they involved in any of the violence.
Mary Beth Clauss, Bartholomew County Republican Ladies League president, confirmed that she helped organize a caravan of Trump supporters who traveled from Indiana to Washington from Jan. 5 to 7 to meet with Indiana’s two Republican senators, Mike Braun and Todd Young, to encourage them to contest the federal electoral votes from certain states.
Overall, 52 people from “all around southern, central Indiana” were part of the caravan, including residents of Columbus, Edinburgh, Taylorsville, Elizabethtown and “all the little towns and burgs in our county,” Clauss said.
The group is believed to have gathered at Indiana Premium Outlet Mall in Edinburgh on Jan. 5 and traveled together to Washington, according to a Facebook event page that is no longer accessible to the public. Clauss declined to reveal the caravan’s meeting point, saying she didn’t “want anything to blow back on anybody.”
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Neither the ladies league nor the Bartholomew County Republican Party was involved with the caravan, Clauss said.
Clauss previously helped organize a “Trump Train Car Parade” in Columbus in September.
“Ever since the election, we had been trying to contact (Braun and Young) to have a town hall (in Columbus or elsewhere in Indiana), where they could just come and talk to us and tell us what was going to explain what happened in the election. You know, tell us what’s true and what’s false, to hear directly from them to know what was going on,” Clauss said. “We got no response, zero. Not even a courtesy letter saying, ‘Thank you for contacting us.’ Not even that. And so we felt like we needed to talk to them, so we asked and asked and asked that if we come to D.C., will you come and talk to us?”
Eventually, Braun and Young agreed to meet with them, but the group wasn’t notified until after they had left for Washington, Clauss said.
On Jan. 6, the group met with Young from 10:30 to 11 a.m. and with Braun from 11 to 11:45 a.m. outside the United States Senate Office, which is located across the street from the U.S. Capitol to the northeast, Clauss said.
In a video posted on Twitter Jan. 6 at 11:24 a.m., an animated Young is seen in front of the Russell Office Building across the street from the U.S. Capitol, passionately telling a group of people why he would not vote to object to Electoral College results.
“My opinion doesn’t matter,” Young told the group. “And you know what? When it comes to the law, our opinions don’t matter. The law matters. …I value your opinion. I actually share your concerns. I share your conviction that President Trump should remain president. …But the law matters.”
Braun initially said he would challenge Electoral College votes from some states but abruptly reversed course after the siege on the U.S. Capitol.
The violence on Jan. 6 “changed things drastically,” Braun said.
The group did not hear Trump’s remarks at the Ellipse, where he told his supports to “fight like hell,” because they were meeting with Braun and Young at that time, Clauss said.
After meeting with the senators, the group ate lunch at a hotdog stand and then headed for the east side of the Capitol grounds across the street from the U.S. Supreme Court, arriving after the joint session of Congress to certify the 2020 presidential election results had started, Clauss said.
“We were in the grassy mall area that was set aside for us to be, so we were where we were supposed to be,” Clauss said.
Once Congress broke into separate sessions to consider objections to Arizona’s Electoral College results, a member of the Trump caravan from Indiana said they had heard that people on the other side of the Capitol were trying to get inside the building.
“You know, people say a lot of stuff, so I just blew that off,” Clauss said. “I didn’t pay much mind to it and so we were just standing there. And then we see some of the police officers from the (east side of the Capitol) leave rapidly.”
About 15 to 20 minutes later, she saw a crowd walking toward a parking lot next on the east side of the Capitol.
Near the parking lot, police had erected metal barricades that “look like bike racks,” Clauss said.
When the crowd approached, Clauss said, the police simply opened the barricades.
“I watched them do it,” Clauss said. “…And I can only assume it was because they figured, ‘Well, there’s no point in trying to stop them.’ I don’t know what their logic was, but they opened (them) and let people into the parking lot area and they re-established a line halfway up on the Capitol steps. …The police, you know, there weren’t a lot of them.”
“I thought that was very bizarre and I was like, what are they doing?” she said. “I was like, ‘I don’t understand what’s going on here.’”
Then, “some big guys” pushed their way to the front of the crowd and “went to the top of the steps,” Clauss said.
Clauss said she did not see any tear gas, but “we did hear two sets of what sounded like fireworks.”
“We were still back in the grass kind of watching all of this that was going on,” Clauss said. “…I can’t speak to what happened on the inside and it’s a tragedy that there was loss of life. And I think it’s horrible. We all do. But outside (on the east side of the Capitol) that wasn’t going on.”
There also were police officers and squad cars lined up along Constitution Avenue, which runs along the north side of the Capitol grounds, and First Street NE, which runs between the U.S. Supreme Court and the east side of the Capitol and “never once did they break from that and rush in to arrest anyone,” she said.
Additionally, there were more police “circulating through the crowd” but officers never told anyone to disperse, Clause said.
On the other side of the Capitol, a different series of events were taking place — a violent mob loyal to President Donald Trump was forcing their way inside the building in a failed attempt to overturn America’s presidential election, sending lawmakers into hiding, The Associated Press reported.
The Capitol’s attackers pinned a bloodied police officer in a doorway, his twisted face and screams captured on video, according to wire reports. They mortally wounded another officer with a blunt weapon, believed to be a fire extinguisher, and body-slammed a third over a railing into the crowd.
“Hang Mike Pence!” the insurrectionists chanted as they pressed inside, beating police with pipes and flag poles. They demanded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s whereabouts, although they repeatedly asked: “Where are they?” about all the lawmakers, according to The Associated Press.
Outside, makeshift gallows stood, complete with sturdy wooden steps and the noose. Guns and pipe bombs had been placed in the vicinity.
Clauss said she did not witness any violence while on the Capitol grounds.
At about 3:30 p.m., the group from Indiana, included some elderly people, left the Capitol grounds because it was “very, very cold” and there were “only like four portapotties” and “the line was out around the block,” Clauss said.
Clauss condemned the violence at the Capitol and said the “vast majority” of people she saw on the Capitol grounds were “peaceful” and “not doing anything.”
“I hate that (U.S. Air Force veteran) Ashli Babbitt was shot, I hate that the Capitol (police) officer was killed,” Clauss said. “…I hate that that happened. That’s not what we stand for. We’re peaceful. The experience outside and the experience inside are two drastically different things.”
“We mourn and we pray for the families of the people that were injured, that were killed and the loss of life,” she said.
The president has spent weeks falsely attacking the integrity of the election and had urged his supporters to descend on Washington to protest Congress’ formal approval of Biden’s victory, according to wire reports. Some Republican lawmakers were in the midst of raising objections to the results on his behalf when the proceedings were abruptly halted by the mob.
None of the lawmakers who objected to the results in any state, including Rep. Greg Pence, have presented credible evidence of widespread fraud that would change the outcome of the election, according to wire reports.
“We wouldn’t have even gone to D.C. had Senators Braun and Young just been responsive to us and had a town hall like we asked,” Clauss said. “…I think people are very confused and they don’t know what to believe in the media. They don’t trust the media, and they wanted to hear from their legislators (about) what was going on.”
A man believed to be former Columbus resident and musician Jon Schaffer of the band Iced Earth, is on an FBI wanted poster after a photo showed him inside the Capitol during the insurrection, according to a local resident who recognized Schaffer on the poster. Investigators have declined to say they are looking for Schaffer and no charges have been filed against him.
On Wednesday, the House impeached Trump on a charge that he incited the deadly insurrection against the Capitol on Jan. 6. Trump is first U.S. president to be impeached twice.
