Sporting a black helmet and shouting, “Trump! “Trump!,” a West Virginia state delegate pushed his way through the crowd as he narrated on Facebook Live the moment the mob cracked open the doors of Congress.
“We’re going in! We’re going in!” Republican Derrick Evans yelled in the video.
Seconds later, Evans, a newly elected member of West Virginia’s House of Delegates, pushed his way inside past police officers. “We’re in! We’re in!” he cheered. “Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!”
The recording, which has since been deleted, left state officials from both parties slamming his participation in the mob of pro-Trump supporters who broke into Congress as lawmakers convened to confirm the results of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Amid the violent coup attempt, one woman was shot and killed by police, and three others died of medical emergencies.
In a post shared on his social media hours later, Evans, who did not deny his participation in Wednesday’s events, said he was on a bus headed back to West Virginia.
He claimed that he traveled to the Capitol to film the events as an “independent member of the media.”
“I want to assure you all that I did not have any negative interactions with law enforcement nor did I participate in any destruction that may have occurred,” Evans said in the statement. “I was simply there as an independent member of the media to film history.”
