Anti-Trump protestors gathered outside the Capitol building Wednesday urging senators to convict President Donald Trump in the impeachment vote by screaming through a grate.
As the senators prepared to cast their votes on whether to remove the president from office, several attempted to reach the senators by screaming through an electrical conduit tunnel east of the Senate building.
Protestors are now yelling at the senators through an electrical conduit tunnel outside the Senate #Impeachment pic.twitter.com/7YqZCdrQbG
— Tristan Justice (@JusticeTristan) February 5, 2020
One protestor even chanted through a megaphone aimed down the tunnel.
One protestor is now shouting at the senators through the electrical conduit tunnel through a megaphone pic.twitter.com/gqVbxw7RKO
— Tristan Justice (@JusticeTristan) February 5, 2020
A capitol hill security officer at the site said there was no way anybody in the Senate building could actually hear the protestors through the tunnel, which is actually a security system that was installed post-9/11 to repel a possible airborne chemical attack.
According to Elliot Carter, who is the author of a digital history project documenting the underground environment of Capitol Hill, the tunnels that the protestors were screaming through is a three-story shaft that ventilates the Capitol Visitor’s Center and protects occupants from a terrorist attack in the form of a chemical or biological weapon.
“It’s 50 feet down, through sophisticated air filtration equipment, before finally opening into the Capitol at the lowest service level of the underground Senate expansion space,” Carter told The Federalist.
In other words, the protestors were screaming into a giant fan.
Carter said plans for the project had been in the works since the 1970s but was catalyzed to completion by the September 2001 terrorist attacks. The new security system contributed an additional $38.5 million to the final costs of the Capitol Visitor’s Center’s completion.
Approximately 100 people showed up Wednesday afternoon to protest as the Senate voted to acquit Trump of the charges lodged against him in two articles of impeachment passed by the House of Representatives over a month ago.
Protestors sported signs demanding Trump’s removal as the Senate voted 52-48 to acquit Trump of the charges for “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress.”
There was only one counter-protestor on site.
The impeachment proceedings were kicked off last fall following an anonymous whistleblower complain alleging Trump conspired with the Ukrainian president to interfere in the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
The complaint centered on a July 25th phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, where Trump allegedly tied nearly $400 million in withheld military aid to investigations into the Biden family in an apparent quid pro quo.
The contents of the call were soon declassified and released after reports of the complaint surfaced in the media. The transcript however, showed no such arrangement, though Democrats helped by a compliant media promoted a false narrative that Trump was maliciously abusing the power of the Oval Office for political gain.
After months of partisan proceedings in the House run by Democrats using Democratic rules, Democrat witnesses, and the Democratic calendar, the House voted to impeach Trump without any Republican support.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi then withheld the passed articles of impeachment from the Senate to delay the trial in an effort to extract concessions from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky on how the process would play out in the upper chamber. Pelosi ultimately caved having any leverage on the issue and transmitted the articles without a single pledge from McConnell of Pelosi’s demands to call new witnesses.
On Wednesday, the Senate finally concluded the trial with a 52-48 vote on the “abuse of power” charge with Utah Sen. Mitt Romney being the only Republican voting with Democrats, and 53-47 along party lines on the “obstruction of Congress,” charge falling short of the two-thirds majority required for removal.
