For the members of the jury that will decide whether to hold former President Trump criminally responsible for his actions to remain in office after the end of his term, the attack on the Capitol hit close to home. When rioters charged the building after listening to Trump's instructions outside the White House, it wasn't a distant crisis, the New York Times reports. It was a local story, affecting District residents and people they knew. "I don't think you will find a DC resident who is not aware of what happened on Jan. 6 and was not impacted by some way, either that day or in the days following," said Christina Henderson, a member of the DC Council.
Some were worried about friends and family who worked at the Capitol, including police defending the building and members of Congress inside it. Three of the officers—Daniel Hodges, Aquilino Gonnell, and Harry Dunn—were in the courtroom Thursday when Trump was arraigned. Hodges and Gonnell were injured doing their job on Jan. 6. "All I have wanted from day one is accountability," Dunn said in a statement, per PBS. District judges not involved in the Trump case sat in the courtroom to watch the arraignment, per CBS News.
People who didn't work at the Capitol or know anyone who did still were affected by the attack and the aftermath. They saw Humvees patrol neighborhoods, 8-foot metal fencing go up around the Capitol grounds, streets blocked, and more than 20,000 armed National Guard troops arrive in their city. It felt like a military occupation, some told the Times. "There are so many layers of emotion here, when you think about it," Henderson said. "I don't think anybody in America experienced it the same way as those of us who live closest to the Capitol," council member Charles Allen told Axios a year after the attack.
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Trump said he wants the trial moved out of heavily Democratic DC, but the Constitution says criminal defendants should be tried in the jurisdiction where the presumed offense occurred. An aide to DC's congressional delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, said she barricaded her Capitol office in terror that day. Sharon Eliza Nichols said she could nevertheless be fair in Trump's trial. She thinks other DC residents could, too. Many of them are civil servants, she pointed out, who've worked their entire careers to uphold government values and principles, including a defendant's rights. "I don't think it's any different than any other criminal trial," she said. (More Donald Trump stories.)
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