n Jan. 6, Emily Berret was hunkered down with Speaker While rioters attacked the Capitol o
Nancy Pelosi at Fort McNair when an image popped on the TV screen that stopped her in her tracks.
It was a picture of a man inside Pelosi’s office suite with his feet up on a desk, with a bloody flag draped on the bureau behind him and a taser protruding from his waistband. It’s become one of the most famous images of the Jan. 6 riot — Arkansas’ Richard “Bigo” Barnett with his feet propped up, while a handful of Pelosi staffers sheltered secretly in a nearby conference room.
It was the first indication for many that Pelosi’s office had been breached, and it was a symbol of the brazenness and hubris demonstrated by many who stormed inside that day to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
But for Berret the image meant something more: It was her desk.
“I took a moment because I panicked,” Beret recalled Tuesday on the witness stand in the U.S. District Court of Washington D.C., where she was the first witness in Barnett’s trial on eight charges stemming from his role in the attack — including obstructing Congress’ proceeding and assaulting or impeding federal officers.
More than two years after the attack, the trials of individual defendants are still bringing to light new details about what occurred inside the building. Berret, a deputy chief of staff who essentially served as Pelosi’s shadow, recalled her conversations with the speaker’s Capitol Police detail as they began to grow more anxious about the violence unfolding outside the building. As Berret met with fellow aides and lawmakers on the House floor, she recalled one sergeant telling her to prepare for a possible evacuation.
“Next time you see the whites of my eyes, take the speaker down,” Berret recalled him saying to her while she was on the floor of the House, meaning to begin the evacuation.
Next time she saw him, Berret said she called the remaining staff in the speaker’s office suite and told them to take shelter in a recessed conference room that the staff considered a “safe room,” and to barricade the doors. Meanwhile, Berret, Pelosi, Pelosi’s
chief of staff Terry McCullough and Pelosi’s daughter Alexandra fled the Capitol with her security detail and into a waiting vehicle.
“We started running,” she recalled.
What happened next was an extraordinary story of the makeshift efforts to keep the government functioning that has been told in bits and pieces since Jan. 6.
Pelosi realized that she had left her phone on the rostrum of the House chamber, Berret said. So, Berret, who had her work phone with her, was the only one with access to many of Pelosi’s key contacts.
“I was the lifeline,” she said. “My phone became the operations center.”
Pelosi used Berret’s phone to contact Vice President Mike Pence, as well as state and federal officials, she recalled.
Though she couldn’t arrange the calls herself, she said aides on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s staff
offered to help her set up high-level......