WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — At least one Idahoan living in Washington D.C. witnessed history without being a part of the chaos on Wednesday.
Jake Stewart, who grew up in Idaho Falls and graduated from Hillcrest High School, served as a staffer for former New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall from 2016 to 2018. He started that position just a few months before the 2016 presidential election.
Stewart now works for an early education nonprofit in Washington D.C. in its government relations division and lives near Capitol Hill.
On Wednesday afternoon, what he saw was "extremely disturbing."
"There have been protests that have gone on inside those buildings, but what's happening right now, it's hard for me to call this a protest," Stewart said. "This comes nowhere close to what we've seen before.
"[It's a] insurrection, truly, and has gone beyond anything I've seen," he added. "And I think that's what makes it really shocking and really disappointing too because people have been able to protest in that building. You'd be surprised, the Capitol Police do and are trained to respect protestors to the best of their abilities, and so the protesting itself is not a problem but what's happening now is a huge problem."
Stewart knows some of the staffers who were inside the Capitol as Trump supporters broke physical barriers and made their way past police and security to get inside the building.
"The Capitol takes security very seriously," Stewart said. "Even as a staffer, even someone with a badge that should be able to get you into things, you still have to go through a metal detector, you still have to go through a process and very rarely would you be allowed to bypass that process. So, seeing all these videos of people just going in, it's shocking for me because never would the Capitol ever allow that to happen unless it was truly by force like it's happening."
"I think what makes this situation even scarier is they have those security procedures for a reason," he continued. "So just knowing a bunch of people in the Capitol and you don't know what they have, you don't know if they have weapons, and I think it's that fear of the unknown that makes it particularly scary."
Capitol staffers participate in regular, routine safety drills ever since the September 11, 2001 attacks, but Stewart said he had never participated in any kind of drill that would have prepared him for what happened on Wednesday.
"I don't think anyone could be prepared for what is happening right now," he said Wednesday. "The situation that's unfolding in the Capitol right now, where they were actually on the floor and they have to lock themselves into the galleries and into the chambers, I personally wouldn't have known what to do if I had been on the floor at that moment and those materials, you don't have them and those are protocols you don't know.
"So while we did have some protocols and training in place, I don't think most people in that building could have been prepared for what is happening now," he added.
Despite being shocked at what he saw, Stewart pointed out that what happens between staffers inside the Capitol is not what you see on TV shows and social media.
"Even for people that work in that building, even for people on different sides of the aisle that disagree politically, staffers that were my own age, there was still a sense of respect and I could be friends with people on the other side," Stewart said. "So even though they might put on shows on social media or on television, I think people inside that institution, there is a lot of respect on both sides. I think what we're seeing though is when those shows and displays, those political displays, have gone too far and people have now fallen for it and are believing it and acting on it."
He said he hopes Wednesday's riots can serve as both a learning lesson for politicians and the entire country.
"As politically divided as the country is, you'd be surprised to see the amount of respect that goes on inside that institution between staff."