Members of Mike Pence’s Secret Service called loved ones to say their final goodbyes on Jan. 6, 2021, as rioters called for Pence’s head to lie at the feet of the former vice president, it was revealed Thursday.
Officers feared for their lives as they made a frantic effort to evacuate Pence from the Senate chamber as angry rioters called for the vice president to be hanged.
“The members of the VP at this point were beginning to fear for their own lives,” an unidentified security official told the select group investigating the Capitol riot.
“There was a lot of shouting, a lot of very personal calls on the radio, so it was disturbing. I don’t like to talk about it,” he said.
Agents protecting Pence were preparing for a possible confrontation with the rioters when they made the desperate phone calls.
“There were calls to say goodbye to family members,” he continued. “For whatever reason on the ground, the VP thought this was about to get really ugly.”
He added: “We came very close to the service having to use lethal options or worse.”
Mike Pence’s operatives were braced for unrest after desperate phone calls were made on his behalf about the standoff. Siavosh Hosseini/SOPA Images/Shu
As Pence was being held in an office on the Senate floor at 2:13 p.m., a female agent was heard saying over the radio, “They got access to the second floor and they’re about five feet down from me.”
“If we waste any more time, we may lose the ability to leave, so if we’re going to leave, we have to leave now,” another officer recalled.
Security footage showed the building’s corridors filling with smoke as tension rose.
The panel’s eighth hearing Thursday focused on the fact that former President Donald Trump did not ask rioters to leave the Capitol for more than three hours after the building was breached.
Matthew Pottinger, Trump’s former national security adviser and former deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews, told lawmakers that their inaction led them to tender their resignations that same day.
The select group said the hearings will be scheduled for September after lawmakers spend the next month marshaling a trove of new evidence about the former president’s role in the unrest.