Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) defended herself on Thursday after being criticized over her account of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.
The socialist congresswoman, in the weeks after the breach, repeatedly claimed that she feared for her life on that day as a result of a “very close encounter.”
She had claimed to have hidden in her office for hours until a Capitol police officer came to lead her to a shelter for legislators. The officer, in her words, had “anger and hostility in his eyes” which made her hesitate to trust him, but she eventually followed him.
Cortez was in her office in the Cannon Building when protestors stormed the Capitol building. The building is part of the Capitol complex, but hundreds of yards away from the Capitol building.
Cortez replied with multiple tweets, saying: “This isn’t a fact check at all. Your arrows aren’t accurate. They lie about where the mob stormed & place them further away than it was. You also fail to the [sic] convey *multiple* areas people were trying to storm. It wasn’t 1. You also failed to show tunnels. Poor job all around.”
Posobiec stood by the map, replying: “Maps cut through the rhetoric.”
After the exchange with Posobiec, the hashtags #AOClied and #AlexandriaOcasioSmollett soared to the top trending topics.
She also posted an image of a Newsweek article that wrote: “Ocasio-Cortez said that rioters actually entered her office” and that Cortez believed “this was the moment where I thought everything was over.”
Cortez took to the House floor Thursday to condemn those who accused her of lying and fired back on Twitter.
She said that the “survivors” of “the bloodshed and trauma of the 6th” are already being demanded to “move on.”
She then revealed that she had previously experienced sexual assault, which makes her “struggle with the idea of being believed.” She went on to say that this struggle hindered her from speaking out earlier about her Jan. 6 experience.
