Graham blames Capitol Police for not using lethal force on more rioters

[moriah]

106. House Members were being evacuated through an exit accessed through the Speaker's Lobby.

The video put together by the Washington Post showing multiple videos/angles of the shooting shows that the crowd saw that Members of Congress were visible down that hallway, and the rioters started attacking the glass and intimidating the officers who were on the crowd-side of the barricaded door to the Speaker's Lobby.

The officer who shot was positioned in the first doorway off the entrance to the Speaker's Lobby, and only shot after Babbitt decided to climb on top of the frame of the broken side glass and put her torso through the broken window. He can be seen with his gun drawn (and if Babbitt could hear, there were multiple people relaying back that an officer had a gun), and had it ready to hit the first person who came through any part of that door. When he can see it's going to be Babbitt that's first through, he is shown to move to target her and then shoot.

And so I'm gathering that his instructions that day was to protect that corridor as well as he could until all the House Members got to safety, then either follow them and continue to protect them, get safe himself (as he was plain-clothes), or get to where he could put on protective gear and continue to help.

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After that point, if the employees and MoCs were cleared.... while yeah if it'd been my home, in my state I'd have had the right to shoot someone in the downstairs of my home from the stairwell... sending in a SWAT team to gun all those people in the Senate floor down from the gallery would have probably not played well.